Наталія Романська
(Кам’янець-Подільський національний університет імені Івана Огієнка)
EVENT SCHEMAS IN ENGLISH NEWSPAPER DISCOURSE
The syntactic space of the contemporary English newspaper discourse is made of syntactic units such as phrases and sentences, which construct events and fragments of events. Newspaper events, being a kind of media event, correlate with syntactic units and can be viewed in terms of event schemas [3, p. 269]. The sets of event schemas are meaningful and include the emotion schema, the action schema, and the transfer schema. These event schemas are expressed in a small set of sentence patterns [3, 269]. Addressing event schemas in terms of syntactic functions is relevant. First, event schemas correlate with syntactic functions and second, they are very effective for explaining the syntactic structure of the newspaper discourse.
The paper aims to experiment with event schemas, show their correlation with syntactic functions in the newspaper discourse, and specify their communicative effect. Event schemas have been widely studied from different points of view [1]. Event schemas are characterized by different thematic roles. The thematic role of the instigator of an action is known as the agent, and the role of the affected entity can be described as the theme. Someone who experiences an emotion is an experiencer and someone who is affected by the emotion and at the same time is a stimulus of an emotion is a cause [2]. Less central thematic roles are those of location and possessor.
Let us look at examples. In the newspaper headline, Nikki Haley taunts Trump and he takes the bait [4, 27.01.2024] Nikki Haley represents an agent who instigates Trump to take the bait. Consequently, Trump performs the theme role because represents an affected entity. In the headline Frustrated by Biden, Black men ponder their options [4, 27.01.2024] black men are frustrated and perform the role of an experiencer, while Biden turns out to be a stimulus of such an emotion and has the role of a cause.
Location schema or a thematic role of location can be less important but they can cause more prominent schemas such as an emotion schema, e.g. ‘There is no plan. There’s nothing’: Florida Democrats in despair over future [4, 22.01.2023]. The given headline is made of three sentences. The first two represent the location schema meaning the absence of anything that is considered necessary. The generated location schema causes an emotion schema marked with the third sentence, where Florida Democrats perform the function of an experiencer being in an emotional state of despair.
The possession schema describes a relation between a possessor and a theme, e.g., Hamas received weapons and training from Iran, officials say [4, 9.10.2023]. The given headline is based on the possession schema with Hamas being a possessor and weapons and training turning out to be a theme.
Event schemas are expressed in language by the grammatical constructions characterizing basic clauses and sentences. These constructions are known as sentence patterns. Sentence patterns are established by obligatory constituents and have a specific syntactic function in the sentence structure. Obligatory constituents of a sentence are the subject (S), the predicate (P), the direct or prepositional object (O), the indirect object (IO), and further complements. The latter may “complement” other constituents such as the subject (CS), the direct object (CO), and the predicate (CP). Let us illustrate how event schema roles correlate with certain syntactic functions in the sentence structure, e.g. U.S. and Israeli officials said | they have no firm evidence so far | that Iran authorized or directly coordinated the attack | that killed more than 900 Israelis and wounded thousands [4, 9.10.2023].
The newspaper fragment given above includes one sentence made of four clauses that establish chain relations with one another: each previous clause is main in relation with the next one. In the first main clause, the noun phrase U.S. and Israeli officials performs the function of the subject and the verb said performs the function of the predicate. The first clause is main for the second one which is in the function of a direct object clause in relation to the first one. At the same time, the second clause is main for the third one which performs as an attributive complement in relation to the second one. In the meantime, the third clause is the main one for the fourth one which is in the function of the attributive complement.
The distinguished event schemas can be subsumed under three “worlds of experience”: the material world, the psychological world, and the force-dynamic world. The material world is understood as the structured world of entities as they exist, change, or undergo processes. The material world also includes humans who do not take an active part in shaping it. The psychological world is the internal world of people’s sensations, emotions, perceptions, and thoughts. It is the world as experienced and conceptualized by sentient humans. The force-dynamic world is the external world of action, force, and cause and their effects. In this world, human agents figure prominently as the instigators of events.
Situations that belong to the material world comprise the occurrence of things in states and processes, the location and motion of things, and the possession of things. These are framed in the occurrence schema, the location schema, and the possession schema. The common characteristic they share is that they all involve the role ‘theme’.
Thus, event schemas are abstract models that shed some light on the idea of a sentence and clause, their meaningful nature and functionality.
REFERENCES
- Huang, Lifu, et al. Liberal Event Extraction and Event Schema Induction. Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics URL: https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:14610045
- Martin F., Schaefer F. Causation at the syntax-semantics interface. Causation in Grammatical Structures / Copley B., and Martin F. (eds.). Oxford : Oxford Studies in Theoretical Linguistics. 2015. P. 209-244. DOI:1093/acprof:oso/9780199672073.003.0009
- Radden G., Dirven R. Cognitive English Grammar. Amsterdam/Philadelphia : John Benjamins Publishing Company. 2007. 415 p.
- The Washington Post. URL: https://www.washingtonpost.com/. (Last accessed: 29.01.2024).