One of the most widely adopted forms of lexical semantic representation is what we term a semantic role list, also known as a “case frame” (Fillmore 1968) or a “theta-grid” (Stowell 1981). The best-known instantiations of this approach are Fillmore's Case Grammar (1968) and Gruber and Jackendoff's thematic relations (Gruber 1965; Jackendoff 1972, 1976), but such representations have a long history, going back to the Sanskrit grammarian Pānini. The modern interest in semantic role lists originated in Fillmore's work, especially as presented in “The Case for Case” (1968). In a semantic role list, grammatically relevant facets of a verb's meaning are represented by a list of labels identifying the role that each of the verb's arguments plays in the event it denotes. For example, the verbs break and put might be associated with the semantic role lists “Agent, Patient” and “Agent, Theme, Location,” respectively.

Rather than comparing and contrasting the myriad proposals for semantic role list representations, this chapter provides a critical discussion of these approaches. First, in section 2.1 we present the essential properties of semantic role lists. Then, in section 2.2 we discuss their most fundamental limitations. In section 2.3 we review some attempts aimed at overcoming these shortcomings, while maintaining many basic assumptions underlying such approaches.

The properties common to semantic role list approaches

The components of a semantic role list are a predetermined set of labels that identify arguments according to the semantic relation they bear to their verb; each verb is associated with the relevant list of semantic roles.