Semantic Modelling of the Sentence

Semantic modelling is associated with generative semantics and semantic syntax. Here the content side of a sentence is modelled and described in elementary senses. The basic notion is that of a semantic structure, which a mental model of an extralinguistic situation is. Semantically oriented syntactic theories were developed by Charles Fillmore, Wallace Chafe, Ch. McCauley, O.I. Moskalskaya. V.V. Bogdanov. These scholars described the semantic structure of a sentence in terms of propositions, predicates, arguments and deep cases. The semantic relations between arguments and predicates were described by them in terms of deep cases.

W.Chafe distinguishes propositions according to the character of the verb: He broke a vase (with an actional semantic structure), The wood is dry (with a statal semantic structure), It rains (with a processive semantic All theories of modelling, no matter what school they could be advanced by, what terms they could be described in, distinguish 2 parts within a basicstructure: a noun + a verb, a subject + a predicate, a noun phrase +a verb phrase, a predicate + an argument.

According to W. Chafe, the total human conceptual universe is dichotomized into two major areas: smb does smth, smth happens to smb.