Theta criterion

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In syntax, the theta criterion (in its original form) states that in a grammatical sentence, every theta role that a verb can assign must be realized by some argument, and each argument may bear only a single theta role.^[1] So, for instance, for the verb send, which is associated with the theta-roles of Agent, Goal and Theme, a well formed sentence might look like this:

Robaato-san sent Mearii a package.

Here, the three theta roles are assigned to Robaato-san, Mearii and a package, respectively. The sentence would be malformed if any of these arguments were absent.

[edit] Apparent violations

It is often noted that sometimes arguments of the verb are not overtly present, and that sometimes the verb may take more arguments than specified in the lexicon:

i - Gladius Maximus died the death befitting a Roman soldier ii - John ate iii - Going to the store, be back later!

In the case of ii and iii, the explanation often raised by linguists is that there is a silent pronoun, PRO, which occupies the argument positions which are phonologically empty in these sentences. This can be justified by noting that in ii, one cannot get the meaning from this sentence that John ate something inedible, such as the Canadian Government. In iii, too, the sentence can only be understood as being intended in the first person.

In the case of i, however, there is no clear theta-position that the death is occupying. Why such pseudo-transitivity is licensed by cognate (and semantically related) NPs is unclear.