4.2.2.1.5. Understanding who is doing it to whom.

Consider the sentence “This dog is chasing this cat.” (I'm assuming you have a picture of a dog chasing a cat, of course.) This sentence involves a dog, a cat, and an act of chasing. One animal is doing the chasing. Linguists would say that the animal who is actively, willfully, doing the chasing is the agent. The other animal is getting chased. That animal is the patient. Technically, the cat is an experiencer, since it is aware that it is being chased, but we can use the term patient broadly to mean “the one or thing directly affected by the action of the agent”. So we have an agent chasing a patient. Since the cat is the one directly affected by the action (chasing) of the agent (the dog), the cat is the patient. Without looking at the picture, going only on the basis of the sentence “This dog is chasing this cat,” how can we know that the agent is the dog and the patient is the cat? Of course, we already know that dogs chase cats and cats don't chase dogs. This is called real-world knowledge. Real-world knowledge will often help you to understand sentences in the new language. But you can also tell that the dog is the agent and the cat is the patient from the way the sentence is put together, and in the long run that is more important for you as a language learner. Simple English sentences typically have the agent ( this dog) followed by the verb (is chasing) followed by the patient (this cat). Thus, even though it violates your real world expectations, you can still understand a sentence such as “That cat is chasing that dog.” You will understand that the cat is the agent (doing the chasing) and the dog is the patient (getting chased), because of the order in which they occur in the sentence.

Now different languages will use different means of indicating who is doing the chasing and who is getting chased. The evidence may be found in the order of the words, as in English. It may be found in special markings on the nouns (called case markings). It may be found in markings on the verb which somehow tell you which animal is doing the chasing and which one is getting chased. If you are interested in more detail, you need to take a linguistics course that deals with grammar from a cross-language standpoint. My main point here is that you need to learn how to tell who is doing what to whom in sentences in the language.

There are some sentences which appear to have a subject and an object in English but where the subject is not doing anything to the object. An example is Margie likes my sister, where the subject is Margie and the object is my sister. In this sentence the subject, Margie, is an experiencer, and not an agent. Make sure you include such sentences among those you learn to comprehend, as they may behave differently from other sentences with subjects and objects.

In sentences with subjects and no objects (intransitive sentences), there are at least two types of subjects to consider. Some subjects are agents, that is, doers, like Margie, in the sentence Margie shouted. Other subjects do not do anything, but rather they have something happen to them. An example is tree, in the sentence The tree fell. In some languages words like sick, and angry, are actually verbs with non-agent subjects. (In other languages they are adjectives.)

Techniques: Early on, you may concentrate on learning to understand sentences with agent subjects and patient objects. Your collection of pictures provides a good opportunity for this. Your LRP can take several dozen pictures in which someone is holding something or someone else. She can describe pictures in random order. Your job is to point to the picture being described. “A woman is holding a baby; a boy is holding a ball; a man is holding a hammer;” and so forth. Other verbs which can be used with many pictures are using, touching, looking at (or seeing). If there is a verb with a meaning similar to the English verb have, it can used: “A woman has a baby; a boy has a ball;” and so forth. (Even if there is no verb similar to have, there will probably be some way to express the meaning of “This man has a hammer”. It will be an important sentence pattern for you to learn to recognize.) It is good if your LRP can use many sentences with the same verb, or one of a very small number of verbs. That way, only the subject and object (or agent and patient) will vary from one picture description to the next. This will enable you to work on learning to recognize who is doing the action and who or what the action is being done to without having to worry about learning a large number of verbs at the same time.

Often your TPR expressions such as “Pick up the nail” involve a verb with an object. What is commonly missing is the subject, since it is typically understood to be the one addressed (that is, the second person--you), and not explicitly mentioned. Just the same, these sentences give you lots of exposure to the verbs with objects. A slight variation is for you to have your co-learner perform actions and have your LRP describe them. You can later listen to the tape recording of this and try to envision in your mind's eye what was happening in your session as your LRP uttered each sentence (assuming you didn't videotape the language sessions).