Search by Syntactic Role

In order to find arguments that have a particular syntactic role use the function sentpart().

Syntax

sentpart(part_of_sentence[,term])

The first argument part_of_sentence is used to specify the sentence part and takes one of the values below:

Sentence Part

Description

Predicate

A predicate is the part of a sentence that contains the verb and gives information about the subject. There are different categories of predicates:

  • Simple verbal predicate: He is going on holidays tomorrow.

  • Compound verbal predicate: They decided to discuss the question tomorrow.

  • Compound nominal predicate: He became an interpreter.

Subject

A subject is the person or thing that performs the action of a verb.

  • Danny speaks Spanish fluently.`

Object

An object is a noun affected by the action of the verb.

  • I don’t know his phone number.

Modifier

A modifier is a word or phrase that is used with another word or phrase to limit or add to its meaning. There are different categories of modifiers:

  • currency markets

  • political news

  • the house of my parents

  • genetically modified food

Adverbial

An adverbial is a word that describes or gives more information about a verb, adjective, adverb, or phrase. There are adverbials of time, place, manner, etc.

  • She will leave tomorrow.

  • He is going on holidays.

  • Danny speaks Spanish fluently.

Agent

An agent is the actual actor of the action, which is not represented as subject

  • The contract is signed by vice-president.

Users can specify several syntactic roles separated by a vertical bar ("|") character. In this case query returns words that match at least one of the listed syntactic roles.

If the term argument is omitted, the function matches all specified parts of sentence.

Example

sentpart(subject, apple) matches "Apple" as a subject in "Apple revealed the new model of the iPhone", but not in the sentence "I bought some apples for lunch".

sentpart(object, apple) matches "Apple" as an object in "I bought some apples for lunch".

sentpart(modifier, apple) matches "Apple" as a modifier in "I prefer Apple devices" and "This apple juice is tasty".

sentpart(agent, apple) matches "Apple" as an agent in "The new device promoted by Apple", but not in the sentence "Apple revealed the new model of the iPhone".

sentpart(subject|object) matches "I" as a subject and "apples" as an object in "I bought some apples for lunch".