Abstract
The focus of this paper is to give an overview of Theta Theory outlined in GB framework developed by Chomsky (1981, 1986) and subsequent works with particular reference to Kambari data within the confines of Chomsky’s Government-Binding Theory (1981, 1986) and Grimshaw’s (1990, 1991) Argument Structure. In numerous works over the past decades, most studies on this aspect focused on assignment of Theta roles to arguments in different languages, but putting Kambari language into consideration has not been done to the best of my knowledge. The study is qualitative and uses introspection in analysing the data. Theta Theory, as one of the essential aspects of formal linguistics, is identified to be the guiding theoretical framework in this paper, and it helped to identify some of the core principles of Universal Grammar. The theory was adopted for its concise explanation for the structural relationship that holds between verbs and their arguments in Kambari sentence formation. This paper identifies and further describes the most basic thematic relations encoded in various theta roles with respect to Kambari data. The paper further observed that aspects of the syntactic behaviour of verbs are tied to their meaning in Kambari. The findings reveal that thematic roles are assigned to arguments based on the thematic hierarchy encoded in the language (Agent, Patient, Theme, etc) and that two thematic roles of Agent/Source can be assigned to an argument in Kambari – not necessarily conforming to the Theta Criterion in English.
Keywords: Theta Criterion; Thematic Hierarchy; Theta Grid; Thematic Roles; Argument Structure
DOI: www.doi.org/10.36349/sojolics.2025.v01i02.006
author/Dantata, A. I., & Abdulsalam, S.
journal/Sokoto JOLICS 1(2) | November 2025 |
