The senator received praise from multiple members of the press.
The prepositional phrase in the text is determined by using the airplane and cloud test. If the phrase begins with an action that a plane would do with a cloud, then it is a preposition. In this case, a plane can fly by a cloud. The prepositional phrase has a grammatical function of predicate and a semantic role of agent. The senator is the recipient of the press’s action. The sentence is in passive voice, indicating that the typical roles of agent and patient are reversed.
The rowdy customers were forcibly asked to leave the restaurant by the waiter.
The underlined group of words, which is a noun phrase, is known to be a noun phrase because the rowdy customers are people and meet the criteria of a noun. The grammatical function of the underlined group of words is as a direct object, therefore functioning as a noun phrase. The rowdy customers are experiencing the action of the subject, the waiter. This sentence exemplifies a typical case.
The underlined group of words in this sentence serves the semantic role of patient. This is a typical sentence type where the direct object receives the action in a sentence with a transitive verb.
The students sent a nasty letter to the linguistics professor.
The highlighted words form a noun phrase, which can be identified as such because the linguistics professor is a person and meets the criteria for being a noun. Based on the criteria from A, this noun phrase is functioning as the subject. Thus, the highlighted words serve as a noun phrase functioning in the subject role.
The underlined group of words is assigned the semantic role of patient. However, there is a problem regarding the weak transitive verb “sent” as it is not clear if the actions of the professor’s students had any impact on him. Categorizing the linguistics professor proves challenging, but I assigned it to the patient category as it was the closest fitting option, although not entirely perfect.
The guy on the radio really annoys me.
The noun phrase pronoun replacing Tim Freitag is “me”. A native English speaker would find it incorrect if I didn’t replace my name with the objective pronoun. The underlined word serves as a direct object, although it can be problematic to call it one without a clearly defined interpretation. Howard Stern, who identifies as a shock jock, is the guy on the radio. If we consider that the guy on the radio actively seeks to elicit a response, then the underlined word, “me”, is the direct object experiencing the effect of the subject. “Me” functions as a pronoun and serves as the direct object.
The underlined word in the text is serving as an experiencer, in which it is currently undergoing an emotional response to an external stimulus. As it lacks control over the situation, the underlined word identifies itself as an experiencer.
Alexander strolled through the streets for several hours.
The highlighted group of words, which is a noun phrase, can be recognized as such because the street is a physical object that meets the criteria of a noun. The grammatical function of this phrase is to serve as the direct object. However, there is a difficulty in this situation. Despite “wandered” being a transitive verb, it lacks the ability to be rearranged passively. Moreover, it is unclear whether Alexander truly influences the streets.
