Jackendoff's semantic primitives

A another piece I am using is from Ray Jackendoff [1], A System fo Semantic Primitives, which is a simplification of some of his other work. In this article, he presents three general types of verbs, which he labels GO, BE,and STAY verbs, and two general tyes of agency, CAUSE and LET. BE sets forth the location of an object relative to some object. GO shows movement, perhaps metaphorical, to some goal. STAY says that the object is Remaining at some location. BE verbs represent states of affairs, while GO and STAY verbs represent events.

CAUSE is the general causation, LET is permissive agency. CAUSE and LET differ in the kind of action performed by the Agent: CAUSE brings the event about, and LET is, in Jakendoff's terms in the article, ceasing to prevent the event.

Steven Pinker, in The Stuff of Thought, relies on this distinction between CAUSE and LET, for example, the says, on page 49, that the verb pour "specifies a causal relation of 'letting' rather than 'forcing'"; which is what appears to be the difference between Jackendoff's LET and CAUSE.


[1]Jackendoff, Ray, A System fo Semantic Primitives (pdf), in Theoretical Issues in Natural Language Processing, 10-13 June 1975