Logos

FUNCTIONfun.spa.complemento-agente

complemento agente

The clause role naming the participant that acts, in a clause where that participant is not the subject, carried by a phrase headed by por and by no other preposition.

The agent phrase is the role that exists only because another role was vacated. When a clause is recast so that the participant acting is no longer the subject, the language offers one place to name that participant anyway, and it is a phrase headed by por. The role is therefore parasitic on a voice contrast rather than on a verb, which is why no verb lists it and why every clause of the relevant voice admits it. It is also the role most often absent when it is available, since the usual reason for recasting a clause this way is to avoid naming the participant at all, and a construction whose point is to leave a participant unnamed is used more often with the phrase omitted than with it present. That asymmetry is worth stating rather than assuming: the role is defined by the construction that licenses it, not by how often a speaker fills it.

statusstatus
documentedasserted, and the sources agree
provenanceprovenance
authoredwritten for Logos, from first principles
derivation statusderivation_status
unstatednobody has said whether it follows from anything
saliencesalience
No salience. Where no frequency source applies the object carries none, rather than a default or a guess (03-schema.md §3.5).
aliasesaliases
  • metalanguageagent phrase
sourcessources
  • SOURCENueva gramática de la lengua española (2009)src.nueva-gramaticano page in v1
  • SOURCEA New Reference Grammar of Modern Spanish (Butt and Benjamin)src.butt-benjaminno page in v1

The level it operates at

function.level

A function is a role something plays. This is the size of the thing whose structure supplies the role.

levellevel
clauseit is a role inside a clause, filled by a phrase

Confusable with

function.confusable

Objects a reader is likely to mix up with this one, and the difference that separates them. The edge is symmetric and stored once, so this renders on both objects' pages from the one statement.

  • FUNCTIONcomplemento circunstancialfun.spa.complemento-circunstancialdocumented

    what tells them apartThe same preposition heads adjuncts of cause and of route, so the head does not separate them. A phrase headed by por is in this role only when the clause has demoted the acting participant from subject and the phrase names that participant. Otherwise it names a circumstance, and it can be removed without leaving the clause looking like it has lost an argument.

Everything joined to this object

One group per typed edge, in both directions. A1b guarantees no object node is an orphan, so this is the whole navigation: an object with no edges would have failed the build rather than reached this page.

What this object is a kind of

Walking this object's own `is-a` edges: what it is a kind of. Several branches from one object are several classification axes, not competing supertypes.

objects
1
places drawn
1
multi-parent
None in this view. This subgraph happens to be a tree, which the explorer draws as one without assuming it is one.

Siblings are listed by name, then by id to break ties. That is a display choice made here and not an order the graph asserts.

Fan-out per dimension

A4

One row per dimension, largest first. That is a display order, not a verdict: 03-schema.md declares no threshold above which fan-out is too much, so this reports the count and grades nothing.

  • case13 values
  • mood8 values
  • voice8 values
  • aspect7 values
  • aktionsart6 values
  • number6 values
  • person6 values
  • tense6 values
  • comparison4 values
  • evidentiality4 values
  • gender4 values
  • politeness4 values
  • valency4 values
  • animacy3 values
  • definiteness3 values
  • deixis3 values
  • finiteness2 values
  • information structure2 values
  • interrogativity2 values
  • polarity2 values
  • switch-reference2 values

What kinds of this object there are

Walking the `is-a` edges that point at this object: what kinds of it there are. An object reachable two ways is drawn in both places and is still one object.

objects
1
places drawn
1
multi-parent
None in this view. This subgraph happens to be a tree, which the explorer draws as one without assuming it is one.

Siblings are listed by name, then by id to break ties. That is a display choice made here and not an order the graph asserts.

selects

edges.selects

the parent requires this elsewhere

this object requires, elsewhere

  • CATEGORYpassivecat.passivedocumented
    • conditionThe role is available only in a clause carrying the value of the voice dimension that removes the acting participant from the subject position. In a clause of ordinary voice there is nowhere for it to stand, because the acting participant is already the subject.
  • CLASSpreposicióncls.spa.preposiciondocumented
    • conditionThe phrase is headed by por, fixed and not chosen. No other preposition introduces this role, and the older alternative survives only in fixed formulas.

derives

edges.derives

the why-chain

derived by