Animate who is the initial possessor or creator/producer of something, including the speaker/communicator of information. Excludes events where transfer/communication is not framed as unidirectional.
A “source” in the broadest sense of a starting point/condition. Contrasts with Recipient if there is transfer/communication.
English construals:1
Originator↝Agent (passive-by or adnominal by):
If the source of learning is an individual (or group of individuals, organization, etc.) who provides information, Originator↝Source applies. Otherwise, it is simply Source:
We learned a lot from Miss Zarves. (Originator↝Source) 013
If we consider subject position as an Agent construal and direct object position as a Theme construal (Shalev et al., 2019; see also Ancillary fn. 3, Recipient fn. 1), then we can add examples like She talked to her editor (Originator↝Agent) and They robbed her of her life savings (Originator↝Theme). Originator does not apply to the subject of events like exchange or talk/chat (with), which involve a back-and-forth between multiple Agents. ↩
| description | Animate who is the initial possessor or creator/producer of something, including the speaker/communicator of information. Excludes events where transfer/communication is not framed as unidirectional. |
|---|---|
| animacy | animate |
| parent | Participant |
| deprecated | False |
| deprecation_message |