A Semantic Analysis of Suffocate Verbs

The information of semantic roles can reflect important characteristics of verbs. Among verbs related to animals actions, suffocate verbs have received limited attention in the fields of linguistics and language teaching. This study has selected five suffocate verbs and analyzed 305 single sentences containing them from corpora. The results show that the verb 窒息 zhìxī ‘suffocate’ has both agent-like semantic roles and patient-like semantic roles, whereas the other 4 verbs only have agent-like semantic roles according to the analyzed sentences. Additionally, only 窒息 zhìxī ‘suffocate’ appears in the causative alternation. The common situational roles of suffocate verbs include Manner, Time, and Location. This paper is conducive to the enriching the research on suffocate verbs and provides an important reference for lexicography.