I Tripped or the Man Broke the Chopstick?

The agent and patient, these are semantic roles that they appear in sort of transitive sentences. It's the thing doing the action, but it has been demoted from the subject role because we have raised the object in importance. And it's really important to understand that there are degrees of agenthood and degrees of patienthood. The stuff we're going to be talking about tends to break along degrees ofAgenthood or Patienthood.