Patient (grammar)

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In linguistics, a grammatical patient is the participant of a situation upon whom an action is carried out. A patient as differentiated from a theme must undergo a change in state. At the very least, there is debate to this effect. Also, patient is the name of the thematic role with the above definition.

Typically, the situation is denoted by a sentence, the action by a verb in the sentence, and the agent by a noun phrase.

For example, in the sentence "Jack kicked the ball", "the ball" is the patient. In certain languages, the patient is declined or otherwise marked to indicate its grammatical role. In Japanese, for instance, the patient is typically affixed with |o| (the hiragana を). Although Modern English does not mark grammatical role, patienthood is represented irregularly in other ways; for instance, with the morphemes "-en", "-ed", or "-ee", as in "eaten", "used", or "payee".

The grammatical patient is often confused with the direct object, but there is a slight difference: the former is based explicitly on its relationship to the verb, whereas the latter is based primarily on its relationship to the subject.