> THEMES and PATIENTS are rather similar, and not all linguists distinguish between
these roles. A THEME typically moves from one location or one person to another,
like *the letter* in (31). A PATIENT (or undergoer), like *the window* in (35), is physically
affected by the verb’s action – so the window gets broken. A subject can also
be a PATIENT, as with *the flowers* in (34): by wilting, the fl owers undergo a physical
change of state, but they certainly don’t deliberately wilt, so that noun phrase is not
the AGENT.
Maggie Tallerman, *Understanding Syntax* (2020 5 edn), p 49.
1. How's this sense of Semantic Role related to the lay 2021 English sense of 'patient', i.e. a ["suffering, injured, or sick person under medical treatment"](https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=patient)?
2. Why did linguisticians pick 'patient' to denote this Theta Role? Why not pick 'undergoer' that would be less ambiguous, polysemous, and thus less baffling, than 'patient'?
