Roleset stab.01 Verbnet Class: 1 "poke with sharp object, perhaps fatally":

Roles:

Arg0:stabber


Arg1:thing stabbed


Arg2:sharp object


Arg3:specific location of wound or end result of stabbing

Examples:

person: ns tense: past aspect: ns voice: active form: full


passive transitived (-)
Prior to his term, a teacher bled to death in the halls, *trace* stabbed *trace* by a student.
REL:	stabbed
Arg1:	*trace* -> *trace* -> a teacher
Arg0-by:	a student

person: ns tense: past aspect: ns voice: active form: full


arg3 as location (-)
When he initially refused, he says, they stabbed him in the back and made off with $2,000 and 280 blank tickets.
Arg0:	they
REL:	stabbed
Arg1:	him
Arg3-in:	the back

person: ns tense: ns aspect: progressive voice: active form: participle


arg3 as result (-)
*trace* Beheading small children, stabbing elderly people to death, raping and shooting women, and burying people alive are just a few of the grisly activities that the Somali armed forces have been engaged in over the past two years.
Arg0:
REL:	stabbing
Arg1:	elderly people
Arg3-to:	death

person: ns tense: present aspect: ns voice: passive form: participle


args 1 2 3 (-)
Guns were never used: Each man was stabbed *trace* to death with a large knife.
REL:	stabbed
Arg1:	*trace* -> Each man
Arg3-to:	death
Arg2-with:	a large knife

Note that the result and the location cannot cooccur: "John was stabbed to death in the back". This is clearly not a syntactic valency problem, since this has no more phrases than the last example.