Role-dominated and reference-dominated languages

A language is said to be role-dominated if contrasts between basic semantic roles are directly expressed in its surface structure. Otherwise the language is reference-dominated (Foley & Van Valin 1980, 1984).

Examples
A typical example of a role-dominated language is Archi (Nakh-Daghestanian). A typical example of a reference-dominated language is English.

Origin
The term pair was created by Foley & Van Valin (1980).