What is "actancy"

Actancy is a term in syntax and grammar describing the relationship between a verb predicate and its nominal arguments. It attempts to study and describe actants or clausal components which identify the nominal participants in a verbal process which may be the subject, direct object, or the indirect object of the verb. Actants is a French term coined by Lucien Tesnière, and so its usage has been extended into English although its usage is more common in continental linguistics than in English language linguistics. In French, the term l'actance has the more general meaning of the study of verb arguments and is not as narrow as the English loan.