One of the two principles that facilitate fusion (1) in construction grammar (2).

The semantic coherence principle states that participant roles are matched with argument roles with which they overlap, such that one can be construed as an instance of the other. For example, general categorization principles enable us to determine that the thief participant role of the verb steal overlaps sufficiently with the argument role agent, because both share semantic properties such as animacy, intention, causation and so on.