Transitivity and valence

The concept of sub categorization is somewhat similar to the traditional classification of verbs as being either intransitive or transitive. The basic meaning of the term TRANSITIVE is “taking an object.” Thus, an intransitive verb (e.g. yawn) does not take any object, a transitive verb (e.g. like) requires one object, and a ditransitive verb requires two objects. We considered some ditransitive examples; these are repeated in (7):

(7) a    Mary gave [her son]OBJ [a new bicycle]OBJ₂.

      b    Reluctantly, Henry showed [Susan]OBJ [his manuscript]OBJ₂.

      c    Uncle George told [the children]OBJ [a story]OBJ₂.

Another way of specifying the transitivity of a verb is to ask, how many TERM (subject or object) arguments does it take? The number of terms, or direct arguments, is sometimes referred to as the VALENCE of the verb. Since most verbs can be said to have a subject, the valence of a verb is normally one greater than the number of objects it takes: an intransitive verb has a valence of one, a transitive verb has a valence of two, and a ditransitive verb has a valence of three.

It is important to notice that the valence of the verb (in this sense) is not the same as the number of arguments it takes. For example, the verb donate takes three semantic arguments, as illustrated in (8). However, donate has a valence of two because it takes only two term arguments, SUBJ and OBJ. With this predicate, the recipient is always expressed as an oblique argument.

Some linguists use the term “semantic valence” to refer to the number of semantic arguments which a predicate takes, and “syntactic valence” to specify the number of terms which a verb requires. We will use the term “valence” primarily in the latter (syntactic) sense.

To summarize, both valence and subcategorization tell us something about the number of arguments that must be expressed in a clause which contains a particular verb. However, there is an important difference between them. The valence of a verb tells us only the number of terms, or direct arguments; it says nothing about the presence or absence of oblique arguments. The subcategorization of a verb tells us all the Grammatical Relations which the verb assigns to its arguments, whether direct or oblique. So, for example, the verbs hit and put have the same valence (two), but different subcategorization sets, since put requires an oblique argument while hit does not, as shown in (9). (As a practice exercise, the reader should make up some example sentences to illustrate these argument structures.)

اخر الاخبار

اخبار العتبة العباسية المقدسة

سماحة السيد الصافي يكرم عددًا من عوائل الشهداء ضمن فعاليات مهرجان روح النبوة النسوي العالمي الثامن

إحدى أمهات الشهداء: نعتز بتضحيات أبنائنا ونفتخر بشهادتهم دفاعًا عن الدين والمقدسات

ضمن فعاليات مهرجان روح النبوة… عرض فيلم يوثق نشاطات الشعب النسوية في العتبة العباسية المقدسة

فعاليات مهرجان روح النبوة الثقافي تشهد تقديم أوبريت الثقلين القرآني

المزيد

الآخبار الصحية

ماذا يحدث لجسمك عند تناول الوجبات السريعة يوميا؟

لصحة عظام المرأة.. الشاي أفضل أم القهوة؟

لبناء العضلات وإنقاص الوزن.. ما أفضل توقيت لتناول البيض؟

أطعمة صحية تساعد على التعافي من "الإنفلونزا الخارقة"

المزيد

الآخبار التكنلوجية

دراسة تكشف قدرة الحيتان على سماع الأصوات منخفضة وعالية التردد من مسافة بعيدة

تجربة جديدة: الأسفلت المدعوم بالطحالب يقاوم الحفر ويقلل الانبعاثات الكربونية

تسريبات تكشف ملامح أول هاتف قابل للطي من "أبل"

رصد نوع نادر من القطط في تايلاند للمرة الأولى منذ عقود

المزيد

مواضيع ذات صلة

Case and agreement Conclusion

Case

English NP structure (continued)

Recursive rules

Adjectives and Adjective Phrases (AP)

Complements and adjuncts of N

Lexical entries and well-formed clauses Conclusion

Further notes on English Phrase Structure

Uniqueness of oblique arguments

Well-formedness conditions

Subcategorization

Selectional restrictions