English Verb Classes and Alternations: A Preliminary Investigation

by Beth Levin

In this rich reference work, Beth Levin classifies over 3,000 English verbs according to shared meaning and behavior. Levin starts with the hypothesis that a verb's meaning influences its syntactic behavior and develops it into a powerful tool for studying the English verb lexicon. She shows how identifying verbs with similar syntactic behavior provides an effective means of distinguishing semantically coherent verb classes, and isolates these classes by examining verb behavior with respect to a wide range of syntactic alternations that reflect verb meaning.

The first part of the book sets out alternate ways in which verbs can express their arguments. The second presents classes of verbs that share a kernel of meaning and explores in detail the behavior of each class, drawing on the alternations in the first part. Levin's discussion of each class and alternation includes lists of relevant verbs, illustrative examples, comments on noteworthy properties, and bibliographic references. The result is an original, systematic picture of the organization of the verb inventory.

Easy to use, English Verb Classes and Alternations sets the stage for further explorations of the interface between lexical semantics and syntax. It will prove indispensable for theoretical and computational linguists, psycholinguists, cognitive scientists, lexicographers, and teachers of English as a second language.

Genres: Linguistics

366 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1993

Reviews

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

The English language, having lost most case inflections, favors reliance on word order to establish how clause elements map to arguments of the clause verb. While it's often possible to rearrange clause elements into alternative orders - generally using prepositional phrases - how this is allowed vs. disallowed depends on the specific verb used.

This book analyzes thousands of English verbs, grouping them into classes such that within a class the clause element mappings, as well as the ways in which alternative word orders are allowed, are similar. Much of this grouping operation, interestingly, is by verb semantics - verbs of motion, verbs of perception, etc.

I'm not aware of any other resource that so deeply yet concisely enumerates how one can assemble elements of a clause in English. This book helps demystify not just English verbs, but to a considerable extent English prepositions as well.

[Audra]

The bible of semantic tagging. More like a dictionary than some fascinating read that I recommend to everyone. However, if you NEED to know why the verbs "speed" and "rocket" are related, or why "squeeze" and "style" are connected, you should have this.