Verbs in the driving seat

• Valence


  The number of essential participants (arguments) a verb implies
• Valence range


  • 0
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
• Verb


  The 'coat hanger of the sentence' - it implies a certain number of participants
• Psycholinguistic studies show that even when we hear verbs in isolation, we mentally represent the number of participants
• Argument Structure


  A level of linguistic representation that comprises: 1) the number of essential participants, 2) their roles in the sentence, 3) how those roles are ordered
• Essential participants


  Known as 'arguments'
• Non-essential participants


  Often classified as adverbials
• Some adverbial phrases describe essential participants - the event could not take place without them
• Roles for Noun Phrases

  • Essential participants known as 'arguments'
  • Non-essential participants often classified as adverbials
• Other types of Noun Phrase roles

  • Attributives
  • Locatives
  • Instruments
• Determining valence


  1. Corpus analysis

  2. Introspection
• Argument structure is partly semantic (roles determined by verb meaning) and partly syntactic (ordering of roles)
• Verbs can have different argument structures

  Verbs can allow arguments to be swapped around, but the subject is fixed
• Determining essential participants: those which are syntactically obligatory (sentence sounds odd without them)
• Most arguments can be rendered optional in certain contexts
• Some verbs elicit a wide variety of arguments
• Extra-valent arguments which sound "added on"
• No foolproof method to determine valence - corpus analysis and introspection can give different results
• Proposition


  The 'basic meaning' of the sentence, consisting primarily of the verb-plus-arguments
• Propositions can be expressed in different sentence structures
• Argument structure is needed to explain differences in verb behaviour that cannot be accounted for by just the verb meaning
• Argument structure is important for clinical applications like language assessment and therapy
• Attributives


  Phrases which describe a property of something else
• Locatives


  Phrases which describe locations
• Attributives are mapped to Cs and Co
• We can often make questions about attributives using the question word how
• The girls played baseball in the park
• The girls played baseball

  in the park
• in the park
• e need AS?


  • Projectionist Acc
  • Probs with PA (1)
  • Probs with PA (2)
  • Probs with PA (3)
  • Propositions
• What is a proposition?


  A proposition is a statement that can be either true or false
• Thematic relations


  • Agent
  • Experiencer
  • Patient
  • Theme
  • Benefactive
  • Attributive
  • Locative
  • Instrument
  • Possessor
• Main roles for Noun Phrases

  • Agent
  • Experiencer
  • Patient
  • Theme
  • Benefactive
• Other roles for NPs

  • Attributive
  • Locative
  • Instrument
• Phrases which describe locations are sometimes called LOCATIVES, e.g. 1. Jason is in the park LOC, 2. Pat loaded the hay onto the wagon LOC
• An instrument is an object used to perform and action, e.g. 1. Angela covered the food with a cloth INSTR
• After Eating Peas Tiny Babies Avoid Laughing In Public is a mnemonic for remembering thematic relations
• Aphasic individuals are widely believed to have fundamental difficulties with argument structure, e.g. often produce verbs without obligatory arguments
• Individuals with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) also show more subtle difficulties with argument structure