Beth Levin's English Verbs Classes and Alternations

Seminar paper from the year 2002 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, Free University of Berlin (Anglistics), course: Seminar Verb classes and alternations, language: English, abstract: [...] "e;This work is guided by the assumption that the behaviour of verb, particularlywith respect to the expression and interpretation of its arguments, is to a largeextent determined by its meaning. (Levin 1993)[Levin tries to develop a system which enables the speaker to determine thebehaviour of a verb by its meaning]Levin points out that a native speaker is able to make subtle judgements aboutthe syntactic behaviour of a verb. She hypothesises that it is the meaning of theverb which enables the speaker to make such judgements about a verb ssyntactic behaviour. //In particular, the ability of a verb to exist in certainsyntactic frames or constructions (see examples below) is sensitive to certaincomponents of meaning. The book aims to establish the relevant components ofmeaning, and thereby classify the English verbs into classes of shared behaviourand meaning. Levin (1993:.. following ... 1987) uses the verb gally - a nearly obsoletewhaling term little-known to native speakers - to illustrate this relationshipbetween a verb s meaning and its syntactic behaviour. [...]