Beth Levin's English Verbs Classes and Alternations (ePub)

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: [...] "This work is guided by the assumption that the behaviour of verb, particularly
with respect to the expression and interpretation of its arguments, is to a large
extent determined by its meaning." (Levin 1993)
[Levin tries to develop a system which enables the speaker to determine the
behaviour of a verb by its meaning]
Levin points out that a native speaker is able to make subtle judgements about
the syntactic behaviour of a verb. She hypothesises that it is the meaning of the
verb which enables the speaker to make such judgements about a verb's
syntactic behaviour. //In particular, the ability of a verb to exist in certain
syntactic frames or constructions (see examples below) is sensitive to certain
components of meaning. The book aims to establish the relevant components of
meaning, and thereby classify the English verbs into classes of shared behaviour
and meaning.
Levin (1993:.. following ... 1987) uses the verb "gally" - a nearly obsolete
whaling term little-known to native speakers - to illustrate this relationship
between a verb's meaning and its syntactic behaviour. [...]