Beth Levin′s English Verbs Classes and Alternations (1993)

by

Katrin Shams-Eddien

1 Introduction 1
1.1 The structure of the book 1
1.2 The syntactic behaviour of a verb and its meaning 2

2 Diathesis Alternations 3
2.1 Transitivity-altering Alternations 4
2.2 Alternations Not Involving a Change in the Transitivity of the Verb 6
2.2.1 With/Against Alternation (Levin 1993:67) 6
2.3 Oblique Subject Alternations 7
2.4 Obligatory Passive 8
2.5 Summary: Alternations 8

3 Verb Classes 8

4 Conclusion 9

1 Introduction

1.1 The structure of the book

Levin′s book consists of two major parts:

I) providing a list of diathesis alternations

II) providing a list of verb classes

Part I: shows that in the relevant diathesis alternation is illustrated with respect to this class of verbs, it is accompanied by an annotation indicating that it applies to only some members of the class and that only the relevant verbs are listed

Part II: shows that when the relevant verb class is treated, the properties that do not apply to the whole class are flagged

Levin divides verbs into different classes that are determined by the meaning of the verbs:
We can find 57 different verb classes with a great variety of subcategories like:

1.) Verbs of putting à subcategories: 
a.) verbs of putting in a Spatial configuration
b.) verbs of putting with a specified direction

2.) Verbs of removing

3.) v. o. sending and carrying

4.) v. o. Creation and Transformation

5.) Psych-Verbs (Psychological state)

6.) Weather Verbs etc. ...

Every verb class allows certain alternations. So once we know what kind of verb class a verb belongs to we can make a judgement about its alternations.

Levin describes eight different kind of alternations, containing many subclasses like:

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