Beth Levin's English Verbs Classes and Alternations

1.) Verbs of putting à subcategories: a.) verbs of putting in a Spatial configuration

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:

1.) Transitivity Alternations

à subcategory: 1.1) Object of Transitive = Subject of Intransitive Alternations

à subsubcategories 1.1.2) Causative Alternations 1.1.2.1) Causitave/ Inchoative Alternations

1.1.2.2) Induced Action Alternation 1.1.2.3) Other Insances of Causative Alternations

1.2 The syntactic behaviour of a verb and its meaning

“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.

(1) a. The sailors gallied the whales. b. The sailors saw the whales. c. The sailors frightened the whales.

One native speaker, being unfamiliar with the verb ‘gally’, might assume it means something like ‘see’ (1b), whereas another native speaker, might equally assume it means something like ‘frighten’ (1c). Now consider the following examples:

(2) a. The sailors gallied the whales. b. ?Whales gally easily. c. Whales frighten/*see easily.

Example 2b demonstrates the so-called ‘middle construction’ - the subject of the intransitive use of the verb in (2b) corresponds to the object of the transitive use in (2a). To a speaker who believes ‘gally’ means something like ‘see’, the middle construction is unacceptable - *Whales see easily. On the other hand, the speaker thinking that ‘gally’ means ‘frighten’ will find this construction absolutely acceptable. The acceptability of (2b) can therefore be directly related to a speaker’s assumptions concerning the meaning of ‘gally’.

In general, it can be shown that the middle construction (more generally, a syntactic frame of any kind) is available only to certain semantically defined verb classes. In particular, change-of-state verbs such as frighten, cut, open, spit and crush have middles, whereas other kinds of verbs such as see, consider and believe do not. Therefore knowing the meaning of a verb can be a key to make judgements about its behaviour. As Levin (1993:5) puts it: “Predictions about verb behaviour are feasible because particular syntactic properties are associated with verbs of a certain semantic type. The gally example and others like it suggest that general principles of grammar are at work, allowing the syntactic behaviour of a verb to be predicted from its meaning.”

2 Diathesis Alternations

We consider verbs as argument-taking elements. As seen in the above examples, these arguments can often be expressed in a variety of ways; this depends on the verb. In this section, we are interested in identifying which verbs may participate in diathesis alternations, which Levin (1993:2) characterises as “alternations in the expressions of arguments, sometimes accompanied by a change in meaning,” as well as transitivity alternations - alternations which affect a verb’s transitivity.

In passing, we will also discuss how interpreting the behaviour of verbs with respect to these alternations may be interpreted to yield distinct verb classes, and discuss to what extent the verb classes may be semantically coherent.

We begin by examining particular alternations, in order to sense the variety of diathesis alternations which the English verb system offers. Studies of diathesis alternations show that verbs in English É fall into classes on the basis of shared components of meaning. The class members have in common a range of properties, including the possible expression and interpretation of their arguments [see examples 1-4], as well as the existence of certain related morphological forms [see examples 5-6].Ó (Levin 1993:11)

(1) a. Sharon sprayed water on the plants. (locative altern.) b. Sharon sprayed the plants with water. (2) a. The farmer loaded the apples into the cart. (partative) b. The farmer loaded the cart with apples. (holistic[?])

(3) a. * Gina filled lemonade into the pitcher. (with only) b. Gina filled the pitcher with lemonade. (4) a. Carla poured lemonade into the pitcher. (into only)

b. * Gina poured the pitcher with lemonade. [all Levin 1993:2]

(5) a. He e-mailed me the invitation. (zero-related verb) b. * They churched the money.

(6) a. The truck roared down the road. meaning) b. * The dog barked down the street. [Levin 1993:4]

points to note:

- locative alternations

- Òholistic/partativeÓ effect

- inadmissablity of some verbs to alternation

- native speakers aware of limitations on process demonstrated in 5 and 6

2.1 Transitivity-altering Alternations

This section describes alternations which involve a change in the verb’s transitivity. Levin characterises these alternations as ‘NP V NP’ alternating with ‘NP V’ or else ‘NP V NP’ alternating with ‘NP V PP’. Primarily in this section, I will emphasise how the alternations can be used to separate distinct verb classes.

{MEDIA 2 here as blackboard example - direct object deletion - intro to alternations}