Syntax 1 Wiki: Week 3

Please read through the information about the Phrases.

Valence

Valence is the representation of the knowledge speakers have about what other kinds of constituents a word needs to combine with. You will remember from traditional grammar the distinction between intransitive and transitive verbs. These are just names for those verbs, respectively, which do not need a direct object (i.e. the verbs appear and cough) and those which do (like have and trust). Objects are called complements in our theory; so, to express that the verb have needs a direct object, its representation would contain the line

COMPS <NP>,

which translated into people speech means that the expression needs one and only one complement and that the part of speech of this complement needs to be NP.

Correspondingly,

COMPS <>

means that the expression does not need and, in fact, is not allowed to combine with any complement. That is correct for intransitive verbs like appear, since you cannot say such things as *Lilly appears the cake..

As we will see, words cannot only select complements, but also subjects and determiners. This is what the two attribute SPR is for. Verbs are marked as

SPR <NP>,

i.e. they must have a subject NP and so-called common nouns (i.e. cat or student) are listed as

SPR <D>,

which means that they must combine with a determiner like a or the in order to function as a subject or an object.

With this background about the 2 valence attributes, look at the lexical entries for Lilly and Fido again. You see that both expressions are marked as

SPR <>
COMPS <>.

From this we conclude that both words do not need to be combined with a specifier or a complement in order to function as the subject or object of a sentence. And this is correct, as the two sentences below illustrate:

(1) Lilly snores.
(2) I like Fido.

In (1), the word Lilly serves as the specifier (= subject) of the verb snores and can do so all by itself. In (2), the word Fido is the direct object complement of the transitive verb likes and again it can do so all by itself. Compare this with what happens, when we substitute a common noun for the names Lilly and Fido in the sentences above:

(3) *Student snores.
(4) *I like cat.

Both sentences become ungrammatical! The reason is simple: as already mentioned above, common nouns like student or cat are [SPR <D>], which means that they first need to combine with a determiner in order to serve as the subject or object of a sentence. Thus, (3) and (4) can be made grammatical by putting determiners in front of the two common nouns:

(5) The student snores.
(6) I like any cat.

Self Test Exercises on Verb Valence

(1) Kim snores.

Check your answer

SPR	<NP[nom]>
COMPS	< >

2. Kim likes Robin.

Check your answer

SPR	<NP[nom]>
COMPS	<NP[acc]>

3. Kim talked to the student.

Check your answer

SPR	<NP[nom]>
COMPS	< PP >

4. Kim showed Hessen to Robin.

Check your answer

SPR	<NP[nom]>
COMPS	<NP[acc], PP>

5. Kim handed Robin the apple.

Check your answer

SPR	<NP[nom]>
COMPS	<NP[acc], NP[acc]>

6. Kim told Robin that the student likes her.

Check your answer

SPR	<NP[nom]>
COMPS	<NP[acc], S>

7. Kim mentioned to Robin that the student likes her.

Check your answer

SPR	<NP[nom]>
COMPS	<PP, S>

8. Kim wants [to eat an apple.]

Check your answer

SPR	<NP[nom]>
COMPS	<VP[inf]>

9. Kim believes Robin to like the student.

Check your answer

SPR	<NP[nom]>
COMPS	<NP[acc], VP[inf]>

10. Kim seems to Robin to like the student.

Check your answer

SPR	<NP[nom]>
COMPS	<PP, VP[inf]>

11. Kim is intelligent.

Check your answer

SPR	<NP[nom]>
COMPS	<AP>

12. Kim considers the student intelligent.

Check your answer

SPR	<NP[nom]>
COMPS	<NP[acc], AP>

13. Kim talked to Robin about the student.

Check your answer

SPR	<NP[nom]>
COMPS	<PP, PP>

14. Kim saw Robin talk to the student.

Check your answer

SPR	<NP[nom]>
COMPS	<NP[acc], VP[base]>

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