Chapter 10: Transitivity + Valence

Question 1

1) Valency

Answer 1

= the number + type of arguments controlled by a predicate
= counts all arguments, including the subject

types:

• monovalent (valency of 1) = He died last week.
• bivalent (valency of 2) = He thought of John.
• trivalent (valency of 3) = He sent him a letter.

Question 2

2) Transitivity

Answer 2

= a property of verbs that relates to wether a verb can take objects + how many such objects a verb can take

types:

• intransitive = without a direct object
• transitive = w/ a direct object
• ditransitive = with a direct + indirect object

Question 3

3) transitivity vs. valency

Answer 3

there are two views of valence:

• the verb-based view –> most common way
• the claused-based view

each verb takes a certain number of arguments:

1. She is sleeping –> intransitive
2. She knows John. –> transitive
3. She gave him the key. –> ditransitive

Each clause pattern involves a certain number of arguments:

1. NP V. –> intransitive
2. NP V NP. –> transitive
3. NP V NP NP. –> ditransitive

some verbs occur in multiple sentence frames:

1. She cooks every day.
2. She is cooking a meal.
3. She cooked him a meal.

the verb-based view:
cook1 –> intransitive
cook2 –> transitive
cook3 –> ditransitive

the clause-based view:
cook –> intransitive frame
–> transitive frame
–> ditransitive frame

Question 4

4) examples

Answer 4

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