9 - Verb classes and Agents

Summary

They've a temper, some of them – particularly verbs: they're the proudest – adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs …

Humpty Dumpty.

This chapter discusses the internal structure of the verb class. In previous chapters various distinctions were made between verbs. These are reviewed in Section 1, and I then examine in Section 2 a proposal for an additional subdivision of the verb class. Some linguistic effects of this classification are examined in the next two sections, and its relation to features of the Agent is discussed in Section 5. In Section 6 it is shown that the proposed classification of verbs reflects the graded structure of the Agent category, and Section 7 deals with the question of the extent to which naive speakers are aware of these distinctions between verbs.

Subdivisions of verbs

The lexical entry of a verb specifies what are its core arguments (Chapter 2, Section 3.2). Intransitive verbs have only one core argument, which becomes the sentence subject, whereas transitive verbs have (at least) two. Some verbs can be used both transitively and intransitively; as for instance the verb hang (Chapter 2, Section 3.3.2). The verb class, then, can be subdivided according to the number of core arguments verbs enter into.

The lexical entry of a verb also specifies the features of each of its core arguments, and this permits an additional, and finer, subdivision, which determines, among other things, the possibility of using the passive voice; see Chapter 2, Section 5.2.