Summary

The traditional view of clauses and sentences is that syntactic structures, are built up and that lexical items are inserted into the structures. In fact, lexical items can be seen as playing an important and even controlling role. For instance, blame requires a noun phrase to its right, Emma blamed Harriet, and while it does not require a prepositional phrase it allows one and requires the preposition to be for – Emma blamed Harriet for the mistake. Some verbs, such as disappear, exclude any noun phrase to their right; witness *The magician disappeared the investment funds. Other verbs exclude entire constructions; resemble excludes the passive, and *Your friend is resembled by my brother is unacceptable. Particular verbs require particular types of noun to their left or right; faint requires an animate noun to its left, as in The patient fainted vs *The engine fainted, and persuade requires an animate noun to its right, as in We persuaded the students (to write their essays) vs *We persuaded the lava (to flow into the lake). Verbs are said to select particular types of noun and to impose selectional restrictions. Verbs can be divided into subcategories with respect to the number and type of phrases they require, exclude or allow. The phenomenon is known as subcategorization, and verbs are said to subcategorize for particular types of constituents.