Abstract
This paper reports on a contrastive study of verb alternations and semantic classes of verbs. Some of the proposals in Levin (1993) are applied to German. Most of the verb classes identified by Levin for English are also relevant in German, but the classes do not always behave identically with regard to the alternations they permit. Our conclusion is that the proposal of a set of semantic verb classes determining possible alternations is not relevant merely to one language, but that the classes needed and the alternations they govern are subject to cross-linguistic variation.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Language Sciences|Lang. Sci. |
| Publisher | Elsevier BV |
| Pages | 305-317 |
| Number of pages | 12 |
| Volume | 18 |
| Publication status | Published - Jan 1996 |
Keywords
- English
- German
- Grammatical alternations
- Semantics
- Verb classes