Examples
The following sentences are employed to illustrate the concept of subcategorization:
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- Luke worked.
- Indiana Jones ate chilled monkey brain.
- Tom waited for us.
The verb worked/work is intransitive and thus subcategorizes for a single argument (here Luke), which is the subject; therefore its subcategorization frame contains just a subject argument. The verb ate/eat is transitive, so it subcategorizes for two arguments (here Indiana Jones and chilled monkey brain), a subject and an object, which means that its subcategorization frame contains two arguments. And the verb waited/wait subcategorizes for two arguments as well, although the second of these is a prepositional argument associated with the preposition for. In this regard, we see that the subcategorization frame of verbs can contain specific words. Subcategorization frames are sometimes schematized in the following manner:
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- work
- eat
- wait
These examples demonstrate that subcategorization frames are specifications of the number and types of arguments of a word (usually a verb), and they are believed to be listed as lexical information (that is, they are thought of as part of a speaker's knowledge of the word in the vocabulary of the language). Dozens of distinct subcategorization frames are needed to accommodate the full combinatory potential of the verbs of any given language. Finally, subcategorization frames are associated most closely with verbs, although the concept can also be applied to other word categories.
Subcategorization frames are essential parts of a number of phrase structure grammars, e.g. Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar, Lexical Functional Grammar, and Minimalism.
Read more about this topic: Subcategorization Frame
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