Subcategorization, selection and constructions

The last comment in connection with subclasses of nouns is that labels such as ‘concrete’, ‘count’ and ‘human’ represent properties of nouns; these properties are known as inherent properties, and features such as ‘concrete’ are known as inherent features.

All the examples have been of the ACTIVE DECLARATIVE construction, that is, of the basic construction. As discussed there, the construction of an example such as (2c) is related to a number of other constructions, as shown in (17).

Let us say for the sake of the argument that in the ACTIVE DECLARATIVE construction give requires an animate noun to its left referring to the giver, Frank Churchill, and a prepositional phrase to its right, also containing an animate noun but referring to the recipient, to Jane Fairfax. Example (17b) is an example of the ditransitive construction; the same lexical items occur, but the animate noun Jane Fairfax is a noun phrase immediately following the verb and not preceded by a preposition. In (17c), an example of the passive construction, the animate noun Frank Churchill is not to the left of the verb but to its right, inside a prepositional phrase, by Frank Churchill.

We could write separate dictionary entries for give for all three constructions, but this has two drawbacks. We would have to write separate entries for each construction that a given verb occurs in, and there are many different constructions. More seriously, we would not capture in our account the system of constructions, the fact that paths lead from the basic ACTIVE DECLARATIVE positive construction out to the other constructions, some directly, some via intervening constructions. The way round this problem is to state the subcategorization and selectional restrictions once for the basic ACTIVE DECLARATIVE positive construction and to have the information about the restrictions carried from one construction to the next. (The details of the transfer from one construction to another differ from one model to another, and it is no easy task to state the details explicitly; nonetheless, what has been stated above is the goal shared by all the models of syntax.)