Subcategorization frames

Revision as of 14:48, 2 September 2013

Subcategorization frames are sets of rules used to generate syntactic structures out of the base form.

What are subcategorization frames ?

Subcategorization frames are sets of subcategorization rules that apply for a wide range of cases, i.e., that are regular.

When to use subcategorization frames

Subcategorization frames are used in case of valent words whose syntactic needs follow a general rule, i.e., whenever there can be stated a regular pattern for generating constituents linked to the base form, such as specifiers, complements and adjuncts.

For instance, many verbs in English take a NP as a specifier (subject) and another NP as complement (direct object). This syntactic behavior, described by the frame VS(NP)VC(NP);, can be assigned to many different verbs and, therefore, must be defined as a subcategorization frame.

When not to use subcategorization frames

Subcategorization frames are not used in case of avalent words or in case of irregular behaviour, which is described by subcategorization rules.

For instance, very few verbs, in English, admit more than two arguments, such as "to bet" in "I bet you ten pounds that they lose". This syntactic behavior, which can be described by the rule VS(NP)VC(PPR)VC(NP)VC(CH([that]));, as very specific, is likely to be defined as a subcategorization rule rather than as a subcategorization frame.

Reference

The subcategorization frames are referred as follows:

• by its common name (such as "intransitive", "direct transitive"), in case of well-established reference;
• by the rule itself, in case of single-rule frames;
• by the most distinctive rule, if any; or
• by a "leading form", i.e., a typical example (a prototype) representative of the whole category, otherwise.

There are two predefined frames in the UNL^arium:

AVALENT

If the word has valency equal to 0, i.e., if it does not require any argument.

IRREGULAR

If the word requires an argument but does not follow any existing frame.

Syntax

Subcategorization frames are expressed by S-rules, a special formalism for representing the syntactic structure of phrases.

<SYNTACTIC ROLE>(<REQUIRED>);

Where:
<SYNTACTIC ROLE> is the Syntactic roles (VA, VC, VS, VH, etc) of the term required by the base form; and
<REQUIRED> is the term required by the base form to saturate its syntactic structure. It is a maximal projection (NP, VP, JP, AP, PP, DP), a head or a combination of both.

Examples

Notes