Levin (1993): English Verb Classes and Alternations #

This file formalizes Levin's diagnostic: a verb's participation in diathesis alternations follows from its meaning, so verbs fall into semantically coherent classes that share an alternation profile (ArgumentStructure.LevinClass.Participates). The book's opening quadruple break, cut, hit, touch takes four distinct profiles across the causative/inchoative, middle, conative, and body-part possessor ascension alternations, one class each (quadruple_profiles_distinct). The Introduction explains the profiles by four components of verb meaning, "motion, contact, change of state, and causation" (MeaningComponent), to which each of the four alternations is sensitive (sensitivity): the body-part possessor ascension alternation needs contact and the conative contact and motion, the middle causation of a change of state, and the causative/inchoative a pure change of state, one whose meaning does not specify how the change comes about. Only the last condition is lost when a meaning involves more components (isUpperSet_sensitivity, not_isUpperSet_sensitivity_causativeInchoative), and the components of the Introduction's characterizations of the four verbs meet the conditions exactly where the class pages of Part II attest the alternations (quadruple_mem_sensitivity_of_participates, quadruple_prediction_matches). Every categorical alternation judgment among the book's examples in Data/Examples/Levin1993.json agrees with the profile of the verb's class (participation_matches_profile). The alternations that pair two argument frames are frame-pair schemas (schema?), which relate two diatheses of a verb when the verb's participants move as the schema says; the causative/inchoative and induced action alternations, which relate the same diatheses, are told apart by the causee's volition (Shows, run_shatter), and every English fragment verb Levin lists has a class whose page it realizes (shows_class_alternations).

Implementation notes #

Rows record the verb's class by the book's section number and the alternation by name; classOf and alternationOf read them into the substrate's enumerations. A row's participation in its alternation is its judgment: an acceptable row attests the alternation, a starred row denies it, and a marginal row is categorical in neither direction.

The Introduction's conditions are necessary ones: a verb shows the body-part possessor ascension alternation "only if its meaning involves the notion of contact" (p. 8), and the causative/inchoative "is found only with verbs of pure change of state" (p. 10). Each is an interval of sets of components, and an alternation for which the Introduction states no condition has the whole lattice. A pure change of state may carry a cause, as break does "when transitive" (p. 9), so the causative/inchoative's interval runs from the change of state to the change of state with its cause.

A causee's entailments are the entry's own or else those its classes' templates agree on (Verb.participantProfile?). Where neither is recorded the causee meets no condition, so a verb shows the causative/inchoative or the induced action alternation only where Levin's condition is verified.

Levin (1993): English Verb Classes and Alternations #

Implementation notes #

References #

The Introduction's quadruple #

Frame-pair schemas of the alternations #

The causee #