ISSN: 2306-5737E-ISSN: 2658-4069
Acta Linguistica Petropolitana
Transactions of the Institute for Linguistic Studies
ISSN: 2306-5737E-ISSN: 2658-4069
Acta Linguistica Petropolitana
Transactions of the Institute for Linguistic Studies 

Valency change of English verbs

DOI:10.30842/alp2306573716326
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Yulikova N. M. Izmeneniye valentnosti angliyskikh glagolov. Acta Linguistica Petropolitana. 2020. XVI(3): 837–880.

Many valency studies focus on typical valency configurations, because they rely on dictionaries as their main data source. This paper focuses on both texts and dictionaries, with the former chosen as the main information resource. This paper builds on the theory of structural and functional syntax and views valency as a syntactic property of verbs disclosed in sentences through basic syntactic units or syntaxemes demonstrating specific syntactic meanings and a range of distinctive features. Thus, the syntactic locative category embraces syntaxemes of two of the three functional classes with substantive and qualificative properties that, in their turn, represent syntactic categories as well. Therefore, one can say that the syntactic locative category interacts with the syntactic categories of substantiality and qualificativity.Verbs with the same locative valencies and common lexical semantics can combine in valency groups. There are valency groups comprising verbs with varying valency properties such as verbs of motion, speech, etc. The cases of use of certain syntaxemes with verbs can be either frequent or have low frequency of occurrence. Such occasional changes in verbs’ valency, i.e. in their syntactic properties, can be described as “syntactic shifts”. These valency changes of verbs play the role of structural signals, acting in some cases as formal indicators of the text’s discreteness, and in some cases as its integrators. Syntactic shifts can be markers of the beginning of a paragraph and the end of a paragraph (indicators of discreteness), and also occur in the middle of a paragraph, playing the role of semantic peaks (acting as integrators). The article shows that low-frequency elements considered peripheral can play an important role in text formation. The specific method of analysis applied in this paper reveals instances of discursive use of the syntactic locative category.

Keywords
discourse, language levels, locativity, syntaxeme, syntactic categories, structural and functional syntax, syntactic shifts, valency
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Keywords
discourse, language levels, locativity, syntaxeme, syntactic categories, structural and functional syntax, syntactic shifts, valency
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