Towards a Frame-Constructional Approach to Verb Classification

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel approach towards identifying English verb classes by combining insights from Componential Analysis (Katz and Postal), Verb Descriptivity (SnellHornby), and Frame Semantics (Fillmore, “Frames”). It differs from syntactico-centric and event structure approaches in that frame-semantic information is shown to directly influence a verb’s ability to occur in grammatical constructions. This frame-constructional approach emphasizes the importance of form-meaning correspondences between the information specified in semantic frames and their different syntactic realizations, leading to a more fine-grained classification of English verbs.