Talk:Valency (linguistics)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Lesley15.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 12:14, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

The Terms
Since "valency" and "valent" are Latinate words, shouldn't the numerical prefixes be Latinate too, not Greek?

Invalent Univalent Bivalent Trivalent Quadrivalent

? Vegfarandi (talk) 17:47, 24 May 2009 (UTC)


 * You are absolutely correct.  The main page of this article needs to be corrected so it doesn't look like junk science.   Dexter Nextnumber (talk) 08:22, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

voice and valency
Another linguist and I were having a discussion at lunch today, and we were trying to figure out the difference between (grammatical) voice and valency. Is there a difference? Or are they just more or less similar terms used in different theories? I guess voice usually refers to 'active' or 'passive' (etc.), while valency usually refers to the number of arguments, but is that the only difference? Mcswell (talk) 19:26, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, that is the difference. Valency simply defines the number of arguments, and although voice does decide between active and passive, it's concerned more universally with the general syntactical role of the subjects/objects in relationship to the verb. (Case) As this in English can only be defined by passive or active, you are not at all incorrect, but there are other forms of relationships (for example in other languages), and voice is the general description of this.

So we could say the difference is: Valency is just a numerical definition, counting arguments with no reference to syntax, whereas voice specifies grammatical relationships between these arguments, and has nothing to do with counting them. Dürer³ (talk) 16:33, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Wrong, that is NOT the only difference! Actually, voice and valency are only insofar related that the passive voice lowers the verbs potential (quantitative) valency: The subject is in that case an adjunct, it can be left out. Apart from that: Depending on the theory you use, valency is not just about the number of arguments, but also about what may or may not fill the slots opened by the verb. In the valency scheme "x opens y with z", x, y and z are noun positions and can therefore not be filled with adjectives: *"brown opens fearful with noisy.". Some theorists take this further on a semantic level: Is *"The tree opens the kibosh with a bridegroom" a functional sentence? Syntactically it is fine, semantically it is not. In valency terms, the z slot can only be filled with a kind of INSTRUMENT, the x position only with some kind of AGENT (the doer), the y position only with some kind of PATIENT (the thing/person something is done to), at least if you don't use the verb metaphorically. Actually this is similar to other syntactical theories in the sense that subject and object often correspond to agent and patient, though this is not always the case. Anyway. There's a lot more to valency theory than just the quantity of conjuncts. Here in Germany it has become the standard theory for syntax, and it works really well! The professor at my university even proposed a valency syntax of English not too long ago that works really quite well. The book's called "Introduction to Syntactic Analysis: a Valency Approach". It's a good read in the tradition of the CGEL and Aarts & Aarts grammars and can be used as preparation for our final exams by now. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Morbox (talk • contribs) 12:11, 22 February 2014 (UTC)


 * I think you are confusing valency and dependency in the second part of your message. Both concepts stem from Lucien Tesnière, but the one is subsumed by the other. Valency, that is, is a subtheory of the greater concept of dependency. The term "valency grammar" is problematic, because the concept of valency belongs in the lexicon and can therefore not serve as the basis for an overall grammar. Dependency is what can do that. --Tjo3ya (talk) 19:40, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

What about a sentence like...
'He gave her the ball with his hand'? Isn't that a tetra-whatshumicallit? Siúnrá (talk) 12:30, 29 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I think that would be more a case of valency expansion than tetravalency. As a verb gave requires a subject to do the giving, a direct object to be given, and an indirect object to be the recipient of the giving. I forget the term in English (it's ablative of means in Latin), but I don't see that "to give" requires an agent of means for grammatically and syntactically correct phrase. Scienda (talk) 08:43, 1 July 2009 (UTC)


 * The verb to trade is a tetravalent verb: "He trades the apple with her for an orange." I wouldn't be surprised if this was the only one. Sheean (talk) 19:37, 8 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Most verbs of transaction should work that way: "He sells her the fig for a dollar", "She offers him an apple now for a canteloupe tomorrow", etc. Verbs like "promise and "offer" can snowball: "She (1) offers to give (2) him (3) an apple (4) for a guava(5)". Wall Street expressions where someone offers to sell someone else the option of buying later in exchange for undersigning the sale of options now to a third party, make me think that there's some fuzziness involved: is "with her" in your example an absolutely required part of a full form, so that "He trades the apple for an orange" should be regarded as reduced, or is "with her" just a parenthetical commentary, as "on Sunday in the rain during the Founder's Day parade" would be? I would venture to speculate that the weakness of intuitive right/wrong response to such questions is why valency waited so long to be established as a fruitful topic in linguistics: can you guarantee that an assessment of "He trades apples for oranges" as a deleted form of a tetravalent verb, or as a non-deleted form of a trivalent verb, will be generally acceptable enough to serve as a building block for further research instead of as a mere debate topic? Scutigera (talk) 23:30, 21 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Hello Scutigera,


 * Your example She offers to give him an apple for a guava contains two main valency bearing verbs: offers and give. The first, i.e. offer, takes two arguments: she and to give him an apple for a guava. The second, i.e. give takes at least three arguments: she, him, and apple. Whether for guava is argument of give is debatable, I think.


 * What I find most interesting in your comment concerns the length of time it has taken for valency to be established as a fruitful concept in linguistics. Valency appears to replacing the competing concept of subcategorization. The two notions are closely related, but they stem from different traditions. The valency metaphor is due to the great French linguist Lucien Tesnière, who is widely considered to be the father of modern dependency grammars. Subcategorization, in contrast, is a notion that stems from Chomsky's early works. I would argue that the reason that valency has taken so long to become established is due to the competition between these two traditions. The Chomskyan tradition has been quite dominant since the modern study of syntax really got going. The fact that the valency concept took so long to become well established is hence due, I believe, to the overinfluence of the Chomskyan tradition. I observe with some satisfaction the weakening of this overinfluence in the past decade or two. Ideas from other traditions are finally being allowed into mainstream syntax and grammar. --Tjo3ya (talk) 16:05, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Transitivity : mistake

 * an impersonal verb takes no arguments, e.g. It rains. (Though it is technically the subject of the verb in English, it is only a dummy subject, that is a syntactic placeholder - it has no concrete referent. No other subject can replace it. In many other languages, there would be no subject at all. In Spanish, for example, it is raining could be expressed as simply llueve.)

[...]
 * a transitive verb takes two, e.g. He1 kicked the ball2.

Wrong. It might be true in English (anyway I couldn't find counterexample myself, I don't speak English well enough), but not in Latin (and probably some others) : please see this. --Fsojic (talk) 22:22, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Additional sidebar
Hi. I have created this sidebar and would like to include it on this page. However, per this page, "few articles have more than one sidebar." Should I replace the current sidebar with the more specialized sidebar? What is the best way to go about this problem since the new sidebar revolves heavily around the topic of valency? Joeystanley (talk) 12:40, 30 April 2014 (UTC)


 * The current additions to the article seem OK to me. Information about valency altering mechanisms is certainly relevant content. Please consider, however, that the article should be a coherent whole. Accomplishing a coherent whole requires that the formatting be consistent throughout. The examples should be listed using the same conventions. The notes should be formatted consistently. I personally prefer the conventions that are already in place. The notes give a sentence indicating what is being cited, and the actual source appears in the literature list. This convention makes reading the notes easier. One can easily see what the note is about.


 * Concerning valency increasing and reducing mechanisms, much more could be added. Tesniere considered the recessive to be a valency reducing mechanism, e.g. Er muss sich beeilien 'He must self hurry'. The reflexive form sich 'self' is the object of a formerly transitive verb, but beeilen can no longer be viewed as transitive in modern German. For Tesniere, the causative was a valency increasing mechanism, e.g. Sam let us stay. The appearance of the causative-like verb let increases the basic valency by adding the argument Sam.


 * I may work on the additions to the article. I may ensure that the formatting throughout is consistent, and I may add/change the additions so that the content is clear.--Tjo3ya (talk) 15:33, 30 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the input. I've been adding a bit on valency changing today. That section of the article should be quite a bit different now and I'll probably continue to add on to that section. If the section becomes too large (and it very easily could), would it be a topic for a separate page? Joeystanley (talk) 18:30, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Lobjan
I think the best use of "See also" sections is to provide the most important links to content that is mentioned in the text above. A willy-nilly addition of links to "See also" undermines the coherence of the greater article, especially when these links have to have a special clarificational statement included with them. I am reverting back. Please respond here before rereverting. We need to discuss this and perhaps get third party opinions. We want to avoid edit warring. --Tjo3ya (talk) 03:36, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I actually don't feel that strongly in this case. I mean, there's no reason Lojban in particular has to be mentioned other than that it handles valency in an unusual, rigid, explicit way. On a larger scale, though, I'm under the impression that See also sections are for topics that aren't covered in the article - that's the point of "Main article:" and "See also:" tags at the tops of body text sections. See also sections are for other topics that may be of close interest to the reader but where there isn't a good place to put them elsewhere. Tezero (talk) 03:45, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

I would support the link if Lobjan were mentioned in a coherent way in the text above. In fact I would be in favor of expanding the article above in a coherent way so that it mentions how valency is accommodated in Lobjan and other non-natural languages. But here's the main point: Expanding the main content of an article in a coherent way is much more difficult than simply adding links to "See also" sections. Hence if there is a strong desire to mention Lobjan, then please do so by making a significant contribution in terms of coherent content in the main article. I can provide my feedback on any potential additions. --Tjo3ya (talk) 03:57, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
 * If you think it could fit in that way, I suppose that could be arranged. I'm... caught up in a few different things both off-Wiki and on, but will try to take a look at some point, if I can find sources on Lojban grammar that aren't primary. Tezero (talk) 04:02, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

It rains
"It rains. (Though it is technically the subject of the verb in English, it is only a dummy subject, that is a syntactic placeholder - it has no concrete referent. No other subject can replace it. In many other languages, there would be no subject at all. In Spanish, for example, It is raining could be expressed as simply llueve.)" This seems a bad example, because in Spanish, "I sing" could also be expressed without a pronoun, and yet "yo" isn't a dummy subject. Is the distinction that a pronoun could optionally be supplied when saying "canto", whereas a subject pronoun is impossible for "llueve" - or is a subject pronoun optionally possible for "llueve" too? Surely a better example would be one from a language in which personal pronouns (such as the "I" in "I sing") are mandatory while a dummy pronoun in "it rains" is impossible? 86.186.42.111 (talk) 16:22, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Rain rains. Just granpa (talk) 11:27, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

More modern sources?
The most source recent is from 2000 and I was wondering if there might be sources even more recent that might expand on the topic even more. -Sophie Wright (talk) 07:45, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

Is "bet" tritransitive?
Dubious statement in question:

However, since the latter example can be restated as I1 bet you2 two dollars3 without becoming ungrammatical, the verb bet is not considered to be a true tritransitive verb (that is, the clause it will rain is an adjunct, not an argument).

Quote from @172.58.187.16:

''this is not the only opinion on this, and this section needs to be rephrased to indicate the lack of academic consensus. personally, i am of the opinion that the restated version of the phrase has a fundamentally different meaning than the original, along the lines of ambitransitive verbs, but that is not my job to decide but rather the citations''

I am not a linguist and have no opinion on the matter. However, the dubious span template was broken, so I'm fixing it by kicking the discussion out to here. JamesTMartin (talk) 01:58, 12 February 2023 (UTC)