Verb Valency - The dependents of the verb (ePub)

Seminar paper from the year 2008 in the subject Didactics - English - Grammar, Style, Working Technique, grade: 1,7, RWTH Aachen University (Institut für Anglistik ), course: Syntactic Questions, language: English, abstract: Although the idea of valency is not new in the field of linguistics, it seems to have received
relatively little attention up to now. Lucien Tesnière, who became known as the developer of
the so called "dependency grammar", was one of the first linguists who described the
capacity of a verb to bind a certain number of "actants"1 (cf. Tesnière 1980, 385-386). In his
posthumously published book "Eléments de syntaxe structurale"2 (1959) he called this
phenomenon "valency". Later on, other linguists adopted his notion, modified and adapted it.
One of these linguists is Peter Eisenberg, a German philologist, who wrote some recent
works on grammar in which the role of verb valency is often in the center of attention.
Because a period of thirty years had passed since Tesnière's first attempt to define the
phenomenon of valency in linguistics, Eisenberg's approach is a lot more detailed and
includes different criteria for he had the opportunity to contribute his knowledge of other
theories which were created after Tesnière's book had been published.
This term paper will draw a comparison of two works written by the authors mentioned
above with special regard to the words which are dependent on verbs. Since the verb is often
in the center of attention when the notion of valency is concerned, the group of the other
words which are "governed" by the verb does not seem to be examined in the same way.
Furthermore there does not even seem to be a standard term for such words (perhaps except
for "arguments" (cf. Meyer 2005, 30), but even the notion of arguments is used in diverse
ways), so that I will use the word "dependents" to refer to every possible linguistic element
which can be bound by a verb.
The main aim of this paper will not only be to provide a small overview of dependents in
valency theories, but also to illustrate the pros and cons of each of these theories in a
comparison at the end.
To introduce the reader into the topic, a small overview of the notion of valency will be
given at the beginning of the term paper. Later on, the most important aspects concerning
dependents of both theories will be presented separately. After having compared the two
works, pointed out the main discrepancies and having stated their benefits respectively their
deficiencies, a final conclusion will be given.