Let's know Verb 2

               Let’s Know Verb

                            Nidhu Bhusan Das

(Continuation)

     A verb can take one or more arguments. The number of core arguments the verb takes is its Valency or Valence. The arguments are the part of the verb’s morphosyntactical structure. In chemistry, the valency of an element is a measure of its combining power with other atoms when it forms chemical compounds or molecules. In linguistics, verb valency refers to the number of arguments controlled by a verbal predicate. It is related, though not identical, to verb transitivity, which counts only object arguments of the verbal predicate. Verb valency, on the other hand, includes all arguments, including the subject of the verb. The linguistic meaning of valence derives from the definition of valency in chemistry.

      Valency is verb-specific. A verb may expect one or more arguments. When a verb expects one argument, it is monovalent.When the expectation is for two arguments, it is divalent, and if the expectation is for three, the verb is trivalent.

       When we say ‘It rains’, the verb takes the expected pronoun-subject ‘It’ as an argument. Some grammarians say that in such cases the subject word ‘It’ is a dummy pronoun or expletive. Can’t we tend to believe that the pronoun is not a dummy but it replaces the noun ‘Rain’, and instead of saying’ Rain(Noun) rains(verb)’,we say ‘It rains.’ The use of ‘rain’ as noun and verb is a case of zero derivation or Conversion. So, here the verb ‘rain is monovalent.But those who believe that ‘It’ in this case is a dummy pronoun, and the verb ‘rains’ does not have a real argument call the verb’rain’ avalent for its having zero-argument. When we say ‘They play football’ the verb ‘play’ requires a ‘player’ (They-subject NP) and a thing to be played (football-object NP).Here the verb is divalent. As for a trivalent verb we may think of the verb ‘give’ which requires a ‘giver’, a thing to be ‘given’ and a ‘givee’ (the person to receive).(to be continued)