If you want to know where natural language processing began and see how it works, you need
this book. A few key terms are not adequately explained for the lay reader, but core principles
and the examples of reconfiguration of verbs into groupings help considerably in understanding
how our language use works.
English Verb Classes and Alternations: A Preliminary Investigation New edition
by
Beth Levin
(Author)
|
Beth Levin
(Author)
Find all the books, read about the author, and more.
See search results for this author
|
ISBN-13:
978-0226475332
ISBN-10:
0226475336
Why is ISBN important?
ISBN
Scan an ISBN with your phone
Use the Amazon App to scan ISBNs and compare prices.
This bar-code number lets you verify that you're getting exactly the right version or edition of a book. The 13-digit and 10-digit formats both work.
Use the Amazon App to scan ISBNs and compare prices.
Add to book club
Loading your book clubs
There was a problem loading your book clubs. Please try again.
Not in a club?
Learn more
Join or create book clubs
Choose books together
Track your books
Bring your club to Amazon Book Clubs, start a new book club and invite your friends to join, or find a club that’s right for you for free.
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
New releases
Explore popular titles in every genre and find something you love. See more
Enter your mobile number or email address below and we'll send you a link to download the free Kindle App. Then you can start reading Kindle books on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
-
Apple
-
Android
-
Windows Phone
-
Android
|
Download to your computer
|
Kindle Cloud Reader
|
Customers who bought this item also bought
Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1
Tell the Publisher!
I'd like to read this book on Kindle
Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.
I'd like to read this book on Kindle
Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.
Product details
- Publisher : University of Chicago Press; New edition (September 1, 1993)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 366 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0226475336
- ISBN-13 : 978-0226475332
- Item Weight : 1.24 pounds
- Dimensions : 9.06 x 6.02 x 0.86 inches
-
Best Sellers Rank:
#1,535,993 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2,346 in Grammar Reference (Books)
- #187,971 in Textbooks
- Customer Reviews:
Customer reviews
4.7 out of 5 stars
4.7 out of 5
9 global ratings
How are ratings calculated?
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzes reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
Reviewed in the United States on February 17, 2014
Verified Purchase
2 people found this helpful
Report abuse
Reviewed in the United States on August 28, 2006
I have worked as a computational linguist for over 20 years now. And even while I was still in grad school, I grew weary of exceedingly complicated theoretical frameworks whose longevity was questionable, in part because in my experience, they have a tendency to lead to politics. But mostly this is true because I find them of marginal utility when I actually want to build something which is useful on my computer.
This book is exceedingly useful for building things on a computer... at least I have found it so.
So in my humble opinion, this book ranks with and beyond many of the what are thought of as the great works of linguistics, like, you know, Cours, Syntactic Structures, Bloomfield's and Sapir's Language, Jakobson's Kindersprache, and Humboldt's writings, which I regard very highly. And yes, I have read them all, too many times in some cases. The reason I rate this work so highly is that it consists of substantive generalizations, which by their nature must stand the test of time. Nor are they trivial generalizations.
That doesn't mean it's excessively difficult to understand what the generalizations are once you get into it. I would say that anyone who knows what a transitive verb is and who knows the difference between verbal tense and aspect would be able to follow this text if they were motivated. And if you are into text processing of any sort on a computer, like data mining or translation memory or full text retrieval, there's very good reason to be motivated to use this book.
Still there's a reason why nobody made this classification before Levin. You have to know what to look for. You have to resist the temptation to go into your head and start confusing the map with the territory. I regard this as a major problem for theoretical linguists, not only in modern times, but also historically.
The book proves that there is a relationship between the meaning of a verb and the syntactic structures that it can enter into. At the time the book was written, this was a much debated topic in the linguistics world, and I suspect that it is primarily the influence of this book which has largely laid that debate to rest. For example, one class she distinguishes (to choose completely at random) is verbs of substance emission. You can say both:
Substance/Source Alternation:
Heat radiates from the sun.
The sun radiates heat.
However, you cannot say:
The boy eats from the plate.
The plate eats the boy.
In the first half of the book, Levin distinguishes perhaps 70 syntactic alternations like this organized into 8 supercategories. In the second half, she inverts the classification. She distinguishes perhaps 150 semantic verb classes and then lists the syntactic alternations that characterize them.
For example, the Separate Verbs in English are: decouple, differentiate, disconnect, disentangle, etc. And these can undergo the transitive and intransitive Simple Reciprocal Alternations (which she defines in the first section), the Causative/Inchoative Alternation (also defined in section I) and so on.
And that's the essence of it. It is a reference work which covers about 3000 verbs in common English usage.
This book is exceedingly useful for building things on a computer... at least I have found it so.
So in my humble opinion, this book ranks with and beyond many of the what are thought of as the great works of linguistics, like, you know, Cours, Syntactic Structures, Bloomfield's and Sapir's Language, Jakobson's Kindersprache, and Humboldt's writings, which I regard very highly. And yes, I have read them all, too many times in some cases. The reason I rate this work so highly is that it consists of substantive generalizations, which by their nature must stand the test of time. Nor are they trivial generalizations.
That doesn't mean it's excessively difficult to understand what the generalizations are once you get into it. I would say that anyone who knows what a transitive verb is and who knows the difference between verbal tense and aspect would be able to follow this text if they were motivated. And if you are into text processing of any sort on a computer, like data mining or translation memory or full text retrieval, there's very good reason to be motivated to use this book.
Still there's a reason why nobody made this classification before Levin. You have to know what to look for. You have to resist the temptation to go into your head and start confusing the map with the territory. I regard this as a major problem for theoretical linguists, not only in modern times, but also historically.
The book proves that there is a relationship between the meaning of a verb and the syntactic structures that it can enter into. At the time the book was written, this was a much debated topic in the linguistics world, and I suspect that it is primarily the influence of this book which has largely laid that debate to rest. For example, one class she distinguishes (to choose completely at random) is verbs of substance emission. You can say both:
Substance/Source Alternation:
Heat radiates from the sun.
The sun radiates heat.
However, you cannot say:
The boy eats from the plate.
The plate eats the boy.
In the first half of the book, Levin distinguishes perhaps 70 syntactic alternations like this organized into 8 supercategories. In the second half, she inverts the classification. She distinguishes perhaps 150 semantic verb classes and then lists the syntactic alternations that characterize them.
For example, the Separate Verbs in English are: decouple, differentiate, disconnect, disentangle, etc. And these can undergo the transitive and intransitive Simple Reciprocal Alternations (which she defines in the first section), the Causative/Inchoative Alternation (also defined in section I) and so on.
And that's the essence of it. It is a reference work which covers about 3000 verbs in common English usage.
30 people found this helpful
Report abuse
Reviewed in the United States on August 3, 2008
This book is a result of a considerable research about English verbs! That's a good source for verbal studies even in other languages.
3 people found this helpful
Report abuse


