Leipzig Valency Classes Project
Description
The Leipzig Valency Classes Project (funded by the DFG) is carrying out a large-scale
cross-linguistic comparison of valency classes. With respect to their valency properties, verbs fall into
different classes in all languages. The project is inspired by Levin (1993), a classical study of syntactic
classes of verbs in English, which argues that a semantic classification of verbs can be achieved through
applying syntactic diagnostics. Yet, this study, as well as an earlier study by Apresjan (1967) on Russian,
has not been followed up cross-linguistically, which leaves open the question of which aspects of these
classifications are universal and which are language-particular. Similarly, valency dictionaries are few in
number and mostly deal with European languages, thus they cannot fill the gap.
Project members:
Andrej Malchukov, Bernard Comrie, Iren Hartmann, Martin Haspelmath, Bradley Taylor & Søren Wichmann
URL
http://www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/valency/
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