Valency (linguistics)
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In linguistics, valency or valence refers to the capacity of a verb to take a specific number and type of arguments (noun phrase positions). A monovalent verb (for example, sleep) cannot take a direct object (*he sleeps it). A trivalent verb has three arguments (e. g., give has the giver, the recipient, and the thing given).
The linguistical meaning of valence is derived from the definition of valency in chemistry.
Valency is closely related, though not identical, to transitivity. Transitivity refers to the number of core arguments of the verb that are not optional (giving intransitive verbs, transitive verbs, and ditransitive verbs). For example:
- (1) Newlyn lies. (valency of lie = 1, intransitive)
- (2) John kicks the ball. (valency of kick = 2, transitive)
- (3) John gives Mary a flower. (valency of give = 3, ditransitive)
The concept of valency is however undermined by the fact that non-optional or core meanings are hard to pin down. For example:
- (4) Ask, and God will give.
- (5) John kicks Mary the ball.
- (6) The horse kicks.
and it becomes rather difficult to define what is non-optional. Modern trends such as cognitive grammars take the view that optionality is a gradation, i.e. different arguments have different degrees of co-occurrence, and this makes valency a moot issue.
[edit] Lexical Valency
The term valence has a related technical meaning in lexical semantics that elaborates on the role of argument structure - it refers to the capacity of other lexical units to combine with the given word. For instance, valence is one of the elements defining a construction in some Construction Grammars. This sense of the term, sometimes called Lexical Valency, is related to the above, but is far richer than the numerical notion inherited from Chemistry.
