On N. Chomsky’s strict subcategorization of verbs

Abstract

This paper studies the so-called strict subcategorization rules, and the theory associated with them, in the transformational grammar of. Erigl·ish as proposed by Noarn Chomsky in his Aspects. The syntactic component of English transformational grammar consists of two mutually ordered parts, viz., the base and the transformational subcomponents. The initial part of the base are the so-called categorial rules, which are of almost exclusive interest to us here. Their primary task is to generate what are usually called basic sentence patterns, and will here, with Chomsky (Aspects, p.ll3), be designated with the expression, frames of category symbols.- The rules of the transformational subcomponent modify, in various ways, the frames generated by the base. For several reasons - one of them being that the correct work of the transformational subcomponent quite often depends on the kind of lexical items with which the syntactic positions in the frames of category symbols have been filled, the lexical items must be introduced from the lexicon into the empty positions in the frames before the rules of the transformational subcomponent can be allowed to modify the frames.