The study of valency is biased toward more frequent verbs: A corpus study of the valency of less frequent verbs in Czech

Abstract

Abstract Theories of valency and valency dictionaries are inevitably and understandably based on the valency behavior of frequent verbs. This paper scrutinizes 154 low-frequency Czech verbs and argues that they demonstrate that Czech verbs are more malleable in their valency behavior than suggested by the literature. It is argued that this fits better within a constructionist approach to valency rather than a lexicalist one. Furthermore, the paper illustrates two alternations, previously unrecognized for Czech as semantic diatheses, namely the causative-inchoative alternation and the Agent-Means alternation.