Assessing Semantic-Syntactic Features of Verbs from Thirteen Verb Subsets

There are three major classes of verbs: intransitive, transitive, and linking. These three types of verbs can be divided into 13 semantic-syntactic subsets. Verbs within each subset give rise to sentences that have similar syntactic form, albeit a form distinct from that of sentences associated with other subsets. Preliminary research found that more than 90% of sentences written by children or for children contain verbs from 1 of the 13 verb subsets. The sentence form associated with each verb subset might be viewed as a "sentence template" that operationally defines a fixed set of 13 underlying semantic-syntactic relationships essential to communication. A strategy for assessing a child's knowledge of verbs from each subset is described.