The Influence of VERB Argument Structure on Processing
Alan Juffs, Guillermo A. Rodríguez · 2014
Argument structure is part of a learner’s knowledge of word entries in the lexicon. Juffs (1996) emphasized that a sophisticated approach to the lexicon is key to understanding how important vocabulary is as part of a property theory of SLA (Gregg, 1989). Although that work and Juffs (2009) summarize some of the other key issues in lexical knowledge that are relevant to second language sentence processing, this chapter will focus more narrowly on research that specifically addresses how learners use their knowledge of the links between a verb’s meaning, its argument structure, and syntactic frames to process sentences. The background to this topic in general resides in the long-held recognition that the meaning of a verb plays a role in the syntactic frame it may occur in (Wasow, 1985, p. 203). Indeed, the semantic roles defined by a verb’s event structure and how they are associated with clause structures has been a topic of research since at least the Indian grammarian Panini (Cardona, 1998). If verb meaning determines the structure of a clause in descriptive grammars, it is understandable why verb argument structure has formed a key component of theories of processing.