title: Assessing semantic-syntactic features of verbs from thirteen verb subsets.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Texas Woman's University, Denton, USA.
authors.forename: Alfred H
authors.initials: AH
authors.lastname: White
mesh_terms: D003638:Deafness; D006801:Humans; D008037:Linguistics; D012813:Sign Language; D014705:Verbal Behavior