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In linguistics, valency or valence is the number and type of arguments and complements controlled by a predicate, content verbs being typical predicates. Valency is related, though not identical, to subcategorization and transitivity, which count only object arguments – valency counts all arguments, including the subject. The linguistic meaning of valency derives from the definition of valency in chemistry. Like valency found in chemistry, there is the binding of specific elements. In the grammatical theory of valency, the verbs organize sentences by binding the specific elements. Examples of elements that would be bound would be the complement and the actant.[1] Although the term originates from valence in chemistry, linguistic valency has a close analogy in mathematics under the term arity.[2]
The valency metaphor appeared first in linguistics in Charles Sanders Peirce's essay "The Logic of Relatives" in 1897,[3] and it then surfaced in the works of a number of linguists decades later in the late 1940s and 1950s.[4] Lucien Tesnière is credited most with having established the valency concept in linguistics.[5] A major authority on the valency of the English verbs is Allerton (1982), who made the important distinction between semantic and syntactic valency.
- ^ "Valency Theory". obo. Retrieved 2023-04-26.
- ^ "Arity", Wikipedia, 2023-04-29, retrieved 2023-04-30
- ^ Przepiórkowski (2018) investigates the origins of the valency metaphor in linguistics. He points out that Peirce's use of the valency metaphor is overlooked, Lucien Tesnière being incorrectly credited with having introduced the notion into linguistics.
- ^ Przepiórkowski (2018) documents that in addition to Peirce and Tesnière, three other linguists employed the metaphor roughly around the same time as Tesnière: the Soviet linguist Solomon Davidovič Kacnel’son (1948), the Dutch linguist Albert Willem de Groot(1949), and the American linguist Charles Hockett (1958).
- ^ Tesnière devotes a lengthy and detailed chapter to presenting and exploring the valency concept in his book Éléments de Syntaxe structurale (Elements of Structural Syntax) (1959).