Lexical verb
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In linguistics a lexical verb or full verb is a member of an open class of verbs that includes all verbs except auxiliary verbs. Lexical verbs typically express action, state, or other predicate meaning. In contrast, auxiliary verbs express grammatical meaning. The verb phrase of a sentence is generally headed by a lexical verb.[1]
The descriptor lexical is applied to the words of a language's lexicon, often to indicate a content word, as distinct from a function word.[2]
The Kalam languages in New Guinea are famous for having perhaps the smallest numbers of lexical verbs of any languages in the world.
[edit] References
- ^ Crystal, David. (2003) A Dictionary of Linguistics & Phonetics (5th edition). New York: Wiley-Blackwell.
- ^ "What is a lexical verb?". Glossary (Linguistics). SIL International. 2004. http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsALexicalVerb.htm. Retrieved 25 August 2009.
