Subcategorization of verbs in Thai: A Lexicase dependency approach

This study begins with a comparison and critique of the previous approaches to verb subcategorization in Thai. The present study presents an analysis of clausal structure in Thai in terms of an explicit comprehensive subcategorization of verbs within the Lexicase dependency syntactic framework. The subcategorization of Thai verbs in this study is primarily syntactic and includes both morphologically simple verbs and compound verbs. Unlike English and Korean, for example, Thai does not have morphological inflection to mark the syntactic function of nominals in a sentence. Instead, the syntactic relationship between a verb and a nominal in a sentence is identified only syntactically by means of word order and lexical selection.;The subcategorization of verbs in Thai is stated in terms of: (1) the cooccurrence of verbs with the five lexicase complement case relations, namely Patient, Agent, Locus, Correspondent, and Means; (2) referentiality, that is, whether verbs require a referential subject; (3) the potential extension types, that is, whether verbs require a predicate complement. Based on syntactic criteria for verb classification, there are thirty-one major verb classes in Thai, fifteen non-extension and sixteen extension classes. All classes are exemplified with illustrative sentences.