Valence (definition)

Valence (also called "valency") is a property of verbs. It indicates the number of arguments a verb requires to make a clause. Valence is roughly equivalent to the traditional concept of transitivity.

(1) contains a verb with a valence of 1 (sometimes called univalent or intransitive), (2) a verb with valence of 2 (divalent or transitive), and (3) a verb with valence of 3 (trivalent or ditransitive).

1) Jones snored.

2) Smith bewildered the pedestrians.

3) Jones gave the cheese to the mouse.

Although the mouse in (3) looks superficially like an object of a preposition (and therefore an oblique , it is in fact a core argument (an indirect object) of the verb give.

While valence is conceived as a property of verbs (and therefore is lexically determined), human languages have a wide variety of valence changing operations by which valence can be increased or decreased. Passive voice, for instance, is one example of an "operation" which decreases the valence of a given verb.

See Also

• Valence Changing Operation (definition)
• Argument (definition)
• Transitivity (definition)
• Transitive (definition)
• Intransitive (definition)

External Links

The link below takes you away from the Gaelic Wiki to Wikipedia. Since wikipedia pages can be edited by anyone, they often contain inaccurate information. So be careful!

• wikipedia article on Valence: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valency_(linguistics)