Subcategorization

Part of a series on
Linguistics
Outline History Index
General linguistics Diachronic Lexicography Morphology Phonology Pragmatics Semantics Syntax Syntax–semantics interface Typology
Applied linguistics Acquisition Anthropological Applied Computational Conversation analysis Corpus linguistics Discourse analysis Distance Documentation Ethnography of communication Ethnomethodology Forensic History of linguistics Interlinguistics Neurolinguistics Philology Philosophy of language Phonetics Psycholinguistics Sociolinguistics Text Translating and interpreting Writing systems
Theoretical frameworks Formalist Constituency Dependency Distributionalism Generative Glossematics Functional Cognitive Construction grammar Functional discourse grammar Grammaticalization Interactional linguistics Prague circle Systemic functional Usage-based Structuralism
Topics Autonomy of syntax Compositionality Conservative and innovative language Descriptivism Etymology Iconicity Internationalism Internet linguistics LGBT linguistics Origin of language Orthography Philosophy of linguistics Prescriptivism Second-language acquisition Theory of language
Portal
v t e

In linguistics, subcategorization denotes the ability/necessity for lexical items (usually verbs) to require/allow the presence and types of the syntactic arguments with which they co-occur.^[1] For example, the word "walk" as in "X walks home" requires the noun-phrase X to be animate.

The notion of subcategorization is similar to the notion of valency,^[2] although the two concepts (subcategorization and valency) stem from different traditions in the study of syntax and grammar.