Lexical Verb

A Lexical Verb is a verb that is a content word (e.g. expresses action, occurrence, or a state of being).

Context:
- It can (typically) be the Grammatical Center of a Sentence Predicate.
- It can be:
  - an Action Verb, that Denotes the action performed by a Subject.
  - a Passive Verb, that ...
  - a Being Verb, that Denotes the condition of the Subject.
    - a Linking Verb, that ...
  - an Occurrence Verb, that links the Subject to a Complement.
    - a Sensation Verb, Cognition Verb, Aspectual Verb, Change of State Verb, Movement Verb.
- It can be the Head of a Verb Phrase.
- It can have Verb Syntactic Arguments in a Sentence, such as linguistic subject and direct object.
- It can have Verb Semantic Arguments in a Sentence, such as an experiencer.
- It can range from being a Transitive Verb to being an Intransitive Verb.
- It can be a Finite Verb (with five variables: person, number, tense, mood, and voice)
- It can be an Inflected Verb/Word Form.
  - for Verb Tense, e.g. stop/stops/stopped.
  - for Verb Number, e.g. bite/bites/bit/bitten.
- It can be a Compound Verb, e.g. TO_SEE_TO, KICK_THE_BUCKET.
Example(s):
- Action Verbs:
  - go, come, step, suck, chew, eat up, swim, steal, extinguish.
  - "verb” ⇒ "It is possible to [verb] any noun.”
- Being Verbs:
  - "exist", "live", "soak", and "stand".
- Occurrence Verbs:
  - "to decompose” (itself) and "to glitter". (
Counter-Example(s):
- an Auxiliary Verb.
See: Part-of-Speech Role, VerbNet, Noun.

References

(Crystal, 2008) ⇒ David Crystal. (2008). “A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics, 6th edition." Blackwell Publishing.
- QUOTE: lexis (n.) A term used in LINGUISTIC to refer to the vocabulary of a LANGUAGE … A UNIT of vocabulary is generally referred to as a lexical item, or LEXEME. A complete inventory of the lexical items of a language constitutes that language's dictionary, or LEXICON … 'in the lexicon' as a set of lexical entries. … ... Lexis may be seen in contrast with GRAMMAR, as in the distinction between grammatical WORDS and lexical words: the former refers to words whose sole function is to signal grammatical relationships (a role which is claimed for such words as of, to and the in English); the latter refers to words which have lexical meaning, i.e. they have semantic CONTENT. Examples include lexical verbs (versus auxiliary verbs) and lexical noun phrases (versus non-lexical NPs, such as PRO). A similar contrast distinguishes lexical morphology from derivational MORPHOLOGY.