The main purpose of this paper is to propose and present the theoretical and practical ways of verb in use which is decisively critical for Korean students to learn English in the middle and high school. When Korean students study English verbs, in ad...
The main purpose of this paper is to propose and present the theoretical and practical ways of verb in use which is decisively critical for Korean students to learn English in the middle and high school. When Korean students study English verbs, in addition to learn the superficial dictionary meaning of a verb by hearts, they should simultaneously acquire the syntactic and semantic information that the verb has by nature as an internalized knowledge.
The core element of constituents in a sentence is a lexical verb. In order to form a sentence, a lexical verb selects and merges with its complements like an object, a complement, an obligatory adverbial or an optional adjunct. Whenever a lexical verb is associated with its complements and a subject to complete a grammatical syntactic structure and to put the semantic interpretation on the combined sentence, the condition on the specification of syntactic and semantic features that the verb require must be satisfied. As an English learner, therefore, Korean students ought to study and get to have a through knowledge of a lexical verb which connotes the information about strict subcategorization feature, complement form feature and thematic feature as its own intrinsic property.
There is a strong connection between a lexical verb and its complements in a sentence. It means that a verb strictly subcategorizes for its complements when it is realized as a head element in the argument structure of a sentence. Thus each verb determines a unique argument structure which specifies the number of arguments that the verb takes and their categorial status, or form by exerting subcategorization feature and complement form feature, respectively. A verb also add the thematic information which is realized in a thematic structure where the verb assigns the number and types of thematic roles to its argument structure. Therefore, when we say we know the meaning of a certain verb, it simply doesn't mean that we know the lexical meaning of the verb itself, but means that we know the syntactic and semantic information of it in addition to word meaning.
In sum, one of the most principled and effective methods of studying English verbs as a foreign language in the secondary schools, Korean students should not only memorize the lexical meaning of a verb, but also acquire such syntactic and semantic information as subcategorization feature, complement form feature and thematic feature that the verb owns as its inherent property as internalized Knowledge.