lexical-selection rules

in linguistics, rules governing which lexical items may appear in which sentence structures. For example, intransitive verbs, such as smile or lie, do not allow direct objects and are therefore incompatible with certain syntactic structures. The relationship between lexical selection and sentence structure is of major interest in generative grammar.

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Psychology term of the day

May 8th 2024

disarranged-sentence test

a test or test item whose objective is to put a scrambled sentence in proper order. For example, the individual being tested could be required to reorder “Boy town the to went bustling the” to read “The boy went to the bustling town.”