Bill,

I don't understand your probablity account, especially with regard to your two examples of sleep.

Bill writes:
 
When you look at a large number of examples of sentences using a given verb, whan you find, in terms of "+/- use of a direct object," is a probability distribution. "Sleep" is rarely used with a direct object, *but it can be* (I've heard students say things like, "That lecture slept the whole class") -- the probability distribution is thus something like 99.99999% intrans. vs. 0.00001% trans, or even more assymmetric. With a verb like "run," the distribution will be more symmetric. Traditional grammar makes an argument move that says, roughly, "verbs don't _really_ having varying probabilities of use; instead, each verb has exactly one use, and what looks like variation is either due to homonymy, or the kind of language play that does not call for any formal explanation."

****
If I understand this correctely (and I may not have), then the passage above says the "sleep" in sentences 1 and 2 are the same.

1) The class slept.
2) The lecture slept the class.

Causative constructions in English are hard to learn.  There is evidence that sentences like (2) are created by children.  

However, (1) and (2) have different meanings for me.   (1) has no sense of causation; (2) clearly has that.  

Likewise, in sentences (3) and (4) "run" has very different meanings.

3)  Barry ran.
4) Barry ran a good campaign.  

Dictionaries are very interesting in this regard.  They provide different meanings for verbs and indentify which meaning of a verb is transitive or intransitive.  Why is this wrongheaded?

Bob Yates, University of Central Missouri 

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