USING THETA ROLE PRINCIPLE IN VOCABULARY MATERIAL DEVELOPMENT: A CASE OF VERB ‘TAKE’.

Abstract

ABSTRACT

Verb ‘take’ is one of very popular verbs in foreign English class. This verb, based upon its distribution in syntactic configuration can be categorized as intransitive, transitive and ditransitive verb. The meaning inherent within this verb, determine the number of the argument required by the verb. The verb ‘take’ will assign a number of theta roles born by the decomposed atomic meaning yielded by the syntactic structure and lexical item selected by this verb. The number and type of argument, and the variant of this verb, enrich the syntactic structure and the semantic aspect of the verb ‘take’. The combination of the bare verb ‘take’ with any prepositions/particles to form phrasal verb resulted varieties of variants of the verb. These variants may differ in construction. It can appear either in continuous or discontinuous structure. The using of theta role principle simplified the acquisition of this verb and its variants. The grammar aspect can be unified and embedded within this model of vocabulary material development.

Keywords:  Intransitive, transitive, ditransitive, theta role, argument structure, X- Bar Theory