motifs, verb valency, distribution

The present study mainly scrutinizes the question of motif-like characters of verb valency. Do they behave as other linguistic units? Tests are performed using the Czech text Šlépěj (Footprint) written by Karel Čapek and the Hungarian translation of G. Orwell?s 1984. The rank-frequency, the spectrum of motifs and the relation between length and frequency are examined. The Zipf-Mandelbrot distribution is used for the rank-frequency and spectrum as a model; the relationship between length and frequency is modelled by the Lorentzian function. For a determination of verb valency, a full valency approach is used. Results show that valency motifs are regular language entities.