Paper

Rating-based property axes: Agentivity and split intransitivity

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Abstract

Many gradable properties have been found to be encoded as axes in embedding space. Most commonly, property axes are computed using seed words, but recent work has noted limitations to seed-based axes. Here, we present a novel methodology for computing property axes that is based on human ratings and does not require seeds. We apply this methodology to a particular problem at the syntax-semantics interface, namely, the question which semantic properties of intransitive verbs affect their likelihood to occur in one of two syntactic structures, unergative and unaccusative. Comparing property axes that encode different semantic dimensions of the concept of agentivity,  we find that properties like movement and being alive are a better predictor of the syntactic behavior of intransitives than goal-directedness or intentionality. We discuss the potential of rating-based axes for future work in semantics and at the syntax-semantics interface. 

Keywords: property axes, animacy, agentivity, unergativity, unaccusativity

How to Cite:

Neu, E., Dillon, B. & Erk, K., (2026) “Rating-based property axes: Agentivity and split intransitivity”, Society for Computation in Linguistics 9(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.7275/scil.4040