science

Lexicase

Lexicase is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Lexicase rather than just read about it. In short: Lexicase is a type of dependency grammar originally developed beginning in the early 1970s by Stanley Starosta at the University of Hawaii. Dozens of Starosta's graduate students also contributed to the theory and wrote at least 20 doctoral dissertations using Lexicase to analyze numerous languages of Asia (Japanese, Mandarin, Vietnamese, Thai, Khmer, Tagalog, etc.), Europe (Greek, Russian, etc.), and Africa (Swahil…

Key takeaways

Lexicase belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Lexicase to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Lexicase from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Lexicase is a type of dependency grammar originally developed beginning in the early 1970s by Stanley Starosta at the University of Hawaii. Dozens of Starosta's graduate students also contributed to the theory and wrote at least 20 doctoral dissertations using Lexicase to analyze numerous languages of Asia (Japanese, Mandarin, Vietnamese, Thai, Khmer, Tagalog, etc.), Europe (Greek, Russian, etc.), and Africa (Swahili and Yoruba). Lexicase is a monostratal X-bar grammar (i.e. it is not a transformational grammar) in which words are the heads of their own phrases (i.e. there are no assumed empty phrases). In Lexicase, words have features that determine the morphosyntactic distribution of their dependents. A primary goal of Lexicase is to provide a simple, transparent, disprovable means of testing cross-linguistic tendencies. As a lexically focused theory, Lexicase has been used to identify verb subcategories in Korean, Russian, Thai, and Vietnamese, and noun subcategories in Khmer and Thai and to provide an overall language description of Pacoh in central Vietnam. Regarding arguments and clause structure, it has been used to explore case in Greek and Mandarin Chinese and transitivity and ergativity in Amis, an indigenous language in Taiwan and in Proto-Central Pacific Austronesian, among other topics.

References

Bibliography Alves, Mark J. (2000). A Pacoh analytic grammar. Ph.D. dissertation. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i. Bender, Byron W. (2002). In Memoriam, Stanley Starosta 1939-2002. Oceanic Linguistics Volume 41, Number 2, December 2002. 255-274. Clark, Marybeth. (1978). Coverbs and case in Vietnamese. Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University. Indrambarya, Kitima. (1994). Subcategorization of Verbs in Thai. Ph.D. dissertation. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i. Jeong, Hy-Sook Rhee. (1992). A valency subcategorization of verbs in Korean and Russian: a Lexicase dependency approach. Ph.D. dissertation. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i. Kikusawa, Ritsuko. (2000). Reconstructing the actancy systems of Proto-Central Pacific and its daughter languages: ergativity, accusativity and their diachronic development. Ph.D. dissertation. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i. Liao, Hsiu-chuan. (2004). Transitivity and ergativity in Formosan and Philippine languages. Ph.D. dissertation. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i. Sak-Humphrey, Channy. (1996). Khmer nouns and noun phrases: a dependency grammar analysis. Ph.D. dissertation. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i. Savetamalya, Saranya. (1989). Thai nouns and noun phrases: a Lexicase analysis. Ph.D. dissertation. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i. Starosta, Stanley. (1985). Mandarin case marking: a localistic Lexicase Analysis. In Journal of Chinese Linguistics, 13, 215-266. Starosta, Stanley. (1988). The case for Lexicase: An outline of Lexicase grammatical theory. Open Linguistics Series, ed. by Robin Fawcett. London: Pinter Publishers. Starosta, Stanley. (2001). Dependency grammar and monostratal transfer. In Language matters: In honour of Professor C. Ramarao, ed. by B. Vijayanarayana, K. Nagamma Reddy, and Aditi Mukherjee, 127–154. Hyderabad: Centre for Advanced Study in Linguistics, Osmania University, and Booklinks Corporation. Starosta, Stanley. (2006). Lexicase revisited. Encyclopedia of languages and linguistics. Pergamon Press. Starosta, Stanley. (2008). Dependency grammar and lexicalism. In An international handbook of contemporary research, ed. by Vilmos Ágel, Ludwig M. Eichinger, Hans-Werner Eroms, Peter Hellwig, Hans Jürgen Heringer, and Hening Lobin. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter. Trask, R. L. 1993. A Dictionary of Grammatical Terms in Linguistics. London: Routledge. Wilawan, Supriya. (1993). A reanalysis of so-called serial verb constructions in Thai, Khmer, Mandarin Chinese, and Yoruba. Ph.D. dissertation. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i.

External links

Stan Starosta's home page

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Lexicase

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Lexicase claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Lexicase before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Lexicase ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Lexicase

In research: Lexicase appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Lexicase in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Lexicase is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Dependency grammar, Linguistic morphology, Natural language parsing, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Lexicase outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Lexicase in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Lexicase means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Lexicase out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Lexicase in simple terms?

Why does Lexicase matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Lexicase?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Lexicase.