Subcategorization

Subcategorization is when you take a big group of things and divide them up into smaller groups based on how they act or what they need. It's like if you had a lot of toys, and you put all the toys that fly in one bin and all the toys that roll in another bin.

In language, subcategorization is when we take a big group of words (like verbs) and divide them up into smaller groups based on what other words need to be with them in order to make sense. For example, the verb "eat" needs something else with it in order to make sense. We can say "I eat cookies" or "I eat pizza," but we can't say "I eat" all by itself.

So we might say that "eat" is a transitive verb, which means it needs a direct object (like "cookies" or "pizza") to make sense. Other verbs, like "sleep," don't need anything else to make sense, so we might say they are intransitive verbs.

Subcategorization helps us understand how different words work together to make sentences that make sense. It's like putting all the toys that need batteries in one bin and all the toys that don't need batteries in another bin so we can know which toys to use when we don't have batteries.