The book "English Verb Classes and Alternations: A Preliminary Investigation" by Beth Levin is a comprehensive study of English verbs, focusing on their diathesis alternations and semantic classes. The first part of the book details various syntactic alternations, such as transitivity, argument placement, and oblique subjects, providing detailed explanations, examples, and counterexamples. The second part cross-classifies verbs into groups based on their meanings, often using epithets or names of members to describe the classes. The book is part of the Lexicon Project at MIT and aims to lay the groundwork for future research on verb meaning and syntactic properties. It is a valuable resource for linguists and sophisticated English learners, featuring a rich bibliography of over 700 references. However, it lacks computational support and could benefit from an accompanying diskette or file for easier implementation in computational linguistics. The book's theoretical underpinnings are rooted in Bloomfield's view of lexical entries and the potential use of predicate decompositions for semantic representations.The book "English Verb Classes and Alternations: A Preliminary Investigation" by Beth Levin is a comprehensive study of English verbs, focusing on their diathesis alternations and semantic classes. The first part of the book details various syntactic alternations, such as transitivity, argument placement, and oblique subjects, providing detailed explanations, examples, and counterexamples. The second part cross-classifies verbs into groups based on their meanings, often using epithets or names of members to describe the classes. The book is part of the Lexicon Project at MIT and aims to lay the groundwork for future research on verb meaning and syntactic properties. It is a valuable resource for linguists and sophisticated English learners, featuring a rich bibliography of over 700 references. However, it lacks computational support and could benefit from an accompanying diskette or file for easier implementation in computational linguistics. The book's theoretical underpinnings are rooted in Bloomfield's view of lexical entries and the potential use of predicate decompositions for semantic representations.