Questions: Selectional Restrictions and Lexical Licensing

Question 1

The sentence 'The rock ate sadness' is odd. What type of violation does it represent, and what distinguishes this from a sentence like 'Ate the rock sadness'?

• A. Both sentences violate syntactic rules; they are equally ungrammatical
• B. 'The rock ate sadness' is syntactically well-formed but selectionally anomalous — it violates the semantic type constraints 'eat' places on its arguments; 'Ate the rock sadness' is syntactically malformed regardless of meaning
• C. 'The rock ate sadness' is selectionally anomalous and therefore also ungrammatical
• D. Both sentences are acceptable in poetic contexts, so neither violates any linguistic rule

Answer: (B)

This distinction is the core of selectional restrictions. 'The rock ate sadness' follows English word order perfectly (Subject-Verb-Object) and uses a normal transitive verb construction — it is syntactically impeccable. The oddness is purely semantic: 'eat' requires an animate subject and a consumable object, and rocks and sadness satisfy neither constraint. 'Ate the rock sadness' scrambles the phrase structure in a way that violates the grammar regardless of meaning. Selectional restriction violations and syntactic violations are different phenomena at different levels of linguistic description.

Question 2

A poet writes 'Time devoured the years.' How do selectional restrictions explain why this phrase is interpretable as metaphor rather than simply anomalous?

• A. Metaphors are exempt from selectional restrictions entirely, so the sentence is processed literally
• B. The selectional violation is productive: because 'devour' requires a consumable object and 'years' is abstract, the listener must construct a non-literal mapping — the violation signals that metaphorical interpretation is required
• C. The sentence is grammatical because 'years' can be consumed metaphorically, satisfying the restriction
• D. Selectional restrictions only apply to spoken language; written poetry is not subject to them

Answer: (B)

Selectional restrictions are the background against which metaphor figures. A listener who knows 'devour' selects for [+consumable] objects encounters a mismatch when the object is an abstract temporal span. This mismatch, rather than blocking interpretation, signals that a literal reading is not intended and triggers a search for an analogical mapping — perhaps that time consumes or wastes years in the way a hungry animal consumes food. Metaphor works precisely because the violation is recognized as deliberate. If the listener did not know the restriction, the metaphorical force would be lost.

Question 3

Selectional restrictions are properties of individual words (predicates), stored in the lexicon, not rules of general grammar that apply uniformly to all predicates.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: True

This is the defining characteristic of selectional restrictions. 'Elapse' requires a temporal subject (time elapses, events elapse — rocks do not). 'Blond' requires a head noun denoting something that bears hair. 'Devour' requires an edible object. These are not properties derivable from a general rule like 'subjects must be animate' — each predicate carries its own set of filters, and the set differs from predicate to predicate even among closely related words (compare 'eat' vs. 'consume' vs. 'ingest'). The lexicon is where this information is stored; acquiring a verb includes acquiring its selectional requirements.

Question 4

If a sentence violates a selectional restriction, it is ungrammatical in the same way as a sentence with a syntactic error.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: False

Selectional restriction violations and syntactic violations are distinguishable both descriptively and theoretically. A syntactically ungrammatical sentence like '*The ate rock' cannot be interpreted; native speakers consistently reject it and cannot assign it a meaning. A selectionally anomalous sentence like 'The rock ate sadness' is perfectly interpretable — it can function as metaphor, appear in fiction, or describe an impossible situation. Native speakers typically describe it as 'odd' or 'weird' rather than 'ungrammatical.' This contrast is part of the evidence that syntax and lexical-semantic constraints operate at different levels.

Question 5

Explain why understanding selectional restrictions is necessary to give a complete account of how metaphor works.

Model answer: Metaphor works by deliberate violation of selectional restrictions: a predicate is applied to an argument that fails its semantic filters, and this mismatch signals to the listener that literal interpretation is impossible — triggering a search for an analogical or extended meaning. Without the concept of selectional restrictions (the rules being violated), there is no account of what makes a metaphor a violation rather than just an unusual word combination. The restrictions define normality; the metaphor exploits a departure from that norm. A speaker who said 'time devoured the years' to a listener who did not know 'devour' selects for consumable objects would generate no metaphorical effect — the listener would simply be confused.

This is why selectional restrictions are not just a constraint but a resource. They establish the semantic expectations against which figurative language operates. Grasping this turns the apparent 'limitation' of selectional restrictions into an explanation of linguistic creativity: the constraints are what make metaphor possible and interpretable. The same logic extends to personification, synesthesia, and other tropes that involve applying predicates to arguments of the wrong type — in every case, the violation is meaningful only because the restriction is known.