# Frequency, Acceptability, and Selection: A case study of clause-embedding

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.04106 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.04106/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 8 Apr 2020.

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Automatic Extraction of Clausal Embedding Based on Large-Scale English Text Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.14064/) (2025)
- [A Scalable Pipeline for Estimating Verb Frame Frequencies Using Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.22187/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We investigate the relationship between the frequency with which verbs are found in particular subcategorization frames and the acceptability of those verbs in those frames, focusing in particular on subordinate clause-taking verbs, such as "think", "want", and "tell". We show that verbs' subcategorization frame frequency distributions are poor predictors of their acceptability in those frames---explaining, at best, less than 1/3 of the total information about acceptability across the lexicon---and, further, that common matrix factorization techniques used to model the acquisition of verbs' acceptability in subcategorization frames fare only marginally better. All data and code are available at http://megaattitude.io.