Contrastive verb valency and conceptual structures in the verbal lexicon

Abstract The CONTRAGRAM Contrastive Verb Valency Dictionary of Dutch, French and English not only describes interlingual differences between different types of verb complementation exhaustively, it also provides a semantic picture of the entry verbs. Next to a lexical approach to verb valency, a multidirectional and non-reductivist contrastive approach therefore offers a suitable basis for describing conceptual differences between various languages. These conceptual structures in the verbal lexicon are illustrated by means of a concrete contrastive lexicological analysis of the Dutch verb beslissen and its proto-translatious, French decider and English decide.