The coding frame of a verb contains the information about the way its arguments are coded, either flagged (by adpositions and case-markers on the arguments) or indexed (by person-markers on the verb).
Glossed examples illustrate verbs, coding frames, and alternations.
Verb meaning
Verb meaning
The 80 ValPaL verb meanings are comparison meanings that were chosen for representativeness and comparability.
,
Microroles
Microrole
A microrole is the semantic role of an argument of an individual verb, e.g. the 'breaker' of a 'break' event.
, Coding sets
Coding set
A coding set is the coding means of an argument. If the argument is only flagged (coded by an adposition or case), its coding set consists of the flag. If it is only indexed, the coding set consist of the index-series (e.g. subject marking). If it is both flagged and indexed, it consists of both flag and index-series.
and Argument types
Argument type
Arguments are classified into cross-linguistic argument types: A (argument coded like the 'breaker' of 'break'), P (argument coded like the 'broken thing' of 'break'), S (sole argument of a verb that lacks A and P), I (argument coded like the instrument of 'cut'), L (coded like the sitting location of 'sit'), and X (all others).
A valency alternation is defined as a set of two different coding frames that are productively (or at least regularly) associated with both members of a set of verb pairs sharing the same verb stem. Alternations may be coded (marked by an affix on the verb, or by an auxiliary, like the English Passive) or uncoded (like the English Dative alternation).