Speakers have knowledge of thousands of words stored in their mental lexicon. The lexicon contains detailed information about each word's syntactic behavior and relationships with other words. For example, verbs like 'want', 'force', and 'try' require different types of objects or complements in a sentence. This aspect of a speaker's linguistic knowledge is represented in their internal lexicon.

2. Speakers of any language know thousands of
words.


3. Lexical Insertion


4. 
Verbs

5. Subcategorization


6. Verbs


7. Determiners


8. More Lexical Differences

Different words engender different
syntactic behaviour, and this aspect
of speaker knowledge is represented
wanted to leave.
in the lexicon. force to leave .
tried

9. 
Example:
• Expect, need, wish want
• Allow, order, persuade force
• Condescend, decide, manage try

10. The teachers Susan is outstanding.
The teachers
 is outstanding.
Susan
The teachers believes Susan to be outstanding.
*The teachers say Susan to be outstanding.

11. The examples given show only a single
verb for each pattern, but each verb
cited is representative of a class of
verbs. 
Example:
• Expect, need, wish want
• Allow, order, persuade force
• Condescend, decide, manage try
• Suppose, think believe
• Insist, forget say

12. The Lexicon is a key component in the

grammar, containing vast amounts of
information on individual words.