Word.ws English Dictionary

subcategorizing

subcategorizing is the present participle and gerund of subcategorize.

Meaning of subcategorize

Verb

subcategorize (third-person singular simple present subcategorizes, present participle subcategorizing, simple past and past participle subcategorized)

  1. (transitive) To categorize more specifically by placing in a subcategory.
  2. To practice subcategorization.
    • As we see from the examples in (55):
      (55) (a) John will put [_(NP) the car] [_(PP) in the garage]
      (55) (b) ^✽John will put [_(NP) the car]
      (55) (c) ^✽John will put [_(PP) in the garage]
      (55) (d) ^✽John will put
      the Verb put subcategorizes (i.e. ‘takesʼ) obligatory NP and PP complements (to simplify...1988, Andrew Radford, chapter 8, in Transformational grammar: a first course, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, page 421

Questions about subcategorizing

What is subcategorizing the present participle and gerund of?
Subcategorizing is the present participle and gerund of subcategorize.

Words near subcategorizing in the dictionary

  1. subcategorize
  2. subcategorized
  3. subcategorizer
  4. subcategorizers
  5. subcategorizes
  6. subcategorizing
  7. subcategory
  8. subcaucus
  9. subcaucuses
  10. subcaudal
  11. subcaudally

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: subcategorizing (page history and authors); subcategorize (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “subcategorizing.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/subcategorizing. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.