| Additional meaning | In addition to the 80 core meanings, the contributors were also allowed to add verbs that have other meanings. These are called additional meanings. |
| Alternation | 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). |
| Alternation class | Coarse-grained classification of valency alternation comprising four categories: valency rearranging, valency augmenting, valency decreasing and valency identifying. |
| 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). |
| Basic Coding frame | A basic coding frame is a coding frame of a basic verb, i.e. one that is the counterpart of a ValPaL meaning and that is considered basic for the purposes of the database. |
| Coding frame | 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). |
| 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. |
| Contributor | A contributor is an author who contributed a database to ValPaL. |
| Core meaning | One of the 80 meanings that all Language contributions have a Verb form for. |
| Derived coding frame | A derived coding frame is a coding frame of a verb that is derived from the basic verb, by way of an alternation. |
| Example | Glossed examples illustrate verbs, coding frames, and alternations. |
| Language contribution | A language contribution to ValPaL is a separtely citable online publication that has the same status as a chapter in an edited book. |
| Microrole | A microrole is the semantic role of an argument of an individual verb, e.g. the 'breaker' of a 'break' event. |
| Role | Semantic roles of verbal arguments featuring an intermediate level of granularity between microroles and macroroles, e.g., E = Experiencer for animate arguments of perception, cognitive and emotion verbs. An exception is represented by S, which stands for intransitive verb subject. |
| Role frame | The role frame of a verb meaning is the set of microroles of its arguments. |
| Valency augmenting | Alternations in which arguments are added to the basic valency pattern of a verb (e.g. applicative). |
| Valency decreasing | Alternations in which arguments of the basic valency pattern are deleted (e.g. object omission) or demoted (e.g., passive). |
| Valency identifying | Alternations in which a certain argument is made co-referential with another argument (e.g., reflexive) or in which arguments are assigned the same semantic roles (e.g., reciprocal). |
| Valency rearranging | Alternations in which the mapping between semantic roles and morphosyntactic encoding is changed without argument demotion, deletion or addition (e.g. partitive). |
| Verb form | The citation form of a verb that is the counterpart of a ValPaL verb meaning. |
| Verb meaning | The 80 ValPaL verb meanings are comparison meanings that were chosen for representativeness and comparability. |
