consider: 1. "John ate the apple" 2. "John ate" seems like removing [[grammatical role|object]] means we generalize: John ate *something*. but compare this to: 1. "John is too stubborn to talk to Bill" 2. "John is too stubborn to talk to" very different meaning! in (1) John is talking but in (2) John is being *talked to*! see [[valence]] (ie transitivity): "eat" means something quite different transitively vs intransitively. # sources [[1986ChomskyKnowledgeLanguageIts|Knowledge of language: its nature, origin, and use]]