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We investigate the relationship between the frequency with which verbs are found in particular subcategorization frames and the acceptability of those verbs in those frames, focusing in particular on subordinate clause-taking verbs, such as think, want, and tell. We show that verbs’ subcategorization frame frequency distributions are poor predictors of their acceptability in those frames—explaining, at best, less than ⅓ of the total information about acceptability across the lexicon—and, further, that common matrix factorization techniques used to model the acquisition of verbs’ acceptability in subcategorization frames fare only marginally better.