Light verb

Encyclopedia : L : LI : LIG : Light verb

---

In linguistics, a light verb is a verb that has little semantic content of its own, but that rather takes most of its meaning from its argument (linguistics). Examples include English take in take a nap, Yiddish geb in geb a helf (help, literally give a help), and French faire in faire semblant (pretend, literally make seeming). Some verbs are found in many such expressions; to reuse an earlier example, take is found in take a nap, take a shower, take a sip, take notes, take turns, and so on.

Light verbs are interesting to linguists from a variety of perspectives, including those of diachronic linguistics, syntax, and corpus linguistics. From the diachronic perspective, the issue is of how light verbs come to have their semantic content. From the corpus annotation perspective, the question is of how (and what) to annotate in light verb constructions.

Useful links

• [Miriam Butt's The light verb jungle]
• [Tan Yee Fan's site for light verb constructions]

 

---

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.

Search Titles

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

U

V

W

X

Y

Z

?