linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

, a light verb is a

verb A verb () is a word (part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descri ...

that has little

semantic Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics and comput ...

content of its own and forms a

predicate Predicate or predication may refer to: * Predicate (grammar), in linguistics * Predication (philosophy) * several closely related uses in mathematics and formal logic: **Predicate (mathematical logic) **Propositional function **Finitary relation, o ...

with some additional expression, which is usually a noun. Common verbs in English that can function as light verbs are ''do'', ''give'', ''have'', ''make'', ''get'', and ''take''. Other names for ''light verb'' include ''delexical verb'', ''vector verb'', ''explicator verb'', ''thin verb'', ''empty verb'' and ''semantically weak verb''. While light verbs are similar to auxiliary verbs regarding their contribution of meaning to the clauses in which they appear, light verbs fail the diagnostics that identify auxiliary verbs and are therefore distinct from auxiliaries. Light verb constructions challenge theories of compositionality because the words that form such constructions do not together qualify as constituents although the word combinations qualify as catenae.

Examples

English

Most light verb constructions in English include a noun and are sometimes called stretched verbs. Some light verb constructions also include a preposition, e.g. ::They did the review of my paper first. ::Sam did the cleaning yesterday. ::Who got such intense criticism? ::Susan is getting much support from her family. ::I am going to have a nice nap. ::She had a smoke. ::We had a slow, boring conversation. ::Are you giving a presentation at the conference? ::They gave the kids a hard time. ::Who will give you a hug? ::Who made such a severe mistake? ::I made the first request. ::Sam has taken a shower. ::Why is Larry taking a nap? ::We should take a break soon. ::Have you taken advantage of that opportunity. ::I haven't taken that into consideration. The light verbs are underlined, and the words in bold together constitute the light verb constructions. Each of these constructions is the (primary part of the) main predicate of the sentence. Note that the determiner ''a'' is usually NOT part of the light verb construction. We know that it is not part of the light verb construction because it is variable, e.g. ''I took a long/the first/two/the best nap''. The light verb contributes little content to its sentence; the main meaning resides with the noun in bold.

Hindi-Urdu

Light verb constructions in

Hindi Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been de ...

–

Urdu Urdu (;"Urdu"
''

Hindustani) are highly productive. Light verbs in Hindi–Urdu can combine with another verb, an adjective, adverb or even a borrowed English verb or noun. The light verb loses its own independent meaning and instead ''"lends a certain shade of meaning"'' to the main or stem verb, which ''"comprises the lexical core of the compound"''. While any verb can act as a main verb, there is a limited set of productive light verbs. Some commonly used light verbs are shown in the table belowː

Alternative constructions with full verbs

Many light verb constructions are closely similar in meaning to a corresponding full verb, e.g. ::a. Sam did a revision of his paper. – Light verb construction ::b. Sam revised his paper. -Full verb ::a. Larry wants to have a smoke. – Light verb construction ::b. Larry wants to smoke. – Full verb ::a. Jim made an important claim that.... – Light verb construction ::b. Jim claimed that... – Full verb ::a. Mary is taking a nap. – Light verb construction ::b. Mary is napping. – Full verb Alternative formulations such as these lead to the insight that light verb constructions are predicates just like the corresponding full verb alternatives. There can be, however, nuanced differences in meaning across these alternative formulations. The light verb constructions produce possibilities for modification that are less available with the corresponding full verb alternatives.

Contrasted with auxiliary verbs and full verbs

Many verbs that serve as light verbs can also serve as auxiliary verbs and/or full verbs depending on the context in which they appear. Light verbs are similar to auxiliary verbs insofar as they contribute mainly functional content (as opposed to semantic content) to the clauses in which they appear. Light verbs, however, are not auxiliary verbs, nor are they full verbs. Light verbs differ from auxiliary verbs in English insofar as they do not pass the syntactic tests that identify auxiliary verbs. The following examples illustrate that light verbs fail the inversion and negation diagnostics that identify auxiliary verbs: ::a. He did call Susan yesterday. ::b. Did he call Susan yesterday? – The auxiliary ''did'' inverts with the subject. ::c. He did not call Susan yesterday. – The auxiliary ''did'' can take ''not'' as a postdependent. ::a. He did the review of my paper yesterday. ::b. *Did he the review of my paper yesterday? – The light verb ''did'' cannot invert with the subject. ::c. *He did not the review of my paper yesterday. – The light verb ''did'' cannot take ''not'' as a postdependent. ::a. He has opened the window. ::b. Has he opened the window? – The auxiliary ''has'' inverts with the subject. ::c. He has not opened the window. – The auxiliary ''has'' takes ''not'' as a postdependent. ::a. She had a smoke. ::b. *Had she a smoke? – The light verb ''had'' cannot invert with the subject. ::c. *She had not a smoke. – The light verb ''had'' cannot take ''not'' as a postdependent. Light verbs differ from full verbs in that light verbs lack the semantic content that full verbs have. Full verbs are the core of a predicate, whereas light verbs form a predicate with another expression (often a noun) with full semantic content. This distinction is more difficult to illustrate, but it can be seen in the following examples involving reflexive pronouns: ::a. Jim₁ took a picture of himself₁. – The light verb ''took'' requires the reflexive pronoun to appear. ::b. *Jim₁ took a picture of him₁. – The light verb ''took'' prohibits the simple pronoun from appearing. ::a. Jim₁ took a picture of himself₁ to school. – The full verb ''took'' allows the reflexive pronoun to appear. ::b. Jim₁ took a picture of him₁ to school. – The full verb ''took'' allows the simple pronoun to appear. ::a. Sally₁ gave a description of herself₁. – The light verb ''gave'' requires the reflexive pronoun to appear. ::b. *Sally₁ gave a description of her₁. – The light verb ''gave'' prohibits the simple pronoun from appearing. ::a. Sally₁ gave me a description of herself₁. – The full verb ''gave'' allows the reflexive pronoun to appear ::b. Sally₁ gave me a description of her₁. – The full verb ''gave'' allows the simple pronoun to appear. The indices indicate coreference, i.e. the two coindexed words denote the same person. The reflexive pronoun must appear with the light verb, whereas the full verb allows the simple pronoun to appear as well. This distinction has to do with the extent of the predicate. The main predicate reaches down into the noun phrase when the light verb appears, whereas it excludes the noun phrase when the full verb is present.

Compositionality in terms of catenae

Light-verb constructions present the same difficulty associated with idiosyncratic expressions of every sort: the meaning is not compositional in a straightforward way. This fact is evident in the examples above, inasmuch as the words that constitute a light-verb construction often do ''not'' qualify as a

constituent Constituent or constituency may refer to: Politics * An individual voter within an electoral district, state, community, or organization * Advocacy group or constituency * Constituent assembly * Constituencies of Namibia Other meanings * Const ...

in any sense. These constructions do, however, form catenae (= chains). This fact is illustrated with the following

dependency grammar Dependency grammar (DG) is a class of modern grammatical theories that are all based on the dependency relation (as opposed to the ''constituency relation'' of phrase structure) and that can be traced back primarily to the work of Lucien Tesni� ...

trees: :: Light verb trees 1

The words of each light-verb construction form a catena. In this regard, the words in green qualify as the main predicate of the clause each time. If an auxiliary verb is present (as in trees b and d), it is included in the main predicate because like the light verb, it contributes functional meaning only.

In other languages

Examples in other languages include the

Yiddish Yiddish (, or , ''yidish'' or ''idish'', , ; , ''Yidish-Taytsh'', ) is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a ver ...

''geb'' in ''geb a helf'' (literally give a help, "help"); the

French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...

''faire'' in ''faire semblant'' (lit. make seeming, "pretend"); the

''nikal paRA'' (lit. leave fall, "start to leave"); and the ''bǎ'' construction in

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...

. Light verbs are extremely common in modern

Indo-Iranian languages The Indo-Iranian languages (also Indo-Iranic languages or Aryan languages) constitute the largest and southeasternmost extant branch of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family (with over 400 languages), predominantly spoken i ...

, Japanese, Basque and other languages in which verb compounding is a primary mechanism for marking aspectual distinctions. Light verbs are also equivalent to inherent complement verbs in many

Kwa languages The Kwa languages, often specified as New Kwa, are a proposed but as-yet-undemonstrated family of languages spoken in the south-eastern part of Ivory Coast, across southern Ghana, and in central Togo. The name was introduced 1895 by Gottlob Kra ...

, e.g. ''jo'' in ''jo foi'' "run" ( Ga), ''tu'' in ''tu fo'' "advise" ( Akan).

Australian Languages

A significant proportion of

Australian Aboriginal languages The Indigenous languages of Australia number in the hundreds, the precise number being quite uncertain, although there is a range of estimates from a minimum of around 250 (using the technical definition of 'language' as non-mutually intellig ...

have verbal systems involving light verbs. Many Australian inflecting-verb classes are closed classes and very few in membership. Thus, in order to express more intricate assertions, matrix verbs are combined with coverbal elements such as preverbs to form complex verbal predicates. In such instances, the matrix verb typically still bears all of the

tense–aspect–mood Tense–aspect–mood (commonly abbreviated ) or tense–modality–aspect (abbreviated as ) is a group of grammatical categories that are important to understanding spoken or written content, and which are marked in different ways by different la ...

inflection but contributes little to the sentence semantically (i.e. is more of a

function word In linguistics, function words (also called functors) are words that have little lexical meaning or have ambiguous meaning and express grammatical relationships among other words within a sentence, or specify the attitude or mood of the speaker. ...

); as noted above, however, they are still distinct from traditional auxiliary verbs.

Bardi

One such Australian language with prevalent uses of light verbs is Bardi, a

Nyulnyulan The Nyulnyulan languages are a small family of closely related Australian Aboriginal languages spoken in northern Western Australia. Most languages in this family are extinct, with only three extant languages, all of which are almost extinct. I ...

language spoken in the north of Australia. Although its inflecting-verb class is comparatively large with respect to some other Australian languages (~230 members), a number of these appear often as light verbs. Comprising the most frequent of these light verbs are the verb roots ''-ju-'' 'do/say' and ''-ma-'' 'put.' An example of the latter in use is: In a case such as the above, ''liyan'' 'heart' is the preverb containing most of the semantic content. Likewise with ''goo'' 'hit' in the following example:

Jingulu

Typically, in languages with coverb+light-verb predicates, these words must be directly adjacent; however, in extremely rare cases in languages such as Jingulu, there can be intervening elements between the semantically-rich preverb and the inflected matrix verb. See the following example where the subject ''ngaya'' appears between the preverb ''ambaya'' 'speak' and the inflected main verb ''nu'' 'do.' This rare but significant phenomenon provides evidence that, even in more heavily agglutinating languages like Jingulu wherein the main verb may not be morphologically independent from the preverb, these are in fact light verbs and not inflectional affixes.

Diachronic considerations

Light verbs are interesting to linguists from a variety of perspectives, including those of diachronic linguistics and

computational linguistics Computational linguistics is an Interdisciplinarity, interdisciplinary field concerned with the computational modelling of natural language, as well as the study of appropriate computational approaches to linguistic questions. In general, comput ...

. From the diachronic perspective, the light verb is said to have evolved from the "heavy" verb through semantic bleaching, a process in which the verb loses some or all of its original semantics. In this sense, the light verb is often viewed as part of a cline: :verb (heavy) → light verb → auxiliary verb →

clitic In morphology and syntax, a clitic (, backformed from Greek "leaning" or "enclitic"Crystal, David. ''A First Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics''. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1980. Print.) is a morpheme that has syntactic characteristics of a w ...

→

affix In linguistics, an affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form. Affixes may be derivational, like English ''-ness'' and ''pre-'', or inflectional, like English plural ''-s'' and past tense ''-ed''. They ar ...

→

conjugation Conjugation or conjugate may refer to: Linguistics * Grammatical conjugation, the modification of a verb from its basic form * Emotive conjugation or Russell's conjugation, the use of loaded language Mathematics * Complex conjugation, the chang ...

However, the light verb → auxiliary path is disputed, since a) light verbs can remain stable for very long periods (cf. Butt and Lahiri (2013), and b) since both light verbs and auxiliaries can exist in the same languages, descended from the same full lexical verb, but with different meanings. In

, a serious challenge is that of identifying light verb constructions, which require marking light verbs.

Notes

References

* Adger, D. 2003. Core syntax: A minimalist approach. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. * Butt, M. 2003. The Light Verb Jungle. In Harvard Working Papers in Linguistics, ed. G. Aygen, C. Bowern, and C. Quinn. 1–49. Volume 9, Papers from the GSAS/Dudley House workshop on light verbs. * Collins Cobuild English Grammar 1995. London: HarperCollins Publishers. * Grimshaw, J. and A. Mester. 1988. Light verbs and ɵ-Marking. Linguistic Inquiry 19, 205–232. * Hornstein, N., J. Nunes, and K. Grohmann 2005. Understanding Minimalism. New York: Cambridge University Press. * Jespersen, O. 1965. A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles, Part VI, Morphology. London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd. * Osborne, T. and T. Groß 2012. Constructions are catenae: Construction Grammar meets Dependency Grammar. Cognitive Linguistics 23, 1, 163–214. * * * * Steven, S., A. Fazly, and R.North. 2004. Statistical measures of the semi-productivity of light verb constructions. In ''2nd ACL workshop on multiword expressions: Integrating processing'', pp. 1–8.

External links

Miriam Butt's ''The light verb jungle''

Tan Yee Fan's site for light verb constructions

Ryan North's ''Computational Measures of the Acceptability of Light Verb Constructions''

Vincze, Veronika ''Detecting noun compounds and light verb constructions: a contrastive study''
{{lexical categories, state=collapsed Verb types