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Light verb

A light verb is a type of verb that provides minimal semantic content on its own but combines with a complement—typically a noun—to form a complex predicate known as a light verb construction (LVC), where the noun carries the primary meaning of the action or event.^[1] For instance, in English phrases like make a decision, take a walk, or give a shout, the verbs make, take, and give act as light verbs, contributing structural support such as tense and aspect while the nouns decision, walk, and shout convey the core semantics.^[1] These constructions are semantically bleached, allowing the verb to lose much of its independent meaning through a process of grammaticalization, and they enhance expressive flexibility in languages by enabling nuanced combinations without requiring dedicated verbs for every concept.^[1] The concept of light verbs was first formalized by the Danish linguist Otto Jespersen in his 1909–1949 work Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles, where he described them as verbs with "light" or reduced load-bearing capacity for meaning.^[1] Over time, linguistic research has expanded this notion beyond English to numerous languages, including Indo-European (e.g., Farsi, Hindi-Urdu) and non-Indo-European ones (e.g., Japanese, Korean), revealing light verbs as a universal syntactic strategy for predicate formation.^[2] Key characteristics include the verb's identical form to its full-verb counterpart (e.g., give in both give a gift as light and give money as heavy), stability in inflectional paradigms across historical periods, and the ability to resist certain transformations like passivization in some cases (e.g., ?A nap was taken sounds unnatural).^[3] Theoretically, light verbs have sparked debate in generative linguistics, with some analyses treating LVCs as complex predicates where the verb and noun form a single unit (e.g., via incorporation or argument sharing), while others, like Benjamin Bruening, argue they are ordinary verbs selecting eventive noun complements under obligatory control, without special status.^[2] Cross-linguistically, LVCs vary in productivity and structure—for example, English favors preverbal nouns (have a look), while languages like Chinese place the noun before the light verb (kan yi kan, "look one look")—and they play a crucial role in computational linguistics for tasks like natural language processing and machine translation due to their frequency and idiomatic nature.^[4] Overall, light verbs exemplify how languages economize lexical resources, blending general verbs with content words to build rich, idiomatic expressions essential to everyday communication.^[5]

Definition and properties

Core definition

A light verb is a semantically bleached verb that contributes little independent meaning to a predicate, instead providing essential grammatical support by licensing a non-verbal complement, typically a contentful noun, to form a complex predicate unit.^[6] This construction allows the noun to carry the primary semantic load, while the verb enables verbal inflection, argument structure, and syntactic integration.^[7] The term "light verb" was coined by Otto Jespersen in his analysis of analytic syntax in English, highlighting verbs that function more as supportive elements than full lexical predicates.^[6] In such structures, the light verb and its complement together form a cohesive unit, often exhibiting idiomatic or compositional semantics where the overall meaning emerges from their combination rather than the verb alone.^[5] Light verb constructions are attested in languages across diverse families worldwide, where they facilitate the incorporation of nominal elements into verbal predicates, effectively nominalizing actions or embedding nouns within event frames.^[6] This phenomenon underscores their role in cross-linguistic patterns of predicate formation, adapting lexical nouns to verbal contexts without requiring full verbalization.^[5]

Syntactic and semantic characteristics

Light verbs exhibit distinct syntactic properties that integrate them into complex predicate structures. They typically subcategorize for a host noun, which serves as the primary semantic carrier, while the light verb provides structural support without imposing a full argument structure of its own.^[8] This subcategorization often involves phenomena such as cliticization or noun incorporation in certain languages, allowing the light verb to form a tight unit with its complement.^[9] Additionally, light verbs bear tense, aspect, and mood inflections for the entire predicate, functioning as the inflectional host in monoclausal constructions.^[10] Their syntactic behavior aligns closely with that of full verbs, occupying positions in the functional domain such as an aspectual head or above the vP, rather than a reduced or auxiliary-like role.^[2] Semantically, light verbs undergo bleaching, divesting their concrete lexical content—such as spatial or possessive implications in verbs like "give" or "take"—to contribute more abstract nuances like aspectuality, causativity, or event delimitation.^[9] This process results in partial semantic contribution, where the light verb modulates the event structure provided by the host noun, often imposing telicity or bounding effects without assigning theta-roles independently.^[8] Unlike fully empty elements, light verbs retain subtle interpretive constraints, such as selectional restrictions on compatible predicates, ensuring coherence in the overall predication.^[11] In predicate formation, light verbs combine with a host to create complex predicates, where the noun supplies the core event semantics and the verb augments the valency and argument structure of the construction.^[2] This results in a unified syntactic and semantic unit, with argument sharing between the verb and noun components, often leading to non-canonical role mappings that blend the contributions of both elements.^[11] Typologically, light verbs are frequently polysemous, sharing lexical entries with their full verb counterparts and exhibiting identical phonological forms across languages, as observed in surveys of diverse linguistic families.^[9] This form identity underscores their status as non-grammaticalized content verbs, stable in usage and distinct from auxiliaries or incorporations.^[10]

Examples in Indo-European languages

English

In English, light verbs such as make, have, take, and do commonly pair with a nominal complement to form complex predicates known as light verb constructions (LVCs), where the verb provides structural support while the noun carries the core eventive meaning.^[12] Representative examples include make a decision (indicating the act of deciding), have a look (indicating visual examination), take a walk (indicating ambulatory movement), and do damage (indicating harm inflicted).^[12] These constructions are idiomatic in nature, often functioning as near-equivalents to simple verbs like decide, look, walk, or damage, but they allow for nuanced expression through the choice of light verb.^[12] Semantically, the light verb contributes a subtle, abstract element to the overall meaning, such as causation or inception; for instance, make in make a decision evokes a sense of bringing about or creating the event denoted by the noun.^[12] Syntactically, the verb and noun form a cohesive unit that behaves as a single predicate for purposes like argument selection and restrictions; the light verb imposes compatibility requirements on the noun (e.g., eventive or processual nouns), and the construction resists separation, as evidenced in passives such as a decision was made (where the noun remains adjacent) rather than allowing extraction that disrupts the pairing.^[12] This unity aligns with broader syntactic traits of light verbs, where they integrate the nominal into the verbal complex without full lexical independence.^[12] Many English LVCs demonstrate semi-productivity, enabling speakers to generate novel combinations that extend established patterns, such as have a think to denote momentary reflection, provided the light verb's semantic profile (e.g., have for possession or experience of events) aligns with the noun.^[13] This flexibility contrasts with fully idiomatic fixed phrases but is constrained by collocational preferences, allowing innovation in casual or creative contexts.^[13] LVCs occur with high frequency in spoken English, where they facilitate concise expression of everyday actions, and corpus evidence underscores their prevalence in idiomatic usage; in the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA, 1990–present), over 19,500 instances of take a V patterns appear, with 42% in spoken sections, while have a V yields more than 4,000 tokens, often in informal idioms like have a look.^[14] Such data highlight LVCs' role in natural discourse, comprising a significant portion of verbal expressions in conversational registers.^[14]

Hindi-Urdu

In Hindi-Urdu, light verb constructions form a core mechanism for creating verbo-nominal predicates, combining a semantically rich noun (or other non-verbal element) with a light verb to yield a fully inflected verbal expression. These structures are highly productive, with the noun providing the primary lexical content while the light verb supplies grammatical support, such as finiteness and argument realization. A representative example is kaam karnaa ('work do'), which means 'to work', where karnaa ('do') acts as the light verb enabling the nominal kaam ('work') to function predicatively.^[15] Common light verbs in these constructions include kar ('do'), which serves as a neutral supporter for a wide range of events; de ('give'), which introduces benefactive or permissive connotations; jaa ('go'), which marks perfective or completive aspect; and le ('take'), which emphasizes resultative or exhaustive completion. For instance, zor denaa ('force/emphasis give') means 'to emphasize', with de adding a sense of directed effort. These verbs undergo semantic bleaching, retaining minimal independent meaning to focus on structural roles.^[16]^[17] Semantically, light verbs in Hindi-Urdu encode aspectual distinctions (e.g., jaa for perfectivity in likh jaanaa 'write go' meaning 'to finish writing'), voice alternations, or causative implications, while the noun carries the event's core semantics, such as manner or type. This division allows for nuanced expression, as in hath dho lenaa ('hand wash take') for 'to wash one's hands completely'. Causative light verbs like de can also facilitate permission or benefit, as in likh dene denaa ('write give give') for 'to let someone write'.^[16]^[15] Morphosyntactically, the light verb hosts all verbal inflection, including tense, agreement with the subject, and case assignment, while the construction as a whole behaves as a monoclausal unit with shared argument structure. Subject-verb agreement follows standard ergative patterns in perfective contexts, and these predicates are obligatory for approximately 37% of verbal expressions in Hindi-Urdu, making light verbs indispensable for native predicate formation.^[17]^[18]

Other Indo-European languages

In Romance languages, the verb faire in French functions as a prototypical light verb, contributing minimal semantic content while supporting nominal elements to form complex predicates, as in faire une promenade ('take a walk'), where faire provides syntactic structure but the event meaning derives primarily from the noun.^[19] Similarly, in Italian, fare serves a light verb role in constructions expressing causation or action, such as fare una passeggiata ('take a walk') or causative periphrases like fare causare ('make cause'), where it bleaches its full lexical meaning of 'do' or 'make' to enable nominal integration.^[20] Among Germanic languages, German employs machen ('make') as a light verb in phrases like einen Spaziergang machen ('take a walk'), where it adds little independent semantics and relies on the noun for the core event interpretation, a pattern common in administrative and everyday discourse.^[21] In Dutch, the cognate doen ('do') parallels this usage, appearing in light verb constructions such as een wandeling doen ('take a walk') or causative forms, often transferring from source languages in bilingual contexts to convey aspectual nuances.^[22] Slavic languages feature light verbs like Russian delat' ('do'), which combines with nouns in compounds such as rabotu delat' ('do work'), providing verbal inflection while the noun carries the primary lexical load, though less obligatorily than in some aspect-heavy systems.^[23] Across these Indo-European branches, light verbs such as equivalents of 'do', 'make', and 'give' exhibit shared polysemy, where their bleached semantics support diverse nominal predicates, fostering similar patterns of nominal integration but with reduced aspectual obligatoriness compared to more rigid systems.^[13] This contrasts with heavier verbal autonomy in full predicates, highlighting light verbs' role in enhancing expressivity through syntactic flexibility.^[24]

Light verbs in non-Indo-European languages

Australian Aboriginal languages

In Australian Aboriginal languages, a prevalent pattern involves a small closed class of light verbs that combine with non-inflecting coverbs to form complex predicates expressing full verbal meanings.^[25] These light verbs, often numbering between 10 and 30 per language, carry the inflectional morphology for tense, aspect, mood, and agreement, while the coverbs contribute the bulk of the lexical and semantic content.^[26] This bipartite structure is highly productive, allowing speakers to create nuanced predicates by pairing a limited set of light verbs with an open-class inventory of coverbs.^[27] The semantic role of light verbs in these languages is primarily to categorize the event type denoted by the coverb, such as motion, stance, impact, or perception, thereby providing a structural frame for the predicate.^[26] For instance, light verbs like those glossing as 'go' or 'take' typically frame dynamic or transitive events involving transfer or causation, while stance verbs such as 'sit', 'stand', or 'lie' categorize stative or positional situations.^[28] Coverbs, in turn, specify the manner, path, or instrumentality of the event, enabling fine-grained expression without expanding the inflecting verb inventory. This system contrasts sharply with languages featuring large open classes of full verbs, highlighting a typological feature where verb classification systems emphasize event categorization over lexical diversity.^[26] A representative example occurs in Gooniyandi, where the light verb -ny- (glossing as 'sit') pairs with coverbs to denote stative events, such as miri-ngan-ny-Ø ('be/remain quiet'), combining the coverb miri ('quiet') with the inflecting verb root for a complete predicate.^[27] Gooniyandi employs just 12 such inflecting light verbs, underscoring their high productivity in generating the language's verbal lexicon through combination with diverse coverbs.^[27] These constructions form complex predicates, where the light verb and coverb function as a tight unit, often treated as a single phonological word.^[25]

South Asian and other Asian languages

In Dravidian languages such as Tamil and Telugu, light verb constructions (LVCs) frequently involve verbs that contribute aspectual or resultative meanings to a preceding nominal or verbal element, forming complex predicates. For instance, in Tamil, the verb viḍu 'release' functions as an aspectual light verb in resultative constructions, attaching to the adverbial participle of a main verb to indicate completion, as in cāpp-i viḍu 'eat-release' to denote finishing eating.^[29] Similarly, in Telugu, light verbs like cēy 'do' pair with nouns to form LVCs, such as digulu cēy 'worry-do' meaning 'to worry', where the verb provides syntactic support and aspectual nuance without contributing core semantics.^[30] In Persian, the light verb kardan 'do' is highly productive in LVCs, combining with nouns to express actions where the noun carries the primary meaning, as in fekr kardan 'thought-do' meaning 'to think'.^[31] Persian also employs vector verbs, a subtype of light verbs, to encode aspectual distinctions such as completive or ingressive, often in double verb constructions that add durative or terminative shades to the event.^[32] Japanese utilizes the light verb suru 'do' extensively in nominal compounds to verbalize nouns, creating LVCs where the noun provides the lexical content and suru supplies the verbal structure and aspect, as in benkyō suru 'study-do' meaning 'to study'.^[33] This construction allows for flexible incorporation of Sino-Japanese nouns into predicate frames, with suru contributing minimal semantic weight but enabling inflection and argument realization.^[34] Chinese features few native LVCs due to its typological preference for serial verb constructions, but translations from English highlight contrasts, such as the English LVC "give a lecture" rendering as a serial verb chain like jiang jiao 'lecture give' in Chinese, emphasizing direct action over nominal support.^[4] A 2023 study of Chinese-English consecutive interpreting found that literal translations of English LVCs into Chinese were used in 54.92% of cases, the most common strategy, though challenges arise due to the rarity of light verbs.^[4] Recent typological studies, including 2024 findings from the Association for Computational Linguistics, reveal morphosyntactic variations in UD annotations for South Asian LVCs, such as head-dependent asymmetries between Dravidian languages (e.g., noun-headed in Tamil vs. verb-headed in Telugu), which challenge uniform labeling and suggest refinements like obj:lvc for better capturing argument structures.^[30]

Theoretical distinctions

Contrast with auxiliary verbs

Auxiliary verbs primarily provide inflectional support for tense, mood, and voice, contributing no independent event semantics to the predicate, as seen in English constructions like "She has eaten" where "have" marks the perfect aspect without denoting a separate event.^[35] In contrast, light verbs carry subtle semantic contributions, such as aspectual or causative nuances, while relying on a associated noun or content word for the core event meaning, exemplified by English "have a baby" where "have" implies possession or causation beyond mere tense marking.^[10] A key functional difference lies in lexical selection and predicate formation: light verbs select for specific nouns to form complex predicates, altering valency or theta-roles and contributing to the event's aspect or causation, whereas auxiliaries function as higher functional heads without such selection or role assignment.^[35] Syntactically, light verbs integrate into the verbal domain as part of a monoclausal structure, often identical in form to full verbs and spanning the full verbal paradigm, while auxiliaries occupy dedicated positions for grammatical encoding and may undergo reanalysis from full verbs but lack the lexical specificity of light verbs.^[10] Overlaps occur with verbs like "be," which can serve as an auxiliary for progressive or passive constructions (e.g., "She is running") without event semantics.^[35] It also functions as a copular or linking verb in constructions like "She is a teacher," supporting nominal predication by connecting the subject to a complement, providing structural support similar to light verbs but typically distinguished due to the non-eventive nature of the predicate. In generative syntax, this distinction is formalized with light verbs realized as little v-heads introducing arguments and event structure, in contrast to auxiliaries as T (tense) or Asp (aspect) heads managing inflectional features higher in the clause.^[36]

Contrast with full verbs and alternative constructions

Full verbs, also known as heavy verbs, contribute substantial semantic content and independently determine the argument structure of a clause, whereas light verbs provide minimal independent meaning and primarily serve to support a nominal element that carries the core semantics.^[37] For instance, in English, the full verb "decide" encodes a complete event of resolution, including its participants, while the light verb construction "make a decision" relies on the noun "decision" for the primary meaning, with "make" contributing only aspectual or structural support. This dilution of verbal semantics in light verb constructions allows the noun to predominate, often resulting in a more explicit or nominalized expression of the event compared to the compositional semantics of full verbs. Alternative constructions to light verb constructions include periphrastic nominal expressions, which achieve similar meanings through passive or copular structures without a light verb, such as English "the decision was made" instead of "make a decision." In some languages, serial verb constructions offer another non-light alternative, where multiple full verbs chain together to express complex events, as opposed to a single light verb supporting a noun, though these differ in syntactic integration and semantic independence.^[35] These alternatives highlight functional trade-offs: periphrastic forms emphasize the nominal outcome but may lack the dynamic verbal framing of light constructions, while serial verbs preserve fuller verbal semantics at the cost of increased complexity. Light verb constructions exhibit greater productivity than full verbs due to their flexibility in combining with novel nouns, enabling the creation of new expressions without inventing lexical verbs, whereas full verbs are typically fixed lexical items with limited extensibility.^[38] This semi-productivity arises from the light verb's generic role, which facilitates nominal variation and pragmatic adaptability, contrasting with the more rigid compositionality of full verb predicates.^[39] Theoretically, light verbs function as support verbs that enable the nominal to integrate into the predicate frame, akin to facilitating noun incorporation by providing syntactic and aspectual licensing without dominating the semantics.^[40]

Cross-linguistic and typological aspects

Common patterns across languages

Light verbs exhibit several recurrent patterns across diverse languages, reflecting shared typological features in their form and function. A prominent pattern involves the reuse of a limited set of semantically bleached verbs as light verbs, such as "do," "make," and "give," which appear in complex predicates across Indo-European, Asian, African, and Australian languages. These verbs often derive from full verbs denoting basic actions like creation, transfer, or exertion and serve to license nominal elements while contributing minimal independent meaning.^[10] Aspectual roles are particularly common, with light verbs modulating event properties such as telicity, boundedness, or volitionality, thereby structuring the overall predication without altering the core semantics provided by an associated noun or predicate.^[10] Structurally, light verbs universally form tight verb-noun dependencies in complex predicates, where the light verb acts as a syntactic host that inflects for tense, aspect, mood, and agreement, while the noun carries the primary semantic load. This dependency creates monoclausal units that behave as single predicates, subject to language-specific diagnostics like argument sharing or negation scope.^[10] Light verbs are invariably identical in form to full verbs in the language, ensuring they integrate seamlessly into the verbal paradigm without introducing new morphology.^[41] In terms of event structure, light verbs contribute to the decomposition of complex events by encoding subcomponents such as causativity or completion, often rendering atelic predicates telic. For instance, the causative light verb le ("take") in Hindi-Urdu enforces telicity in constructions like xat likh liya ("wrote a letter completely"), paralleling English patterns where "take a walk" achieves similar aspectual effects through an inner aspect head.^[8] This telicizing function holds typologically across languages, though the precise structural position of the light verb may vary (e.g., within VP in English versus higher aspectual projections in Hindi-Urdu).^[8] Cross-linguistically, light verb constructions occur with higher frequency in analytic languages, where periphrastic expressions predominate over inflectional synthesis, as seen in comparisons between English and Chinese.^[4] Corpus-based typologies confirm this pattern, with automated detection studies revealing consistent structural parallels in LVCs across English, German, Spanish, and Hungarian, where additional parallel data enhances identification accuracy and underscores shared collocational and syntactic behaviors.^[5]

Variations and theoretical debates

Light verb constructions (LVCs) exhibit significant cross-linguistic variation in their obligatoriness and functional roles. In English, LVCs such as make a decision or take a walk are optional, serving as stylistic or idiomatic alternatives to simplex verbs like decide or walk, without altering core event semantics.^[6] In contrast, Hindi requires light verbs obligatorily in complex predicates to convey aspectual, causative, or reflexive nuances, as in ghar ban-a-naa ('house make-INF', meaning 'to build a house'), where the light verb karnaa ('do/make') is essential for verbalization and tense marking.^[42] This obligatoriness in Hindi stems from the language's reliance on LVCs for productive verb formation, unlike the more flexible English system.^[43] In Australian Aboriginal languages, light verbs often function as categorizers, selecting semantic subclasses (e.g., motion, impact, or posture) and providing inflectional support to non-inflecting coverbs, as seen in Warrongo where a light verb like -bi- ('hit') categorizes the event type encoded by the coverb.^[28] This contrasts with their supportive role in Indo-European languages, where light verbs primarily contribute aspectual or valency adjustments without heavy classificatory burden, such as do in English or prendre ('take') in French LVCs, as in prendre une décision ('make a decision').^[44] Theoretical debates center on whether light verbs constitute a distinct grammatical category or merely bleached instances of regular verbs. Benjamin Bruening argues that light verbs are regular verbs with semantically attenuated senses, rejecting a special category due to their uniform syntactic behavior and lack of unique morphological markers in English.^[2] Opposing views posit light verbs as a separate class, citing their predictable semantic contributions and monoclausal properties in languages like Urdu-Hindi, where they form tight syntactic units with nominals.^[6] A key point of contention involves their role in event structure: light verbs may add telicity or causation, as in Hindi khaa-naa ('eat') becoming khaa lenaa ('eat take', ingressive completion), but debates persist on whether this derives from lexical semantics or constructional composition.^[8] In computational typology, annotating LVCs in Universal Dependencies (UD) poses challenges, particularly for South Asian languages, where verb-nominal predicates vary in headedness and dependency relations, leading to inconsistent labeling across Hindi, Bengali, and Urdu corpora.^[45] Translation asymmetries further complicate processing, as Chinese-English interpreting reveals variability in rendering LVCs like English give a lecture into simplex verbs or descriptive phrases, often losing aspectual subtlety due to structural mismatches.^[4] Theoretical frameworks like Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG) model LVCs through feature structures that unify the nominal and verbal components, as implemented in the LinGO Grammar Matrix, which supports cross-linguistic customization by treating light verbs as argument-taking heads with bleached content.^[46]

Historical development

Diachronic evolution

Light verbs frequently emerge through processes of grammaticalization, in which semantically rich full verbs undergo bleaching, gradually losing their concrete lexical content and adopting more abstract, supportive roles in predicate formation. This path involves a reduction in the verb's independent semantic load while increasing its syntactic dependency on accompanying elements, such as nouns in light verb constructions (LVCs). For instance, the Latin verb facere 'to do, make', originally a full verb with concrete meanings related to action or creation, evolved into a light verb in Romance languages, as seen in French faire used in causative and periphrastic constructions like faire manger 'to make eat'.^[47] The grammaticalization of light verbs typically progresses through identifiable stages, beginning with verbs retaining concrete meanings in optional contexts and advancing toward abstract, procedural functions with heightened obligatoriness. In early stages, the verb contributes specific aspectual or modal nuances, but over time, it abstracts to support predication without inherent event semantics, often becoming mandatory in certain syntactic environments. A notable example is the development of English "do-support," where the full verb do from Old English, initially used for emphasis or iteration, grammaticalized by the Early Modern period into an obligatory light verb for forming questions, negations, and emphatic affirmatives, as in "Do you know?" This shift reflects increased syntactic integration and loss of independent argument structure.^[48] Across language families, the diachronic evolution of light verbs aligns with broader typological shifts, particularly in Indo-European languages, where a transition from synthetic to analytic predicate structures promoted the rise of light verbs as functional supports in periphrastic expressions. This change facilitated the breakdown of inflectional morphology into multi-word constructions, with light verbs filling roles once handled by fused forms. In contrast, Australian Aboriginal languages exhibit remarkable diachronic stability in their light verb systems, maintaining small, closed classes of inflecting verbs that pair with non-inflecting coverbs over millennia, resisting the expansion or bleaching seen elsewhere due to the languages' agglutinative and complex predicate typology.^[49] Central to this evolution is the mechanism of reanalysis, whereby sequences of a full verb and a nominal complement—such as a verb-noun phrase expressing a concrete event—are reinterpreted as a light verb supporting an abstract predicate, often driven by pragmatic inferences and analogy. Hopper and Traugott (2003) describe this as a key pathway in grammaticalization, where the original biclausal or lexical structure is collapsed into a monoclausal LVC, enhancing discourse efficiency without altering surface forms immediately.^[47]

Case studies in language change

In the history of English, light verb constructions (LVCs) involving "make" and "do" emerged prominently during the Middle English period (roughly 1100–1500 CE), influenced by contact with Old French following the Norman Conquest. These constructions, such as make a promise or do harm, arose as calques or adaptations of French verbo-nominal patterns, where semantically light verbs combined with nominal elements to form complex predicates, filling gaps in native English verbal lexicon. This development is evidenced in texts like the Ancrene Wisse (c. 1230), where early instances appear, reflecting a shift toward more analytic structures amid lexical borrowing from French.^[50]^[51] The evolution of "do" as a light verb in do-support constructions, used in questions, negations, and emphasis (e.g., Do you know?), began in the 14th century with periphrastic uses in affirmative contexts and expanded significantly by the 16th century, coinciding with the loss of verb-second word order. This grammaticalization process transformed "do" from a full lexical verb into a semantically bleached element, driven by prosodic and syntactic pressures in Late Middle and Early Modern English, as seen in Chaucer's works (late 14th century) and Shakespeare's plays (early 17th century). Historical corpora like the Helsinki Corpus confirm this timeline, showing a marked increase in do-support frequency from the 1500s onward.^[52]^[53] In Hindi-Urdu, the light verb karnaa ('to do') developed its central role in LVCs through influences from Persian and Arabic loanwords during the medieval period (c. 1000–1500 CE), particularly under Delhi Sultanate and Mughal rule, when Persian served as an administrative language. Constructions like kaam karnaa ('to work') incorporated Persian nominals, expanding karnaa's productivity as a semantically empty carrier for borrowed content nouns, a pattern not native to earlier Prakrit stages but accelerated by bilingualism. This integration is documented in medieval texts such as Amir Khusrau's poetry (13th–14th centuries), where karnaa pairs with Perso-Arabic elements to form hybrid predicates.^[54]^[55] Vector verb expansions in medieval Hindi-Urdu, involving aspectual or modal light verbs like denaa ('give') or lenaa ('take') in compound forms (e.g., khaanaa khaanaa 'to eat completely'), trace to the same period of Perso-Arabic contact, evolving from full verbs to bleached exponents of completion or benefaction. These structures proliferated in Old Hindi-Urdu literature, such as the Prithviraj Raso (12th century), reflecting a grammaticalization path where vector verbs layered onto main verbs for nuanced semantics, influenced by Persian serial verb patterns. Diachronic analysis shows this expansion stabilized by the 15th century, enhancing the language's expressive typology.^[54]^[56] Australian Aboriginal languages exhibit light verb systems with possible retention from Proto-Pama-Nyungan (c. 4000–6000 years ago), where complex predicates combining coverbs (non-inflecting lexical elements) with inflecting light verbs like 'hit' or 'sit' formed the core verbal strategy. Reconstruction efforts suggest these structures were inherited, as evidenced by cognates across Pama-Nyungan branches (e.g., paja- 'hit/bite' in Warlpiri and related forms), indicating stability rather than innovation. This retention is supported by comparative data from over 200 languages, showing consistent light verb paradigms despite lexical divergence.^[57]^[58] The typological conservatism of Australian languages has preserved these light verb systems with minimal change, as their agglutinative morphology and coverb-light verb dependency resist external influences, unlike more analytic shifts in contact languages. For instance, in non-Pama-Nyungan families like Nyulnyulan, light verbs appear uniformly across daughter languages without significant diachronic loss, underscoring a conservative inheritance pattern over millennia. This stability contrasts with rapid changes in neighboring creoles, highlighting endogenous structural resilience.^[57]^[59] Recent computational approaches have enabled tracking of LVC emergence in modern corpora, using machine learning to identify patterns diachronically. A 2022 review outlines methods like dependency parsing and semantic role labeling on corpora such as the Penn Treebank and Universal Dependencies, revealing productivity shifts in English LVCs from the 19th to 21st centuries, with "make" and "take" increasing in business texts. These tools aid historical linguistics by automating detection in large-scale historical corpora. As of 2025, advances in transformer-based models (e.g., BERT variants) have improved diachronic LVC detection in multilingual historical datasets, enhancing accuracy in tracking grammaticalization paths.^[60]^[61]^[62]

References

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[PDF] Complex Aspectual Structure in Hindi/Urdu 1 Introduction
Light verb constructions are thus clearly differentiable from simple auxiliary cases, and so a standard mono- clausal analysis with the light verb in the ...
[17]
[PDF] Productivity and Argument Sharing in Hindi light verb constructions
Nov 19, 2020 · In a Hindi light verb construction, a verb combines with another pre-verbal noun, predicate, adjective, adverb, borrowed English verb, or noun ( ...
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The compound verb in Hindi : Hook, Peter Edwin - Internet Archive
Nov 25, 2022 · The compound verb in Hindi. by: Hook, Peter Edwin. Publication date: 1974. Topics: Hindi language -- Verb. Publisher: [Ann Arbor] University of ...
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[PDF] Light verbs - OAPEN Library
Kearns, Kate. 1988. Light Verbs in English. Doctoral dissertation: Massachusetts Institute of Technology,. Cambridge, MA. Landman, Fred. 2008. 1066: On the ...
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Light Verb Constructions in Italian: A Corpus-based Analysis of 15 th
Mar 5, 2024 · PDF | This paper aims at analysing the structural and functional features of Light Verb Constructions in Italian.
[21]
[PDF] A Resource of German Light Verb Constructions Along with Possible ...
In this paper we present a freely accessible re- source covering German light verb construc- tions from the domain of administrative and business language ...
[22]
https://brill.com/view/journals/jlc/15/1/article-p198_005.xml?language=en
[23]
What Can You Give in Italian That You Can T Give in Russian a ...
... light verb fare 'to do / to make' and the Russian light verb delat' 'to do / to make'. This paper sets out to investigate LVCs with one of the most produc ...
[24]
https://oxfordre.com/linguistics/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.001.0001/acrefore-9780199384655-e-1063
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https://oxfordre.com/linguistics/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.001.0001/acrefore-9780199384655-e-632
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https://books.google.com/books?id=ct4RYXdMPbcC
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https://books.google.com/books?id=tDRM9pNycO8C
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[PDF] Australian Complex Predicates - Linguistic Society of America
Light verb complex predicates are found in a belt of languages across the North of Australia, from the Dampier Peninsula in the West to Arnhem Land at the ...
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Aspect and Variability in Tamil. - University of Pennsylvania
Jan 27, 2005 · Tamil aspectual verbs provide commentary about the manner in which an action occurred, especially how it began or ended, whether it was ...Missing: put resultative
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[PDF] Light Verb Constructions in Universal Dependencies for South Asian ...
May 25, 2024 · Abstract. We conduct a morphosyntactic investigation into the light verb constructions (LVCs) or the verbo-nominal predicates.
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[PDF] COMPOUND VERBS IN PERSIAN - CORE
Language 62.32-7. Mohammad, Jan,& Simin Karimi. 1992. 'Light' verbs are taking over: Complex verbs in Persian. Proceedings of the Western Conference on ...
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Aspectual Verb Constructions in Persian | Iranian Studies
May 10, 2022 · Aspectual verb constructions in Persian are double verb constructions where an aspectual verb adds a completive, ingressive, or durative aspect ...
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(PDF) The Light Verb “Suru” in Japanese Lexical-Conceptual ...
Nov 19, 2019 · This paper assumes that the light verb “suru” drives certain particular Japanese lexical-conceptual structure, and language-specific ...Missing: nominal | Show results with:nominal
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[PDF] The light verb constructions in Japanese
Mar 2, 1998 · We study the light verb constructions in Japanese, the constructions of verb phrases with `suru'. We analyse and describe systematically the.
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[PDF] On the difference between auxiliaries, serial verbs and light verbs
Abstract. In this paper I look at light verb, serial verb and auxiliary constructions crosslinguistically and try to set up criteria to distinguish these ...
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[PDF] Causation, obligation and argument structure: On the nature of little v
Abstract: As shown by Kayne (1975), Romance causatives with faire fall into two classes, the faire infinitif (FI) and faire par (FP). We argue from.
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[PDF] What to Make of make? Sense Distinctions for Light Verbs
In their light verb use, these verbs are semantically bleached versions ... Even more vexing is the fact that light and full verb uses of make are not dis-.
[38]
Précis of Take a Look at This! Form, Function, and Productivity of ...
Aug 22, 2021 · English light verb constructions (LVCs), such as make an offer and take a bath, are semi-productive constructions: while some novel combinations ...
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[PDF] Statistical Measures of the Semi-Productivity of Light Verb ...
We propose a statistical measure for the degree of acceptability of light verb constructions, such as take a walk, based on their linguistic properties. Our.
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(PDF) Support verbs that are not verbs - Academia.edu
The article redefines Support Verb Constructions (SVC) to include non-verbs and adjectives. It finds historical and syntactic criteria essential for delimiting ...
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[PDF] Light Verbs are Just Regular Verbs Benjamin Bruening 1 Introduction
The defining property of a light verb construction is that the verb contributes relatively little to the meaning, while its complement, ...
[42]
[PDF] Light verbs in Hindi - ResearchSpace@UKZN
Jul 6, 2015 · The study was based on interviews with Hindi and Urdu ... light verb constructions, whereby the light verb absorbs the verbal inflection and the ...
[43]
[PDF] Light verb constructions with do and be in Hindi: A TAG analysis
Aug 10, 2014 · In this paper we present a Lexicalized Feature-based Tree-Adjoining Grammar analysis for a type of nominal predicate that occurs in combination ...
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https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110747997-005/html
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Light Verb Constructions in Universal Dependencies for South Asian ...
Abstract. We conduct a morphosyntactic investigation into the light verb constructions (LVCs) or the verbo-nominal predicates in South Asian languages.Missing: variations findings
[46]
Modeling Light Verb Constructions in the LinGO Grammar Matrix
This thesis describes the development of a library for modeling light verb constructions (LVCs) in the LinGO Grammar Matrix.
[47]
Lexical-Functional Grammar (Chapter 29)
Moreover, the verb is the same lexical item – Latin facere and its Romance reflexes faire, fare, hacer, fer, etc. – despite its having undergone a range of ...
[48]
[PDF] The Rise and Fall of Constructions and the History of English Do ...
& Poletto (2004) suggest, fa-support in Monnese can be seen as a type of light-verb construction, which has generalized to most of the lexicon and which is ...
[49]
https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110279771.263/html
[50]
Light verb constructions in the history of English - Academia.edu
... have a think, some situations may also call for the use of the definite article, especially where previously mentioned light verb constructions are referred ...
[51]
The origins and pathways of three support-verb constructions
Sep 25, 2024 · Support-verb constructions are combinations of a verb and a noun that fill the predicate slot of a sentence, such as to make a suggestion in I made the ...
[52]
Revisiting the loss of verb movement in the history of English - jstor
This phase is characterized by the replacement of Vnot order by do-support, and it starts in the 16th century. Concerning the causes of the decline of V- ...
[53]
[PDF] A Synchronic and Diachronic Study of Light Verbs in English
have a cry / have a cough / have a talk / have a think. (cf. Wierzbicka (1982: 794)). Page 191. 177. 5.6. Conclusion. This chapter has discussed light verb ...Missing: productivity | Show results with:productivity
[54]
[PDF] Diachronic Pertinacity of Light Verbs
Jespersen, 1965, who first coined the term light verb). Rather, it serves to modify the main verb semantics by expressing such notions as completion, inception ...
[55]
[PDF] The Impact of Persian Language on Indian Languages
In this period, Hindi language has been influenced by Persian through Urdu in its all spheres of life: education, administration and correspondence, besides ...
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https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110753066-008/html
[57]
[PDF] The reconstruction of Nyulnyulan complex predication*
In all Nyulnyulan languages, light verbs may be used as event classifiers; that is, they provide further information about some aspect of the event denoted by ...
[58]
[PDF] pama-nyungan: phonological reconstruction and status
The group of Australian Aboriginal languages termed 'Pama-Nyungan' includes all those of the southern three-quarters of the Australian mainland, together ...
[59]
Pama-Nyungan | The Oxford Handbook of Derivational Morphology
In many Pama-Nyungan languages, nominals are formed from verbs via creation of participles. A widespread participle form has been reconstructed for proto Pama- ...Missing: retention | Show results with:retention
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(PDF) Automatic Identification of Light Verb Constructions: A Review
Aug 6, 2025 · Light verb constructions (LVC) are complex predicates that are present in many languages. They belong to the Multiword Expression category ...
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Review on Light Verb Constructions in Computational Linguistics
Nov 24, 2021 · Light verb constructions (LVC) are an interesting phenomenon that occurs in many languages. It is a category of verbal Multiword Expressions ...Missing: tracking emergence modern