Support (= Light) Verbs

• Authors: Igor Mel'čuk

Abstracts

EN

The paper proposes a formal definition of support verb as (roughly) a semantically empty verb serving as a syntactic “prop” to a predicative noun such that the phrase V(support)(N) + N is synonymous with the verb V0 derived form N: ‘V(support)(N) + N’ = ‘V0(N)’, as in ‘to give an order’ = ‘to order’ or ‘to receive an order’ = ‘to be ordered’. The following points are discussed: support verbs as collocates, representation of support verbs in terms of lexical functions, semantic and syntactic properties of support verbs, semantic additions to support verbs (in particular, causation and phasic meanings), realization verbs, and the role of support verbs in theoretical and applied linguistics.

Keywords

EN

English; syntax; phraseology; paraphrasing; support verbs; lexical functions; collocations; the quasi-direct-objectival surface-syntactic relation

• Publisher: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego
• Journal: Neophilologica
• Year: 2022
• Volume: 34
• Pages: 1-30

Dates

published

2022

Contributors

author

Igor Mel'čuk

• Observatoire de linguistique Sens-Texte, Université de Montréal

• https://orcid.org/0000000245200554

References

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Identifiers

DOI

10.31261/NEO.2022.34.03

Biblioteka Nauki

31341218