Productivity, richness, and diversity of light verb constructions in the history of American English

Sundquist, John D.

doi:10.1075/jhl.19009.sun

Cited by 3 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…Another quantitative measurement that combines both type and token frequencies reveals noteworthy differences between these two groups of verbs over time. Following Sundquist's (2020) overview of measurements of lexical diversity, I use Margalef's Richness Index, a statistic that incorporates type and token frequencies for comparison on an equal scale over multiple time periods. Margalef's Richness Index allows for an analysis of how many unique verb–noun combinations occur over time and avoids issues of scaling which may arise when comparing high token frequency verbs like take or make with lower token frequency verbs like bear or lose 16 .…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Unlike the take-a-look type of CP, these are non-compositional and generally have a more idiomatic usage. As discussed in Sundquist (2020: 355) and Claridge (2000: 73), the differences between the two types of CPs are often unclear, with exceptions to rules based on various grammatical characteristics. However, general distinctions are easier to capture: the first type exhibits greater flexibility of grammatical options within the NP, while the second is more idiomatic and exhibits less variability within the NP.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“… 18 See Sundquist (2020) for more discussion of the concept of ‘the rich get richer’ in light verb constructions and in patterns of linguistic variation and change in general.…”

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confidence: 99%

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An exemplar-based approach to composite predicates in the history of American English

Sundquist¹

2022

English Language and Linguistics

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This study examines composite predicates (CPs) in the history of American English and uses an exemplar-based model to explain changes in the frequency of verb–noun pairings over time. Two different types of verb-nominal CPs are considered, including those like take a look, in which a light verb occurs with an abstract nominal object, and others like lose sight, with a more lexically specific verb. Using a corpus of texts written between 1820 and 2009, I track the frequency of different CPs and analyze several families of semantically related nouns that occur with the same verb (e.g. take a look, peak, etc.). Representative families are analyzed to determine the presence of highly frequent verb–noun pairings, or exemplars, that separate themselves over time. The success of exemplars is evaluated according to several factors that may shape patterns of use, including the relative size of noun families, the frequency band of tokens of each family and the distribution of tokens across types within a family. Results indicate that the two types of CPs differ with respect to the evolution and success of exemplary verb–noun pairings and indicate that frequency bands play a role while the size of the noun family and their distributional patterns do not.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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An exemplar-based approach to composite predicates in the history of American English

Sundquist¹

2022

English Language and Linguistics

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“…Both quantitative and qualitative investigations of the light verbs make and do have been conducted across different English varieties (Smith 2009;Laporte 2012;2 The pronominalisation of an LVC with the light verb do is illustrated by the author's example. Ronan & Schneider 2015;Mehl 2019;Sundquist 2020). LVCs with the light verb make have been analysed in terms of nativised structural patterns in Malaysian English (Ong & Rahim 2021).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A corpus-based analysis of light verb constructions with MAKE and DO in British English

Giparaitė

2024

KLB

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The comparison of light verb constructions with the verbs make and do has not received much attention. The present paper is an attempt to contribute to the study of these constructions. It aims to analyze the light verbs make and do in combination with the same deverbal nouns to identify similarities and differences between the two light verbs and examine the contribution of the light verbs and deverbal nouns to the light verb construction in terms of semantic and syntactic features. The research is corpus-based, and the data for analysis are collected from the British National Corpus (BNC). The semantic description deals with characteristics such as generality, polysemy and aspectual meaning, and the syntactic description focuses on complementation. The analysis of findings demonstrates that, despite some similarities, almost all constructions with the two light verbs show either meaning or/and complementation differences. The study also reveals that both light verbs and deverbal nouns have an impact on the semantics and syntax of the construction. Light verbs may affect light verb constructions semantically in terms of generality and polysemy, and the aspectual meaning of constructions depends on both light verbs and deverbal nouns. Likewise, both light verbs and deverbal nouns have an influence on complementation, but in their own way: light verbs on the selection of complements and deverbal nouns on complementation patterns.

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“…Furthermore, LVCs have been investigated in previous studies using a variety of theoretical frameworks, regardless of language. LVCs have been studied using morphology at the first level (Aldridge, 2019;Fleischhauer & Neisani, 2020;Kovalevskaitė et al, 2020;Stroik, 2001;Sundquist, 2020;Vaidya et al, 2019). The main contribution of this field of study was an explicit method for identifying markedness in LVCs.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Morphosemantic Features of Membuat ‘Make’ in the Light Verb Constructions of Indonesian

Nugraha

2023

LiNGUA J.

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Light verb constructions (LVCs) are combinations of a verb and a noun that operate as a referee for a distinctive idiomatic-like meaning in which the noun is the central focus of meaning deduction. This study aimed to identify and describe Indonesian LVCs as morphosemantic phenomena. The dataset comprises Indonesian sentences containing featured LVCs. Three corpora were utilized as data sources: Leipzig Corpora Collection – Indonesian (LCCI), SEAlang Library Indonesian Text Corpus (SEAlang), and Kamus Besar Bahasa Indonesia (KBBI). In this study, a framework from Morphosemantics has been employed to provide the deep analysis technique. The results revealed the following two folds. First, at the morphological level, the Indonesian verb membuat 'make' is a clear indicator of the existence of LVCs. Second, on a semantic level, the verb membuat ‘make’ in Indonesian LVCs tends to produce ACTION type verbs, AGENT paired argument of verbs and RESULTATIVE grammatical meaning. This study suggested that further research be done on the morphosyntactic features of the Indonesian LVCs verb membuat 'make.'

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Productivity, richness, and diversity of light verb constructions in the history of American English

Cited by 3 publications

References 52 publications

An exemplar-based approach to composite predicates in the history of American English

An exemplar-based approach to composite predicates in the history of American English

A corpus-based analysis of light verb constructions with MAKE and DO in British English

Morphosemantic Features of Membuat ‘Make’ in the Light Verb Constructions of Indonesian

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