Abstract
The article examines support-verb constructions of the type verb-noun, such as English to make a suggestion, in the Greek sections of the magical papyri of the second to fourth centuries CE. It shows that the variability of support-verb constructions is exploited for semantic and pragmatic purposes, i.e. in order to enhance precision and create genre-, register-, and style-related variants that are specific to the magical papyri. Support-verb constructions appear to be an internally heterogenous group of constructions. Some are involved in the formulaic sections of the magical papyri and some appear relatively productively to integrate nominal technical terms into the predicate slot of a sentence. Moreover, lexically heavier verbs can be used to convey a nuanced, more precise meaning but with which the ambiguity between a support-verb-construction and a verb-object reading comes to the fore.
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