Take or have a look at a corpus? Expanded predicates in British and American English

Abstract

In place of simple verbs like look , bite or hug , speakers of English can use constructions that combine a semantically reduced or ‘light’ verb like have , take or give with the indefinite article and a deverbal noun, as in: (I) a.“I'd just like you to have a look at one of the patients – I'm a bit worried.” [F-LOB P24] b. She took a sip now and eyed him over the rim of her glass. [F-LOB P23] c. […] he grabbed hold of her and gave her such a hug the goldfish slopped out of the bowl […]. [F-LOB K10] The verb have combines with deverbal nouns such as chat , drag , drink , escape , fall , glance , glimpse , laugh , look , nap , puff , shower , stroll , talk , taste and walk , to give but a few examples. This variety of possible combinations suggests that we are dealing with a fairly productive constructional type. The fact that deverbal nouns like neglect , eat , jump , open , close or shut cannot be used in the construction indicates that the productivity is limited to a certain extent by collocational restrictions. In other words, the topic of this chapter is a phenomenon at the borderline between syntax and the lexicon. This may be one reason why linguists have not paid much attention to verb–noun combinations of the have a look type.