Support Verb Research Articles

CORRER UMA VISTA DE OLHOS, GLISSER UNE OEILLADE, TO SHOOT A LOOK: LEXICAL VARIATION IN THE SLOT OF SUPPORT VERB IN COMPLEX PREDICATES OF VISUAL PERCEPTION IN PORTUGUESE, FRENCH AND ENGLISH

In order to describe complex predicates of visual perception with a support verb, we focus, at the formal pole of the construction, on the lexical variation around the verbal slot, without losing sight of its combination with predicating nominal elements. We intend to analyze whether there are predicating nominal elements of visual perception more or less strongly linked to each verb in the construction. Therefore, we aim to verify possibilities for perspectivizing the visual perception event. To do so, we compared data from two varieties of Portuguese (from Brazil and from Portugal), in comparison to French and English. We adopted the theoretical approach of Construction Grammar (GOLDBERG, 1995; 2006), taking into account its articulation with Sociolinguistics, which results in a socio-constructionist bias (MACHADO VIEIRA; WIEDEMER, 2019). We collect construction incidents via the Sketch Engine platform and we use the Word Sketch tool to check collocations. After selecting only the data that interests us, we arrive at 967 occurrences for Portuguese and 750 occurrences for French and 769 occurrences for English. We analyzed the data using quantitative and qualitative methodology. Results (AUTHOR, YEAR) showed that, in the use of the construction in question, Portuguese and French are similar in the sense that they both present prototypical support verbs (dar/ ‘to give’ and jeter/ ‘to throw’) that reflect the focus of the action on something external. English, on the other hand, presents a strong tendency to use the prototypical support verb take in the construction in focus, so that movement or the action, even if figurative, is in the sense of the participant's field of reference. These results confirmed our hypotheses that the most frequent support verbs in the construction of complex predicates of visual perception in Portuguese, French and English would be, respectively, dar (‘to give’), jeter (‘to throw’) and take.

The grammaticalization and grammatical meaning of a ‘do’ support verb in the northern Italian Camuno dialect

Abstract This paper provides a case study of the grammaticalization of ‘do’ as a support verb in the northern Italian dialect of Camuno. It demonstrates the relative compatibility of fa ‘do’ with different semantic types of supported verbs through the results of an elicitation experiment. A comparison of results from adjacent dialects reveals a series of progressively more grammaticalized forms with three stages: ‘pragmatic’ ‘do’-support, largely restricted to agentive-subject, activity verbs, where question type depends mainly on the pragmatics; ‘agentive’ ‘do’-support, where use with that core group of verbs is largely categorial, and there is more use with theme-subject, change-of-state verbs and a few experiencer-subject, stative verbs; and ‘generalized’ ‘do’-support where optionality remains only with the most resistant stative verbs. Along with loss of lexical content in ‘do’, comes a reduction in salience of the special question meaning. Furthermore, a question with lexical fa ‘do’ (in an optional FS dialect) implies physical evidence exists to determine the truth of a proposition. In a question with bleached fa ‘do’ (in an obligatory FS dialect) the connection to reality has been lost leaving only the implication, and fa ‘do’ has then become an epistemic modal.

A Semantically Rich ‘Do’‐Support Verb in the Camuno Dialect of Northern Italy

AbstractIn the Camuno dialect of northern Italy, ‘do’‐support may be used to form the interrogative. In some varieties, this is optional, and it co‐exists with the alternative interrogative method of using the main verb alone. Through an elicitation experiment, participants produced their preferred version of a question based on a certain main verb with given context. The likelihood that ‘do’‐support was used varied according to the supported verb's semantics and the context pragmatics, specifically: (a) the degree to which the verb denotes activity (directly or indirectly); and (b) the role of the subject as an effector, or ‘do’‐er of that activity. Unlike for ‘do’‐support in English, a purely syntactic function does not seem relevant for Camuno ‘do’. The study shows that: (1) even if, syntactically, the support verb resembles an auxiliary, it may have full lexical content; and (2) that there exists a credible grammaticalisation pathway from a lexical ‘do’ verb to a semantically bleached, contentless ‘do’, seemingly motivated by a social preference for the ‘do’‐support construction and a desire to simplify the interrogative system.

Verbo-suporte escondido “com rabo de fora”

Support verbs are grammatical elements that primarily serve to 'conjugate' predicative nouns. Reduction (zeroing or ellipsis) of these verbs is a highly common phenomenon in texts. In the process of developing a Lexicon–Grammar for support verb constructions with predicative nouns in Portuguese, it becomes crucial to establish precise definitions for verb-noun combinations in which the verb functions as a support verb. This differentiation is necessary, even when the constructions appear formally identical, to adequately represent the meaning of linguistic expressions. This study revisits some of these scenarios and aims to contribute to establishing formal criteria that facilitate this distinction.

Support (= Light) Verbs

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.

Pour un recensement systématique des verbes supports

Like all the major fields of research, the theoretical positions on support verbs have changed as descriptions of them have accumulated. It is surprising that it was not until the twentieth century that the notion was established. Thus, to take a beer and to take a slap have been analyzed in the same way in the grammatical tradition. I have described elsewhere how the notion of support verbs was elaborated and gradually developed (G. Gross 1993, 2004). The first works in the framework of the LADL started from lists of nominal predicates established by Maurice Gross. His first collaborators applied to these lists, each one on his own, this or that support verb, the number of which seemed to be quite small at the time. Thus, J. Giry studied the support faire; L. Danlos studied sentences with the support être Prép. From the very beginning, it was realized that the conjugation of nominal predicates was more diverse than that of verbs: a single verb has only one set of forms. R. Vivès studied the nominal predicates that take the three supports avoir-prendre-perdre. I myself have described the support verbs donner and recevoir by highlighting an active and passive conjugation thanks to the support recevoir. But all these works implied, by default, that the list of support verbs was reduced for each of the predicate nouns and for the whole. But, just as in the last century a systematic inventory of verbal conjugation was made, the time has come to make a systematic inventory of the means of conjugation for nominal predicates. This is what the present article is devoted to.

Pluralia Tantum et verbes supports

It is a long-acknowledged fact that in a wide number of Indo-European languages, some noun phrases occur solely in the plural. As for the French language — the only one concerned in this study — examples as les semailles, les pourparlers, les environs, les pantalons, etc., are very common ones. A subclass of these plural invariable nouns (Pluralia tantum), shows specific properties, e.g., the noun phrase does not behave like a collective noun; it differs in meaning from the version in singular, and the version in plural is always diachronically posterior to the one in singular. The main point is that these plural nouns seem to involve a limited class of verbs in a privileged way. The main purpose of this study is then to question the status of support verb of these verbs, as well as their role in a possible process of idiomatization.

L’apport du Vsup au tour prédicatif verbo-nominal en polonais

This article is a contribution to the research on noun predication in Polish. More specifically, it focusses on the role of the support verb (Vsup) in verb-noun constructions. In this type of structure, also called verb-noun collocation, or conventionalized syntagma, the verb is collocated with an abstract noun. In this paper, Grażyna Vetulani discusses some crucial aspects of the role of the Vsup in Polish. Despite its apparently subordinated non-predicative role, the Vsup brings important semantical and grammatical information to the meaning of the whole syntagma. In particular, Vetulani argues that, it is a unifying element for the class of predicative nouns (Npréd); it indicates the register and aspect of the compound; it determines its class in the set of predicative nouns; it restricts the polysemy of the predicative noun.

Nomes predicativos e construções neutras

This paper, developed within the Lexicon‑Grammar theoretical and methodological framework, analyses the predicate noun and support‑verb constructions that admit the syntactic transformation: O médico fez um raio‑x ao tórax do Pedro = O Pedro fez um raio‑x ao tórax (lit.: ‘The doctor did a x‑ray to the chest of Pedro/Pedro did a x‑ray to the chest’) ‘The doctor x‑rayed Pedro's chest/Pedro had a chest x‑ray’; in this sentence, raio‑x ‘x‑ray’ is a predicate noun and fazer ‘do’ is the support verb. The paper proposes to relate the two sentences by a formal operation, the Neuter transformation. About 275 predicate nouns, expressing a variety of semantic predicates, and involving body‑part nouns, admit this transformation. The paper aims to determine the lexical‑syntactic conditions to the application of the Neuter transformation, contrasting it with other transformations (Dative Restructuring, Conversion, and Fusion), and presents the main regularities observed, discussing the choice of a base form from the alternative sentences and its formalization within the lexicon‑grammar, a comprehensive data base of predicate nouns and support verb constructions currently with about 9,100 nominal predicates. The analysis is supported with data from corpora and other on‑line sources. The study is part of an on‑going program for the systematic description of the lexical‑syntactical properties of predicate noun constructions in European Portuguese.

Machine-Readable Entailments with the Italian Prendere Construction Expressing Hitting and Insulting Events

The Italian language features a little debated transitive construction with prendere ‘to take/to catch’ in which a prepositional phrase (PP) with an adverbial value occurs mandatorily (e.g. Lui prese a pugni Leo ‘He punched Leo’). Semantically, this construction often implies the use of physical force or verbal offence. In the hitting or insulting event, the notional subject generally is a [+ Human] Agent, whilst the notional direct object generally is a [+ Animate] Affectee ([1]: 4). It can be contended that prendere, which carries no literal meaning, is zero-valent and that the predicate assigning semantic roles is the PP. A computational tool will be illustrated, which automatically performs the following NLP / NLU tasks: it provides a reliable syntactic and semantic representation of the clause type, and it produces machinereadable entailments with three clause types, i.e. sentences with ordinary verbs, support verbs, and the causative verb fare ‘to make/to have’.

The processing of bilingual (switched) compound verbs: Competition of words from different categories for lexical selection

AbstractThis paper investigates the production of Persian–English bilingual compound verbs (BCVs) of the type [VERB+VERB]. In this type of code-switched structure, a lexical verb from the donor language English is combined with a light verb from the native language Persian. We tested the hypothesis that in Persian–English BCVs English verbs occupy the nominal slots of monolingual Persian complex predicates of the type [NOMINAL+VERB]. Two methodologies were used. A conversational-corpus analysis confirmed our predictions that Persian–English BCVs have translation-equivalent Persian compound verbs, that the English verbs denote the same action as the nominal constituents of those monolingual constructions, and that the support verbs tend to correspond in both types of compound verbs. A bilingual picture-word interference experiment provided evidence suggesting that English verbs interfere with the production of the nominal constituents of complex Persian verbs in Persian-bilingual speakers. We conclude that words from different word categories can compete for lexical access.

Linguistique informatique et linguistique diachronique : une alliance nécessaire

In this paper, we will try to show how formal linguistics applied to the study of diachrony can be a fundamental asset for research (and consequently also for teaching at a university level) in the field of French language and literature. We will treat successively the analysis of the support verbs (§2), the realization verbs (§3), the intensity collocations (§4) and the pragmatically restricted clichés (§5). In each section, we will present and discuss numerous examples in medieval French accompanied by their published translations into contemporary French.

Exploring a Loan Translation and Its Consequences in an Oral Bilingual Corpus

Abstract This work applies computational tools that have been used to model loanwords in newspaper corpora to an analysis of a loan translation in an oral bilingual corpus. The explicit goal of the contribution is to argue that a specific collocation found in a corpus of Spanish spoken in Texas, agarrar+NP (e.g., agarrar ayuda), is a loan translation that is calqued on English get+np support verb constructions (e.g., get help). We base our argument on the frequency and the linguistic distribution of the nonconventional usage within and between corpora and on the factors that favor its use. Our findings show that the overall frequency of agarrar is the same in Spanish in Texas as it is in the benchmark monolingual corpus of Mexican Spanish but that it is used differently in the two varieties, a difference that has grammatical, as well as semantic, ramifications.

Automatic Extraction of Semantic Roles in Support Verb Constructions

This paper deals with paraphrastic relations in Italian. In the following sentences: (a) Max strappò delle lacrime a Sara 'Max moved Sara to tears' and (b) Max fece piangere Sara 'Max made Sara cry', the verbs differ syntactically and semantically. Strappare 'tear/rip/wring' is transitive, fare ‘have/make’ is a causative, and piangere 'cry' is intransitive. Despite this, a translation of (a) as (b) is legitimate and therefore (a) is a paraphrase of (b). In theoretical linguistics this raises an issue concerning the relationship between strappare and fare/piangere in Italian, and that in English between move and make. In computational linguistics, can such paraphrases be obtained automatically? Which apparatus should be deployed? The aim of this paper is to suggest a pathway with which to answer these questions.

Beyond base and collocate

Abstract Support verb constructions figure among the most frequently investigated topics in the literature on collocation. So far, most studies of this kind have focused on bipartite structures, consisting of a verbal collocate and a nominal base. Accordingly, the analysis of how support verbs are distributed has concentrated almost exclusively on the lexical control exerted by the base. In this article, we draw attention towards the influence exerted by the participation of verb and noun in more complex patterns of lexical co-occurrence. We contend that the distribution of the support verb collocate is contingent not only on the base noun but also on other elements of the lexical context. This highlights the need to enrich the theoretical framework of collocation analysis with the additional descriptive category of ‘second-order collocate’. The proposal is illustrated with two case studies using a large-scale web corpus of English.

Study on the use of support verbs by Korean learners: Focusing on Korean learners’ corpus

본 연구는 한국어 학습자들의 기능동사의 사용 양상을 살피는 데 그 목적이 있다. 학습자 말뭉치 자료에 나타난 기능동사 사용 양상 분석 결과 51개 유형의 기능동사가 전체 동사 사용 빈도(55,774회)의 약 8% 정도에 해당하는 4,454회로 사용되었음을 확인하였다. 그 중에서 대표적인기능동사로 꼽히는 ‘하다’가 약 60% 정도의 사용률을 보였으며 ‘받다(약 10%)’와 ‘되다(5.2%)가그 뒤를 이었다. 숙달도별 기능동사 빈도는 3급은 좀 예외적이나 초급에 비해 4~6급에서 빈도높게 나타난 것을 확인할 수 있었으며 숙달도가 높아질수록 기능동사를 더 다양하게 쓴다는 것도확인할 수 있었다. 기능동사의 경우 일반적으로 중․고급 수준의 학습자가 이해할 수 있는 수준의유형이 많다 보니 4~6급에서 좀 더 다양하게, 빈도 높게 나타난 것으로 파악된다. 기능동사의의미적 오류는 전체 기능동사 빈도 4,454회 중 181회(약 4%)로 낮은 편이며 그 이유는 학습자가쉽고 익숙한 어휘를 선호하여 안정적인 선택을 했기 때문일 수도 있고 또 연어와 마찬가지로‘서술성 명사+기능동사’의 통어적 구성을 반복적으로 학습하여 활용을 잘 하고 있기 때문일 수도있다. 오류 빈도가 높은 편에 속하는 ‘하다, 받다, 나다, 되다, 주다, 가다’의 오류 양상과 원인을간단하게 분석하고 또 ‘하다’ 선호 현상 양상 등을 분석해 보았다. 이상의 연구 결과는 한국어학습자들이 자연스럽게 산출해 낸 기능동사 사용 양상과 오류 양상을 살폈다는 점에서 의의가있다.

Composite predicates in the layers of Latin

AbstractThe present study gives a comprehensive portrait of the accusatival-passival type of the composite-predicate (or support-verb) construction in the history of Latin. Taking stock of properties shows them to only minimally serve as a touchstone distinguishing between Latin composite predicates and syntagmatically identical verb + direct object constructs. The intricate issue of idiomaticity and the prospects of establishing its parameters are discussed, concluding that although characteristics such as figurativity of the verb or direct-object incorporation indicate this status, the closed corpus of Latin securely allows only for a quantitative parameter, or familiarity, for this kind of a complex predicate. We are looking from the diachronic perspective at individual support verbs, primarilycapereandhabere, in the evolvement of their function and status—grammatical or lexical-phraseological—as well as at other sets of verbs, figurative ones and verbs otherwise departing from their basic meaning. The support verb emerges as the cardinal constituent of the construct, determining the function of the complex, and as considerably autonomous, being capable of representing, in anaphoric contexts, the entire construction. A reconsideration of the opposition between composite predicates and their monolexematic counterparts brings up again their added value as to exhaustiveness, clarity, perspective, and focus of the message conveyed through a composite predicate.

Ideophones in Moro

Abstract This article presents a descriptive study of ideophones in Moro, addressing both their structural characteristics and usage, with data from the Thetogovela dialect. We describe their sound patterns, word categorization and placement within sentences, and discuss their meaning and conventionalization. Moro ideophones convey a wide range of sensory meanings, including sound, touch, movement and visual patterns. They are uninflected and typically appear utterance finally, most closely resembling adverbs. Ideophones are often introduced by support verbs, including ‘do’, ‘be’ and ‘eat’, the latter for visual patterns. Ideophones may exhibit reduplication, which in some cases can correspond to pluractionality. The main distinctive sound pattern of Moro ideophones is a wider distribution of obstruents, as well as a performative use of expressive duration and phonation.

O QUE BRASILEIROS DIZEM ACERCA DE USOS DE CONSTRUÇÕES COM VERBO-SUPORTE?

Focalizamos padrões construcionais com verbo-suporte DAR, enquanto operador de verbalização de elementos não-verbais do tipo (um(a)) X-[a/i]da, (um(a)) X-[a/i]dinha, (um(a)) X-adela e (um(a)) X-(z)inh[o/a], tal como em dar uma escapadinha e dar uma olhadela. Baseamo-nos em pressupostos da Linguística Funcional-Cognitiva e da Gramática de Construções. Utilizamos dados retirados de situações reais de comunicação, do acervo online do jornal O Globo (1925 a 2015), para lidar com o problema da avaliação subjetiva. A metodologia é a de pesquisa experimental baseada em usos observados nesses textos. Os objetivos consistem em observar quais valores são associados por brasileiros a usos dessas construções e descrever características formais e funcionais desses predicadores complexos considerando também a ótica do usuário sobre eles. Resultados apontam que essas construções põem em evidência não só aspectualidade, mas, principalmente, o valor modal, e tais valores são reconhecidos pelos informantes.

Verbi a supporto nel latino tardo: il caso di facio

SummarySupport verb constructions are documented throughout the history of Latin. These syntagms are characterized by the presence of a support verb with a more or less reduced semantic force, and a predicative (abstract or verbal) noun that often constitutes its direct object. The present contribution deals, specifically, with the use of facio as a support verb (as in bellum facere, iter facere, insidias facere etc.), focussing on the post-classical and late period. Two main questions shall be discussed: (a) whether, and if so, how facio becomes more productive in later centuries in both non-Christian and Christian sources; (b) what type of semantic evolution the verb undergoes in later Latin and whether, in this respect, continuity or rupture should be assumed with regard to the earlier period. This last point will enable us to suggest a more convincing explanation of an often-quoted passage of Cicero (Phil. 3. 22), in which the expression contumeliam facere is found.