An Improved Model For Defining English Light Verbs

This study discusses how to improve lexicographic definitions of English light verbs.To represent salience of English light verbs and reach the goal practically,this thesis selects five highly-frequent light verbs: do,give,have,make and take.It is obvious that light verbs are not isolated to convey meaning.In other words,light verbs are naturally embedded in light verb constructions.Furthermore,“verb + noun” structures of the five light verbs are observed in Corpus of Contemporary American English(COCA);definitions on the five light verbs are described and judged from five dictionaries(Collins COBUILD Dictionary2006,Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English 5,Macmillan English Dictionary 2nd Edition,Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary 8th Edition and Merriam-Webster’s 11 th Collegiate Dictionary.Definitions on light verbs in dictionaries tend to be long.And they do not point out the basic features of light verbs directly,which may cause confusion to readers.To address the problem,this thesis endeavors to find out theories to explain the mechanism of light verbs and to propose a reasonable definition model for light verbs.This study starts with analysis of structure,function and type of the five light verbs and then contrasts light verb constructions and simple verbs to justify the semantic equivalence between light verb constructions and simple verbs.As for lexicographic examination,this thesis makes research on how dictionaries explain structure,function and type of the five light verbs and deficiencies on the three perspectives are found.This study applies construction grammar to explain the mechanism of light verbs and proposes definition model based on the theory.This study focuses on five light verbs to do investigation on light verb constructions and adopts corpus analysis to obtain overall features on syntax of light verb constructions.The contrast between light verb constructions and simple verbs highlights the semantic relationship between them,which makes the researchmeaningful in explaining the mechanism of light verb constructions.Therefore,it can be justified that the given definition model can provide an effective way to explain meanings of most light verb constructions.