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Light Verbs: Tnx0lVN1
- Description:
- The verb/noun pairs that select this tree families
are pairs in which the interpretation is non-compositional and the
noun contributes argument structure to the predicate (e.g. The man took a walk. vs. The man took a radio). The verb and
the noun occur together in the syntactic database, and both anchor
the trees. The verbs in the light verb constructions are do,
give, have, make and take. The noun
following the light verb is (usually) in a bare infinitive form
(have a good cry) and usually occurs with a(n).
However, we include deverbal nominals (take a bath, give a demonstration) as well. Constructions with nouns that do not
contribute an argument structure (have a cigarette, give
NP a black eye) are excluded. In addition to semantic
considerations of light verbs, they differ syntactically from
Transitive verbs (section 6.3) as well in that the
noun in the light verb construction does not extract. Some of the
verb-noun anchors for this family, like take aim and take hold disallow determiners, while others require particular
determiners. For example, have think must be indefinite and
singular, as attested by the ungrammaticality of *John had the think/some thinks. Another anchor, take leave can occur
either bare or with a possesive pronoun (e.g., John took his leave, but not *John took the leave). This is accomplished
through feature specification on the lexical entries. There are 259
verb/noun pairs that select the light verb tree.
- Examples:
- give groan, have discussion, make comment
The audience gave a collective groan .
We had a big discussion about closing the libraries .
The professors made comments on the paper .
- Declarative tree:
- See Figure 6.16.
- {Declarative Light Verb Tree: $\alpha$nx0lVN1
- Other available trees:
- wh-moved subject, subject relative clause with and without comp,
adjunct (gap-less) relative clause with comp/with PP pied-piping,
imperative, determiner gerund, NP gerund.
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Up: Verb Classes
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XTAG Project
http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~xtag