回复：Annotated Bibliography of MWEs
以下是引用 清风出袖 在 2005-11-23 19:12:46 的发言：
what does light verb mean, lao hong? thanks a lot!
For what light verbs are, pls read this short article below:
TAKE a Look Here: Lightweights in the verbal world
We habitually think of words as carrying something we call a "meaning" attached to them. It's simple enough to say what most words mean. See for yourself how readily you can define elephant, thirsty, to sleep. But there are others where we find it's much harder. What do you do with those ubiquitous little words like of, but, and, or the? If you want to see some suggestions about the meanings of those last two, you might look at Miniature No. 11 on and and Miniature No. 23 on the.
Let's come back to verbs, such as 'sleep' in the preceding paragraph. We can say what the meaning of be, do, have, and put is in sentences such as
The cat must be upstairs. (something like 'exist')
He said he would do it right away. ('accomplish')
We have an old car. ('possess')
They put the flowers on the table. ('place')
But it's a lot harder to say what these same words mean in
You should be studying now
What do you think I should say?
We have never met.
How do they put up with that?
To see what the difficulty here is, we'll take six verbs and first give their basic dictionary definitions -
GET 'obtain, acquire'
GIVE 'transfer possession'
HAVE 'possess, hold'
MAKE 'construct, form'
PUT 'place in a location'
TAKE 'get into one's possession'
and for all of these you can think up related definitions and an endless number of examples.
But now comes the hard part. Try your hand at defining the meaning of
GET
We mustn't let him get away with that
When do I get to use it?
GIVE
You must never give up
Will he give in now?
HAVE
We had it out with each other
Come have a look!
MAKE
Kiss and make up
She makes as if to smile
PUT
How do you put up with that?
They put one over on me
TAKE
The girl takes after her mother
Don't take on so!
You've already seen that applying the basic dictionary definitions doesn't really capture at all what the verbs mean in these sentences. Their individual meaning seems to have faded almost completely, and the resulting colorless verb looks as if it's doing little but supporting other words in the sentence (which is why conscientious dictionaries have to give us so many sub-definitions - it takes one standard desk dictionary 34 of them to pin down the meaning of TAKE). It almost seems as though some other word or words in the sentence are the really important ones.
Look at those sentences just above, and ask yourself whether the word in boldface below doesn't make at least as much of a contribution to the meaning as the verb:
get away with, get to use
give up, give in
have out, have a look
make up, make as if
put up with, put one over on
take after, take on
This is exactly why verbs like these have traditionally been called light verbs. Instead of having a focused (or 'heavy' as it were) meaning like cat or to walk, such verbs seem to have little meaning content of their own. Their function seems to be rather to provide a generalized verbal support for a wide variety of expressions.
In fact, many of them are so light that even a slight paraphrase seems to blow them away completely. This leaves the field to some other word in the sentence that was the really important one all along. Ignore stylistic nuances for the moment, and see if you don't think the sentences on the right have about the same meaning as the ones on the left:
LIGHT VERB 'HEAVY' VERB
I can't get this screw loose = I can't loosen this screw
He gives the ball a kick = He kicks the ball
Did you have a look? = Did you look?
The child makes a fuss = The child fusses
She puts the books on the shelf = She shelves the books
He takes a chance on it = He chances it
GET, GIVE, HAVE, MAKE, PUT, TAKE in sentences like these seem to be doing little more than standing in construction with a noun or adjective that has a verb of normal weight hiding in it. When the light ones (on the left) disappear, this verb (on the right) emerges.
These six verbs are just the ones we're limiting ourselves to here for brevity's sake. There are others that function in similar ways in English. Just think of how DO acts in
She did a dance for us = She danced for us
and how much 'weight' COME has in
How did you come up with that?
And there's nothing particularly English about light verbs. There are many languages that make even more extensive use of them than we do, using their equivalent for a word like 'do' and a noun to make a wide variety of verbs such as
to do a sleep = to sleep
to do a song = to sing
Light verbs are 'light' not because of anything mysteriously inherent in their meaning, but simply because of the unusual variety of tasks they've been assigned in many expressions. They illustrate for us once again that words can't be thought of as living in splendid isolation, but rather get their life from networks of interaction with other words in the sentence.
(Retrieved from http://home.bluemarble.net/~langmin/miniatures/light.htm, on Nov 23, 2005)
