Talk:Light verb

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This article was nominated for deletion on 16 July 2012. The result of the discussion was keep.

On AFD

Why is this article being considered for deletion? The term light verb denotes a concrete phenomenon that is well established in theoretical syntax and beyond. To convince oneself of this fact, I suggest googling "Light verb" and reading for a few minutes. You will see that the concept is indeed well established. Furthermore, the article now lists sources where the concept is discussed, and there is even an informative paper by Miriam Butt that can be downloaded. I see no reason why this article should not be maintained. Please remove the tag (whichever editor can legitimately do so). --Tjo3ya (talk) 18:06, 18 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Contrasts with auxiliaries and full verbs

I have doubts about these contrasts. The differences with auxiliaries may be valid, but they apply to full verbs also, so do not help to establish light verbs as a class.
The differences with full verbs depend  at least to some extent not on the type of verb, but on the vagueness of the pronoun. "He took a picture of him on the beach" is unsatisfactory because we don't know who "him" is, so "himself" is required. However, "we took a picture of us on the beach" is all right, in spite of the verb being a light one, because the first person pronoun has only one meaning and a reflexive is unnecessary. So again these considerations do not seem to establish light verbs as a class.
The whole concept is rather a shaky one, I think.  Seadowns (talk) 15:00, 19 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Origin of the term and concept

I've been studying language and languages for well over half a century now without ever hearing or seeing the term "light verb" before I stumbled across this article. Who first devised the expression and why did they choose that (not very enlightening) form of words? I think we should be told (more explicitly than just via unlinked reference footnotes). -- Picapica (talk) 07:47, 2 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I have added a paragraph in the introduction with the intuition behind the term. Kaĉjo (talk) 12:59, 14 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Compositionality

The current version of the article mentions that "Light verb constructions challenge theories of compositionality because the words that form such constructions do not together qualify as constituents". This is picked up in a section on catenae. I believe this gives undue weight and has a potential neutrality issue, as it was added by User:Tjo3ya, whose work is also cited in the article. Essentially, I do not see the challenge to theories of compositionality. In a traditional framework, light verbs can easily be accommodated, for example as semantically empty predicate licensers (Grimshaw & Mester 1998) or a kind of auxiliaries (Hacker 1958). Discussing an analysis with catenae in such depth but not these alternatives is Wikipedia:UNDUE. I would suggest removing it here and, if needed, leaving only a reference to Catena (linguistics)#Proper idioms, which has relevant examples (e.g. give a hand). Kaĉjo (talk) 12:45, 14 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I have now applied these changes as suggested. Kaĉjo (talk) 18:15, 20 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]