A Study in the Structure and Meaning of English Light Verb Constructions

Traditionally,light verb constructions were merely thought to be the expressional variations of corresponding simple verb constructions with the same meaning.Based on the principles of construction grammar,this article holds that light verb constructions differ a lot from simple verb constructions both in structure and meaning.Structurally,based on the contrast with corresponding simple verb constructions,the constituents and syntactic features of light verb constructions are analyzed in detail;semantically,this article focuses on the analysis of the situation type of light verb constructions,and points out the difference with simple verb constructions in this aspect of meaning.