• Title/Summary/Keyword: Light Verb Constructions

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A Comparison of the Constructions Make / Take a Decision in Malaysian English with the Supervarieties

  • Christina Sook Beng Ong
    • Asia Pacific Journal of Corpus Research
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    • v.4 no.1
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    • pp.43-59
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    • 2023
  • This study aims to compare the structures of light verb constructions (LVCs) taking decision as the deverbal noun in Malaysian English, British English and American English. A general corpus made up of Internet forum threads from Lowyat.Net, was created to represent Malaysian English while the British National Corpus (BNC) and Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) were used to represent the supervarieties. Light verbs make and take are found to be heading deverbal noun decision. Differences are observed in the use of articles. The frequency of Malaysian English LVCs without article is the highest while supervarieties LVCs prefer indefinite article. The high occurrences of LVCs without articles in Malaysian English can be attributed to the influence from Malaysian substrate languages. Findings also show that descriptive adjective is the most frequently used modifier in all three varieties of English. This suggests the standard LVC structure, comprising a light verb, the indefinite article, and a deverbal noun is no longer rigidly adhered to even among the native speakers of English.

Parallels between Korean Verbs and Nouns in Subcategorization (한국어 동사와 명사사이의 하위범주화에 있어서의 평행성)

  • 노용균
    • Language and Information
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    • v.1
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    • pp.27-65
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    • 1997
  • Nouns in the Korean language are subcategorized for various frames(called SUBCAT lists) in much the same way as verbs are. Assuming a monostratal grammar and building on analyses of various 'little elements' as clitics, such as the ones given by No(1991), Chae(1995,1996), and Oh(1991), I delineate the ranges of SUBCAT lists for the Korean verbs and nouns and show that the two word-classes have heavily overlapping frames. Twenty five SUBCAT lists are identified for verbs, and twenty four for nouns, of which twenty three find associated lexical items in both. By the way of justification, I offer analyses of noun--verb collocations in terms of the new five-valued syntactic feature COLLOC along with SUBCAT, which subsume 'light verb' constructions. It is hoped that this work will have given clear syntactic underpinnings to those who are concerned with practical lexicography.

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