dookie

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Sep 23, 2004, at 5:24 PM, Larry Horn wrote:

>> ... but part of a
>> "light verb" construction.
>
> Oops.  I realize I should have defined this term of art.  The point
> is that "to take a piss/shit/shower" is essentially just a different
> way of saying "to piss/shit/shower"; the verb "take" doesn't
> contribute compositionally to the meaning, and the nouns are, as I
> was trying to argue in the last message, essentially place-holders,
> not real, honest-to-goodness God-fearing referential nominal
> expressions, which is why relative clauses are ruled more or less
> out.  Haj Ross talked about these in his dissertation under the
> rubric of "modalization", which I recall was a term he borrowed from
> Zelllig Harris, and I'm sure Jespersen had a detailed discussion of
> them somewhere too.

"aspectualization" might have been a better term, since the light verbs
function to shift the Aktionsart of the verb.  they're somewhat like
the aspectual prefixes of slavic languages.  (and everyone says how
easy english is!)

i have the same faith in jespersen, but don't find it in a quick search
through MEG.

arnold