Carson T Schutze: "light" verbs in English (reply to Heidi Harley)

[Martha McGinnis]

Heidi said:

>(That last one isn't so nice; presumably a saturated PP is itself a
>small clause, so it really ought to get "be" -- but maybe "have" is
>really just a suppletive spell-out of "be" in a certain environment,
>i.e. with a P(have) complement).

I think one can argue that quite nicely for possessive 'have', so hopefully it
would extend as you suggest.

>But: of course "be" can behave like it's not "support" at all; it's
>got a past participle form, etc. How do you get "be-support" to work
>out in "John has been swimming"? (this applies to "have" as well, of
>course).

Well, I don't want to give away my whole analysis! :-)
The crucial point is that 'be' isn't "supporting Tense" in my analysis,
rather it is filling up a V position that the syntax needs but the meaning has
not supplied, i.e. it is "supporting c-selection requirements", if you wish.
(There's that evil word c-selection again!) It's the same basic idea that
Tovah Rapoport mentions in her diss., but she doesn't work out the details (at
least not for English).

>Cf a semi-interesting recent discussion by Lightfoot (I think) about
>how "be" isn't really a verb at all.

I don't believe it for a second, but I'd like to look at it anyway--do you
have a reference?