Cover not available
Part of
Corpus Use in Cross-linguistic Research: Paving the way for teaching, translation and professional communication
Edited by Marlén Izquierdo and Zuriñe Sanz-Villar
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 113] 2023
► pp. 34–50

Chapter 2
Light Verb Constructions in English-Spanish translation

What corpora can tell us

| University of León

Light Verb Constructions (LVCs) are combinations of a partially delexicalized verb and a noun indicating an action or an event (e. g., give a description). Studies modelled on the Meaning-Text theory and qualia roles of the Generative Lexicon model propose that LVCs combine nouns and verbs according to shared underlying, underspecified semantic features. This paper explores these features’ role in translating English LVCs into Spanish. Data come from the parallel corpus P-ACTRES 2.0, including fiction and nonfiction materials. Results indicate that translation choices for LVCs with have, take, make/do, and give are governed by the same notions of transference, inception, and volition that determine their combinatorial compatibility. Register also seems to influence the choice. This information may prove significant to machine translation, bi/multilingual writing support, and post-editing.

Keywords: Light Verb Constructions, parallel corpus, semantic compatibility, semantic underspecification, translation solutions
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Light Verb Constructions
  • 3.Data and method
  • 4.Results
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 2 November 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.113.02rab
References
Alonso Ramos, Margarita
2004 Las construcciones con verbos de apoyo. Madrid: Visor.Google Scholar
2007 Towards the synthesis of support verb constructions. In Selected Lexical and Grammatical Issues in the Meaning – Text Theory. In honour of Igor Mel’čuk [Studies in Language Companion Series 84], Leon Wanner (ed.), 139–166. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bosque, Ignacio
2001 On the weight of light predicates. In Features and Interfaces in Romance. Essays in honor of Heles Contreras [Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 222], Julia Herschensohn, Enrique Mallén & Karen Zagona (eds), 23–38. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2004a La direccionalidad en los diccionarios combinatorios y el problema de la selección léxica. In Lingüística teórica. Análisi i perspectives, Teresa Cabré (ed.), 13–58. Barcelona: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.Google Scholar
(ed.) 2004b Redes. Diccionario combinatorio del español contemporáneo. Madrid: SM.Google Scholar
(ed.) 2006 Diccionario práctico combinatorio del español contemporáneo. Madrid: SM.Google Scholar
Bruening, Benjamin
2016 Light verbs are just regular verbs. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 22(1): 51–60. [URL]Google Scholar
Brugman, Claudia
2001 Light verbs and polysemy, Language Sciences 23(4): 551–578. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Butt, Miriam
2003 The light verb jungle. Harvard Working Papers in Linguistics 9: 1–9.Google Scholar
2010 The light verb jungle: Still hacking away. In Complex Predicates: Cross-linguistic Perspectives on Event Structure, Mengistu Amberber, Brett Baker & Mark Harvey (eds), 48–78. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
De Miguel, Elena
2011 En qué consiste ser verbo de apoyo. In 60 problemas de gramática dedicados a Ignacio Bosque, M. Victoria Escandell Vidal, Manuel Leonetti & Cristina Sánchez López (eds), 139–147. Madrid: Akal.Google Scholar
2008 Construcciones con verbos de apoyo en español. De cómo entran los nombres en la órbita de los verbos. In Actas del XXXVII Simposio Internacional de la Sociedad Española de Lingüística (SEL), Inés Olza Moreno, Manuel Casado Velarde & Ramón González Ruiz (eds), 567–578. Pamplona: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Navarra.Google Scholar
2013 La polisemia de los verbos soporte. Propuesta de definición mínima. In Los verbos en los diccionarios, Sergi Torner Castells & Elisenda Bernal Gallén (eds). Anexos Revista de Lexicografía 20: 67–109.Google Scholar
Frawley, William
1984 Prolegomenon to a theory of translation. In Translation: Literary, Linguistic and Philosophical Perspectives, William Frawley (ed.), 159–175. University of Delaware Press.Google Scholar
Gross, Gaston & De Pontonx, Sophie
(eds) 2004 Verbes supports. Special issue of Lingvisticae Investigationes 27(2).Google Scholar
Koike, Kazumi
2001 Colocaciones léxicas en el español actual: Estudio formal y léxicosemántico. Alcalá de Henares: Universidad de Alcalá/Takushoku University.Google Scholar
Langer, Stefan
2005 A linguistic test battery for support verb constructions. Lingvisticae Investigationes 27(2): 171–184. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Leech, Geoffrey
2006 A Glossary of English Grammar. Edinburgh: EUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mel’čuk, Igor A.
1996 Lexical functions. A tool for the description of lexical relations in a lexicon. In Lexical Functions in Lexicography and Natural Language Processing [Studies in Language Companion Series 31], Leo Wanner (ed.), 37–102. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1997 Vers une linguistique Sens-Texte. Paris: Collègue de France.Google Scholar
2004 Verbes supports sans peine. Lingvisticae Investigationes 27(2): 203–221. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nagy, István, Berend, Gábor, Móra, György & Vincze, Veronika
2011 Domain-dependent detection of light verb constructions. In Proceedings of the Student Research Workshop associated with RANLP 2011, 1–8. Hissar, Bulgaria 13 September 2011 <[URL]> (26 May 2023).Google Scholar
Nagy, István T., Rácz, Anita & Vincze, Veronika
2020 Detecting light verb constructions across languages. Natural Language Engineering 26(3), 319–348. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nenonen, Marja Juha Mulli, Nikolaev, Alexandre & Penttilä, Esa
2017 How light can a light verb be? Predication patterns in V + NP constructions in English, Finnish, German and Russian. In Empirical Approaches to Cognitive Linguistics: Analyzing Real-Life Data, Milla Luodonpää-Manni, Esa Penttilä & Johanna Viimaranta (eds), 75–106. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars.Google Scholar
Piao, Scott S., Rayson, Paul, Archer, Dawn & McEnery, Tony
2005 Comparing and combining a semantic tagger and a statistical tool for MWE extraction. Computer Speech & Language 19(4): 378–397. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Piera, Carlos & Varela, Soledad
1999 Relaciones entre morfología y sintaxis. In Gramática descriptiva de la lengua española, Ignacio Bosque & Violeta Demonte (eds), 4367–4422. Madrid: Real Academia Española/ Espasa-Calpe.Google Scholar
Pustejovsky, James
1995 The Generative Lexicon. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
1998 The semantics of lexical underspecification. Folia Linguistica 32(3–4): 323–348. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rabadán, Rosa, Pizarro, Isabel & Sanjurjo-González, Hugo
2021 Authoring support for Spanish language writers: A genre-restricted case study. Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada 34(2): 671–711. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ramón, Noelia & Gutiérrez-Lanza, Camino
2018 Translation description for assessment and post-editing. The case of personal pronouns in translated Spanish. Target 30(1): 112–136. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sanjurjo-González, Hugo & Izquierdo, Marlén
2019 P-ACTRES 2.0: A parallel corpus for cross-linguistic research. In Parallel Corpora for Contrastive and Translation Studies: New Resources and Applications [Studies in Corpus Linguistics 90], Irene Doval & M. Teresa Sánchez Nieto (eds), 215–232. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sanromán Vilas, Begoña
2009 Diferencias semánticas entre construcciones con verbo de apoyo y sus correlatos verbales simples. ELUA. Estudios de Lingüística de la Universidad de Alicante 23: 289–314. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2012a La hipótesis de la compatibilidad semántica en la selección de los verbos de apoyo. In Tradición y progreso en la lingüística general, Emilio Ridruejo Alonso, Teresa Solías Arís, Nieves Mendizábal de la Cruz & Sara Alonso Calvo (eds), 355–372. Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid.Google Scholar
2012b La representación de las relaciones espaciales en la descripción de los verbos de apoyo. In Meaning, Texts and other Exciting Things. A Festschrift to Commemorate the 80th Anniversary of Professor Igor Alexandrovic Mel’cuk (Studia Philologica), Jurij Apresjan, Igor Boguslavsky, Marie-Claude L’Homme, Leonid Iomdin, Jasmina Milicevic, Alain Polguère & Leo Wanner (eds), 538–553. Moscow: Jazyki slajanskoj kultury. [URL]> (26 May 2023).Google Scholar
2013 In search of semantic links between nouns and light verbs. Some evidence from Spanish. In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Meaning-Text Theory (MTT2013), Valentina Apresjan, Boris Iomdin & Ekaterina Ageeva (eds), 163–175. Prague.
2014 La alternancia dar/hacer en construcciones con verbo de apoyo y nombre de comunicación. Borealis: An International Journal of Hispanic Linguistics 3(2): 185–222. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2015 The role of determiners in Spanish light verb constructions. Word 61(2): 178–200. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2017 From the heavy to the light verb: An analysis of tomar ‘to take.’ Lingvistica Investigationes 40(2): 228–273. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Spencer, Andrew
2013 Lexical Relatedness: A Paradigm-Based Model. Oxford: OUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
UCREL Research Centre
2022 PyMUSAS 0.3.0 [URL]> (26 May 2023).
Vinay, Jean-Paul & Dalbernet, Jean
1958 Stylistique comparée du français et de l’anglais: Méthode de traduction. Paris: Didier.Google Scholar
Vincze, Veronika, Nagy, István & Berend, Gábor
2011 Detecting noun compounds and light verb constructions: A contrastive study. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Multiword Expressions: From Parsing and Generation to the Real World (MWE 2011), 116–121, Portland OR: Association for Computational Linguistics.Google Scholar
2013 Full-coverage identification of English light verb constructions. In Proceedings of the Sixth International Joint Conference on Natural Language Processing, Ruslan Mitkov & Jong C. Park (eds), 329–337. Nagoya: Asian Federation of Natural Language Processing.