A review of light verb constructions in English and Persian complex predicates

Abstract

A light verb (LV) is a verb participating in a complex predication with little semantic content of its own but providing some details on the event semantics. LVs are extremely common in Indo-Iranian languages like Persian, in which verb compounding is a primary mechanism for marking aspectual distinctions. Children are observed to learn LVs quite early as a unit of meaning rather than as a multi-lexical construction. The acquisition of light verbs is associated with the acquisition of argument structure through parental input, which helps LVs to appear among the first verbs in children’s spontaneous speech due to their high frequency in the adult speech.