Tanja Samardžić

Tanja Samardžić
University of Belgrade
LIGHT VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN ENGLISH AND
SERBIAN
Abstract
In a corpus­based study we compare light verb constructions in English and
Serbian. We outline main properties and classes of the constructions in English
and compare them with Serbian data. In an analysis of corpus data, we identify
different models of translation of English constructions to Serbian and establish a
relation between these models and different types of English light verb
constructions.
Introduction
Light verb constructions are periphrastic paraphrases of verbs. English
expressions put the blame on, give someone a kick, take a walk are instances of
such paraphrases for verbs blame, kick, and walk. These constructions are attested
in many different languages representing a wide spread linguistic phenomenon
interesting both for theoretical and applied research. They are characterized by a
special relation between the syntax and semantics of their constituents. The main
meaning of the phrase is provided by the complement, and not by the head, as it
could be expected according to the general theory of projection. The verbs that
head these phrases, light verbs, are usually said to be semantically “empty” or
“impoverished” and they only modify the content expressed by their
complements. (Figure 1)

Figure 1: The structure of a light verb construction compared with a typical verb
phrase. The dashed arrows denote the direction of projection.
The special relation between their structure and meaning makes these
phrases semantically non­compositional or opaque to a certain degree. The
meaning of the phrase cannot be simply calculated from the meaning of its
constituents. Moreover, the use of these phrases is partially conventionalized.
They show some properties of expressions or collocations, but on the other hand,
the pattern of their formations is relatively productive and some grammatical
regularities can be identified. This is why light verb constructions require special
treatment in translation, second language teaching and learning, as well as in
lexicography.
In this study we compare light verb constructions in English and Serbian.
We take a corpus­based approach examining a sample of English constructions
against their translation equivalents in Serbian. The aim of the research is to
establish models of grammatical correspondence as well as to examine factors that
are relevant for modelling.
We describe and compare properties of the constructions in English and
Serbian in the next section underlining the structural differences between the
languages. Then we present a corpus­based analysis of English constructions
formed with the verbs have, make, and take and their translation equivalents in
Serbian identifying models of correspondence. Finally, we discuss the models and
the factors that are taken into consideration in comparing these constructions.

Comparison of light verb constructions
In this section we compare the two constituents of light verb constructions in
English and Serbian – the light verb and its complement.
Light verbs
The light verb that head light verb constructions is a special verb that has
no or little semantic content. In fact, both in English and Serbian these verbs are
special usages of otherwise “heavy” or semantically fully specified verbs (1a and
2a vs. 1b and 2b):
(1) a) Mary had a laugh. ( ≈ Mary laughed.)
b) Mary had a yacht.
(2) a) Marija je imala osećaj da… ( ≈ Marija je osećala da…)
Mary had feeling+ACC that Mary felt that
‘Mary had a feeling that…’ ( ≈ ‘Mary felt that…’)
b) Marija je imala jahtu.
Mary had
‘Mary had a yacht.’
yacht+ACC
The relation between these two usages of verbs in English is a subject of
discussion. Kearns (2002) makes a distinction between true light verbs and vague
action verbs. Only the constructions with true light verbs (3a) are considered to be
special constructions. They have a fixed syntactic structure: their complement
must be indefinite, they cannot be passivized, and they do not undergo WH
movement. Their meaning is specific too – they denote a brief, single action. 1
According to this approach, true light verbs have no semantic content and hence
no semantic relation with their heavy counterparts. The constructions with vague
1
Wierzbicka (1982: 759) gives a similar, more elaborated semantic description of the
constructions with the verb have: “The have a V construction is agentive, experiencer­oriented,
antidurative, atelic, and reiterative”.

action verbs (3b) are not characterized by any of these properties. Although they
can be paraphrases of verbs, they are considered as regular instances of verb
phrases. The relation between vague action verbs and fully specified verbs is not
discussed.
(3) a) John gave the bottle a shake.
b) John made an inspection.
The difference between true light verbs and vague action verbs is relevant
for Serbian too. (3a) cannot be translated with a phrase to Serbian, it is translated
with a single prefixed verb (4a). The prefix is the element of structure that
changes verb’s aspect in Serbian, which makes its role parallel to that of the light
verb in English. On the other hand, (3b) can be translated with a phrase but the
verb is not a lexical counterpart of the English verb and it bears a prefix too (4b).
Only the fully specified use of the verb can be translated with a lexical counterpart
(1b, 2b). 2
(4) a) Jovan je promućkao flašu.
John shaked+PREFIX bottle+ACC
b) Jovan je izvršio inspekciju.
John did+PREFIX inspection+ACC.
We can see that the translation equivalents in Serbian reflect the
differences between three different types of constructions in English:
Constructions with true light verbs are translated with one prefixed verb.
Constructions with vague action verbs are translated with constructions too, but
with a different heading verb. And finally, the phrases with fully specified verbs
can be translated word by word.
2
By lexical counterpart we mean the word that is listed in the ESSE bilingual dictionary as a
translation for a given word.

The next question that can be raised is whether the choice of the prefix and
of the verb that is not a lexical counterpart of the English verb can be predicted by
some rules of structure. Brugman (2001) examines semantic content of light verbs
(without making the distinctions between true light verbs and vague action verbs)
showing that light verbs keep components of meaning 3 of their heavy counterparts
in a systematic way. They can even inherit different meanings or senses of main
verbs, as it is shown for the verb take in (5a) and (5b) where the action that is
denoted by light verbs has two different directions:
(5) a) Sandy took a punch at Cameron.
b) Sandy took a punch from Cameron.
Brugman considers both verbs as light verbs. However, in translating the
sentences to Serbian, a difference between them shows. (5a) cannot be translated
with a phrase, while (5b) can, but with the heading verb that is not a lexical
counterpart of the English verb.
(6) a) Sendi je udarila Kameron.
Sandy punched Cameron+ACC
b) Sendi je dobila udarac od Kameron.
Sandy got punch+ACC from Cameron+GEN
The light usages of verbs are noted in Serbian literature too, but they have
not been closely examined. Radovanović (1990) lists a number of verbs that can
be used in “decomposed predicates” defining the form of their complements, but
does not provide an analysis of the structure and meaning of these constructions.
Our research should shed some light on the semantics of light usages of Serbian
verbs identifying potential components that systematically correspond to English
usages.
3
These components are described in terms of force­dynamics schemata. For more details see the
account given in Brugman (2001: 558­561).

Complements of light verbs
The other distinctive property of light verb constructions is their special
complement. The head of the complement in both languages is an argumenttaking
or predicating noun. A distinction between the nouns that are form
identical with verbs (blame, kick, walk, laugh, shake, punch in the examples
above) and those that are derived from verbs (feeling, inspection) is made in
English. Only those nouns that are form identical with verbs can be complements
of true light verbs (Kearns 2002, Wierzbicka 1982). Vague action verbs can take
both types of nouns as complements. This distinction is not relevant for Serbian
nouns. The nouns that complements of light verbs are either derived (osećaj <
osećati, udarac < udariti in the examples above) or do not have a corresponding
verb (inspekcija). 4
According to the properties described in this section, English light verb
constructions can be expected to be translated to Serbian in two ways:
• Constructions with true light verbs should be translated with one
perfective verb. If the verb is initially imperfective, it will be prefixed to
express perfective meaning that corresponds to the meaning of the light
verb construction in English.
• Constructions with vague action verbs should be translated with a
constructions headed by a verb that is not a lexical counterpart of the
English verb.
We perform a corpus analysis of a sample of constructions. The analysis is
expected to show whether the translations are done by the expected models and to
what extent. In addition to this, it should show what Serbian verb prefixes and
verbs correspond to English true light verbs and vague action verbs respectively.
The results of the analysis are presented in the following section.
4
Category changing in Serbian necessarily involves morphological marking. A distinction can be
made between different types of derivation (Kovačević 2007) but it does not correspond to the
distinction described for English.

Translation equivalents
Translation equivalents are analysed on a parallel electronic corpus. The source of
the texts is The Southeast European Times web site. 5 This is a newspaper
published by the USA Department of Defense in many of the Balkan languages
over the internet.
Corpus
The parallel corpus of English and Serbian texts used in this research has
approximately 110,000 words for each language. It is formed using texts that are
already preprocessed. 6 They are first automatically parallelized at the level of
paragraph. All the usages of verbs have, take, and make and their Serbian
translations are then extracted automatically. All usages with verbal or deverbal
nouns as complements are selected manually. The examples were then analyzed
and classified according to the type of translation. The details of the analysis are
presented in following subsections.
Translations
A total of 133 examples for all three verbs were analyzed. Four types of
translations were identified:
• Type 1: English construction → Serbian verb.
(7) SE Times correspondent A. A. takes a look at the country's prospects for
joining the Partnership for Peace programme.
Dopisnik SETimes­a A. A. analizira izglede zemlje za pridružvanje
programu Partnerstvo za mir.
• Type 2: English construction → Serbian construction with a different
heading verb.
5
The Southeast European Times web address: www.setimes.com.
6
The texts and the details of preprocessing are available on http://xixona.dlsi.ua.es/~fran/setimes.

(8) I'm begging you to make this decision.
Molim te da doneseš tu odluku.
• Type 3: English construction → Serbian construction with the same verb
heading verb. 7
(9) We also have very good co­operation with EUFOR.
I sa EUFOR­om imamo veoma dobru saradnju.
• Type 4: English construction → Serbian noun or no translation.
(10) Stiffer penalties are among the recommendations made in a US State
Department report.
Oštrije kazne deo su preporuka iz izveštaja američkog Stejt departmenta.
The distribution of the translation types is given in Table 1. The
translations for constructions with all three verbs are given in separate tables in
Appendix.
Translation HAVE TAKE MAKE
One word Type 1 (Verb) 13 13 7
Type 4 (Noun/deletion) 3 1 3
Phrase Type 2 (Different verb) 7 7 51
Type 3 (Same verb) 13 12 3
Total 36 33 64
Table 1: Types of Serbian translations for English light verb constructions.
Discussion
7
By different heading verb we mean a verb that is not a lexical counterpart of the English verb
(see footnote 2 in the previous section); same heading verb is a lexical counterpart.

We can see from Table 1 that distributions of translation types for
constructions with have and take is very similar. The distribution differs for
constructions with make. Type 1 can be identified as dominant model of
translation for constructions with have and take, although the number of observed
translations is almost same as Type 3, since a number of translations of the type 3
are simply not good translations (see Appendix). The texts that are analyzed in
this research might have been translated from English to Serbian, so these
translations could occur as a result of interference between the languages. The
information about the direction of translation was not available for this corpus. In
a further research it should be taken into account. Type 2 is clearly dominant for
constructions with make.
In order to see if these differences can be related to different semantics of
light verbs, we compare different Serbian verbs that are used as translations of the
type 1 or as heads of translations of the type 2. We try to extract abstract
components of meaning that are common to the verbs that occur in translations of
one English verbs. The verbs that correspond to constructions with have mostly
denote some kind of state. The verbs that correspond to constructions with take
denote either existence or start of existence. 8 Constructions with make are
translated with verbs that denote either accomplishment or bringing into
existence. (Table 2)
English
LVC type
have
take
Equivalent verbs/light verbs in Serbian
odraziti se, plašiti se, zainteresovati
(passive), sumnjati, moći, uspeti, poštovati,
planirati, pozicionirati, (passive), povezati
(passive)
Common abstract
meaning
state
održati se (2), doći (do+gen) (2), uslediti, start / existence
održavati se, dogoditi se, biti (gen), desiti se,
preuzeti, analizirati, iskoristiti, ukazati
8
Expression take + place is very frequent in this type, which explains the choice of corresponding
verb. Since there are very little other examples, a different tendency could not be identified.

make
postići, ostvariti, uspostaviti, doneti, pružiti,
uputiti, zabeležiti, proglasiti, reagovati,
obećati
accomplishment /
bringing to
existence
Table 2: Common meanings of Serbian verbs.
Brugman (2001) argues that light verbs inherit some components of dynamicforce
schemata from their heavy counterparts (see the second section). Serbian
translations of English light verbs indicate other components of meaning that are
potentially present. Further implications could be drawn from these tendencies,
but this would require a more systematic semantic analysis of the examples.
By examining the examples of the type 1, we could see that there are only
few examples with true light verbs, most of them contain vague action verbs. This
means that constructions with vague action verbs are also translated with single
verbs to Serbian. The difference between the two kinds of constructions could still
be reflected in different frequency of translations, but this would need to be
examined on a bigger corpus, which would provide more examples with true light
verbs. The translations of the type 3 do not necessarily indicate a fully specified
usage of the verbs in English, since the same verbs can have light usages in
Serbian too. However, some differences could be noted between the verbs.
Serbian translations for have seem to be light usages too. Translations for take are
all prefixed with the same prefix. This version of the verb is listed in dictionaries
as a lexical counterpart, but its meaning is differs from the meaning of the verb
without prefix. Translations for make do not seem adequate at all. A broader study
could show that some other way of translating these phrases would be more
appropriate. We can conclude from this that Serbian translations of the type 3 can
be an indicator of a fully specified usage of take and make in English, while this is
not the case for have.
Conclusion

In this research we examined the way in which English light verb constructions
are translated to Serbian. We identified four types of translation: (1) translation
with one verb; (2) translation with a construction where the heading verb is not a
lexical counterpart of the English verb; (3) translation word by word; and (4)
bigger transformations.
We identified translations with one verb (Type 1) as the dominant model
for verbs have and take. Translations with constructions with a different heading
verb (Type 2) showed as dominant models for make. This could indicate that the
meaning and functions of the constructions with different verbs are different. We
extracted common abstract meaning of Serbian verbs used in translations with
different verbs, arguing that light have can be related with verbs that denote a
state, take with verbs that denote existence or start of existence, and make with
verbs that denote either accomplishment or bringing into existence. A more
systematic semantic analysis would be necessary for explaining these relations.
We can conclude that types of Serbian translations can be systematically
related with types of English light verb constructions. The data collected in this
research show that English constructions with vague action verbs correspond to
Serbian constructions with different heading verbs or to Serbian single verbs. True
light verbs are always translated with a single perfective verb. Since there were
only few true light verbs in our corpus, a further research would be necessary to
confirm this. Finally, word for word translations are not adequate for any kind of
light verb constructions.
Acknowledgements
This research was partially done within my postgraduate studies at the University
of Geneva and supported by the Swiss Federal Scholarship Commission for
Foreign Students. I am thankful to Paola Merlo, Balša Stipčević, Borko
Kovačević, and Boban Arsenijević for their suggestions and comments.

Appendix
The tables in this appendix contain all verb + noun pairs that represent English
light verb usages and corresponding Serbian verbs or verb + noun pairs
representing Serbian translations. The numbers in brackets denote the number of
occurrences of a particular type.
HAVE English Serbian
Type 1
(verb)
Type 2
(different verb)
Type 3
(same verb)
Type 4
(noun)
have + impact (2)
have + fear
have + interest
have + suspicions
have + capacity
have + success (2)
have + respect
have + plan (2)
have + position
have + ties
have + division
have + meeting
have + roots (5)
have + impact
have + meeting (2)
have + co­operation
have + coverage
have + access
have + intention
(negated)
have + plan
have + say
have + investments
have + interest
have + incentive
have + lunch
have + quarrel
have + resolution
have + links
have + cross
odraziti se
plašiti se
zainteresovati (passive)
sumnjati
moći
uspeti
poštovati
planirati
pozicionirati (passive)
povezati (passive)
biti + podele
održati + sastanak
vući + korene
imati + uticaj (2)
imati + efekat
imati + sastanak
imati + saradnju
imati + pažnju
imati + pristup
imati + nameru
imati + plan
imati + reč
imati + investicije
imati + interes
imati + podsticaj
imati + ručak
imati + sukob
rezolucija
povezanost
pas
TAKE English Serbian

Type 1
(verb)
Type 2
(different verb)
Type 3
(same verb)
Type 4
(deletion)
take + place
take + control
take + look
take + advantage
take + note
take + decision (3)
take + con consolation
take + position
take + oath
take + survey
take + steps (5)
take + action (2)
take + measures (3)
take + action
take + lead
take + place
održati se (2)
doći (do+gen) (2)
uslediti
održavati se
dogoditi se
biti (gen)
desiti se
preuzeti
analizirati
iskoristiti
ukazati
doneti + odluku
pronaći + utehu
biti + na mestu
položiti + zakletvu
uraditi + istraživanje
preduzeti + korake
preduzeti + mere
preduzeti + akciju
preduzeti + inicijativu
MAKE English Serbian
Type 1
(verb)
Type 2
(different verb)
make + decision
make + visit
make + stop
make + declaration
make + save
make + pledge
make + purchase
make + progress
make + contact
make + decision
make + prediction
make + gains
make + contribution
make + step (2)
make + difference
make + request
make + statement (3)
make + remark
odlučivati
dolaziti
posetiti
proglasiti
reagovati
obećati
platiti
postići + napredak (12)
ostvariti + napredak (6)
ostvariti + kontakt
uspostaviti + kontakt
doneti + odluku (8)
iznositi + prognozu
ostvariti + dobitak
pružiti + doprinos
preduzeti + korak
doneti + promenu
uputiti + zahtev
dati + izjavu

Type 3
(same verb)
Type 4
(deletion)
make + save
make + substitution
make + claim
make + success
make + recommendation
make + criticism
make + offer
make + proposal
make + allegation
make + showing
make + shot
make + concession
make + step
make + selection
make + confession (2)
make + decision
make + recommendation
imati + dobranu
izvršiti + izmenu
izneti + tvrdnju
zabeležiti + uspeh
izneti + preporuku
uputiti + kritiku
izneti + ponudu
izneti + predlog
izneti + tvrdnju
imati + nastup
uputiti + udarac
napraviti + ustupak
napraviti + korak
napraviti + selekciju

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