Light Verb Constructions in Romance

The chapter provides a comparative analysis of a set of Light Verb Constructions of some Romance languages (Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian and Romanian) employng the Light Verbs ‘have’, ‘do/make’, ‘give’, ‘take’. Light Verb Constructions are classified according to the Aktionsart of nouns. From the cross-linguistic data analysis, prototypical and marked uses of Light Verbs in cooccurrence with nouns regularly emerge: the former concern nouns and Light Verbs having the same actionality, while the latter refer to Light Verb Constructions including Light Verbs and nouns which are not coherent from the actional point of view. Marked combinations may produce inchoative/incremental and lexical diathetic effects. The investigation demonstrates that Light Verbs participate in the Light Verb Construction’s semantics based on their basic or less prototypical function. According to this perspective, Light Verbs are not considered truly empty, and Light Verb Constructions are used to modulate different aspectual nuances and even configurations of the information structure. Finally, the cross-linguistic investigation also provides explanations for irregularities among the languages considered, according to some diachronic and areal considerations.