| Light verbs and light verb constructions are frequently used in English and thus take an important role in the language. In view of the importance of light verbs as well as the shortage of the previous studies home and abroad, the present research has made an intensive investigation and analysis on this kind of expression with the aim of raising learners? awareness of light verbs and light verb constructions so that they could be used idiomatically and efficiently in English language teaching, learning as well as the application.Based on corpus linguistics, the present thesis has taken the corpus of COCA as the instrument and made a research on a type of representative constructions of “light verb + a + noun” with both qualitative and qualitative approaches. Firstly, through searching the representative constructions of the five high-frequently-used light verbs in the corpus, the nouns collocating with the five light verbs are gathered and showed. On this basis, we find that a general classification can be made for all these nouns of the five light verbs according to the semantic contents they express together with the five light verbs, which includes motion, verbal activity, sounds, scientific/academic activity, violent/military activity, rest/relax, eating/drinking, group activity, change of a state, feelings and emotions, and economical activity, mental activity and abstract activity. Further, we give the specific classes to the nouns for each light verb, through which we find that the semantic contents of the nouns for each of the five light verbs are of difference. Then through a further exploration of the meaning of the five light verbs in dictionary, we get the conclusion that the selection of nouns by light verbs is based on light verbs? meaning instead of being arbitrary.Meanwhile, through a search of the first thirty most frequently-used collocations of this kind of representative light verb constructions in the corpus, we find that some light verb constructions are more often used in other types of texts instead of spoken language only, which to some extent corrects the previous opinion about the register characteristics of light verbs. Moreover, some other characteristics for light verbs and light verb constructions are also discovered through the observation and analysis of the examples in the corpus. For example, we find that some nouns can collocate with more than one light verb at the same time and that a large quantity of modifiers with various forms can be used to modify light verb constructions. Even some light verb constructions have developed into idiomatic expressions whose meaning can not be speculated literally. |
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