A Lexical-Functional Grammar account of light verbs.

摘要

Lexical-Functional Grammar is suitable for describing linguistic phenomena by which a grammatical category is not realized as a presumed grammatical relation. For example, a noun is typically realized as an argument such as subject, object and indirect object, and a verb is typically realized as a predicate. A set of nouns combines with light verbs, a small number of verbs which have an underspecified argument structure, and forms a productive light verb construction. In English, such constructions include have a drink and take a walk. Since Lexical-Functional Grammar assumes an autonomous level of grammatical relations independent from syntactic structure, it lends itself to the description of the predicational noun, a word which is categorically a noun, but functionally a predicate.; The properties of predicational nouns and light verbs are investigated by looking into Korean light verbs with occasional reference to English. Lexical-Functional Grammar is introduced as a framework for the discussion of the light verb construction. In terms of grammatical relations, the argument structure of predicational nouns, and the argument transfer and lexicalization are discussed, and the claims made about are reinforced by looking into some additional language data including Japanese among others.; Also, the well-known double subject/object constructions in Korean is discussed in such a way that the present study rejects the biclausal analysis based on the reasons to be provided in the study and instead offers Lexical-Functional Grammar analysis of these constructions.; The study examines the noun incorporation phenomena in Korean light verbs and claims that these constructions should be categorized as words, not phrases despite the manifestation of some syntactic properties observed in the noun incorporation. The claim is justified by comparing the light verb construction with a phrasal formation, and by attributing the syntactic properties of this word formation to two relationally independent components within single word.; Finally, the study expands the generalizations made in the earlier chapters to account for other light verbs in Korean, and thus the generalizations themselves are further strengthened.