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Post-Peer-review, pre-formated version of the article. Page breaks here roughly

correspond to printed version of article that later appeared in: Corpus

interrogation and grammatical patterns. Eds. Davidse, K., C. Gentens, L.

Ghesquière, and L. Vandelanotte. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 15-34

Light verb constructions in the history of English

Patricia Ronan

Université de Lausanne

This study investigates light verb constructions in sample corpora from Old- Middle- and

Early Modern English. The use of one coherent definition of light verb constructions

throughout these periods allows direct comparison of the overall structures and of the light

verbs used. The comparison shows that frequencies are highest in the Middle English texts

and decrease in the Early Modern data. While the Old English counts are significantly

lower than Middle English ones, their frequencies are far from negligible. It is argued that

where previous assessments consider Old English light verb constructions to be rare or

non-existent, this is partly due to having used the perspective of the most frequent Modern

English light verbs rather than working from the perspective of which light verbs were

frequent at the period in question.

1 Introduction

In the present paper, attestations of light verb constructions are compared in sample corpora from Old- to Early Modern English in order to assess changes in the light verbs used. The study intends to offer a survey of historical developments in the frequencies of light verb constructions and to offer a basis for further research based on more extensive data sets. Light verb constructions are defined here as semantically largely non-compositional collocations containing a predicate noun which is the syntactic object of a semantically low-content inflected verb, such as to have a look or to take a decision. Typically, but not invariably, these may be paraphrased by simple verbs which correspond to the predicate noun, here to look or to decide. Other terminology used for these constructions includes eventive object, support verb-, stretched verb-, multi verb-, thin verb-, or verbo-nominal constructions.

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Concerning the historical development of these structures, it is well known that they already existed in the earliest varieties of English, but the extent of their use is not yet clear. Traugott considers them to be at the very beginning of grammaticalisation at a ‘phrasal stage’ (1999: 252), in which some fixed collocations exist. In the Middle English period, then, Hiltunen sees them as expanding through French influence (Hiltunen 1983: 28). Previous corpus based studies (especially Brinton and Akimoto 1999) have traced features of the development of light verb constructions throughout the history of English, but the different contributors investigate only the most frequent verbs, and also they partly select the possible predicate nouns according to differing principles. In the following we will suggest a re-evaluation of the relative presence of light verb constructions in different periods of the English language on the basis of an illustrative sample corpus. To this end, we will first summarize previous research on definition and usage of light verb constructions in Sections 1.1 and 1.2, and on light verbs in the history of English in Section 2. Then, after presenting data and methodology in Section 3, we will investigate and compare attestations in our Old English, Middle English and Early Modern English data in section 4 and discuss our findings in Section 5.1

1.1 Definition of light verb constructions Both synchronic and diachronic comparison of light verbs in English are influenced by the fact that the structures do not have a common definition adhered to by all researchers. Consequently, different scholars have also investigated differing entities, which has made particularly diachronic comparison of research results difficult. The most restrictive approach to light verb constructions is to investigate only collocations with zero-derived verbal nominalisations. Nickel (1968) has used this approach in investigating the predicate nouns complementing the verbs give, have, make and take, Wierzbicka (1982) restricts herself to predicates of have and take. A less restrictive approach is found in Quirk et al. (1985: 750-2), Algeo (1995: 206) Claridge (2000), and Allerton (2002). These researchers include structures that are “semantically an extension of the verb” (Quirk et al. 1985: 750) such as to have an argument versus to argue. As Quirk et al. (1985: ibid.) point out, it is the predicate noun that carries the major part of the meaning of the collocation. Syntactically speaking, the predicate noun is the syntactic object of a semantically low-content inflected verb. Typically, light verb constructions can be paraphrased by simple verbs, for example to have a look by to look or to take a decision by to decide. Quirk et al. (1985: 751) argue, however, that not all predicate nouns are extensions of simple verbs and

1 I would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their useful comments on this study. All remaining shortcomings are of course my own.

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cite to make an effort, which is not paralleled by *to effort or to do homework, for which there is no corresponding *to homework. The verbs investigated by Quirk et al. are do, get, give, have, make, offer, pay, put and take.

The broader definition of light verb construction used by Quirk et al. is taken as a basis for the research also in this work for the reason that the collocations with action noun predicates and non-action noun predicates are used in similar syntactic contexts. In contrast to the studies by the aforementioned authors, also a broader spectrum of verbs is admitted here. The selection criterion is that the entire collocation can be paraphrased by a morphologically related or unrelated simple verb at its time of attestation, or will develop a morphologically corresponding simplex at a later stage.

For these verbal groups, the term constructions has been used from early on. Since the rise of Construction Grammar, this term may be less appropriate. The group verbs at times have form-meaning pairs which are not predictable from their individual components, that is they are semantically non-compositional, but for the moment it remains unanswered to what extent they can be regarded as stored parings of form and function. They are, however, constructions in the sense of denoting a position on a cline between fully idiomatic and complete free co-occurrence, a definition of construction which is used in Goldberg and Jackendorff (2004). According to this view, all related grammatical phenomena, whether idiosyncratic form-meaning pairs or totally general, should be considered together. This view is adopted in the current study.

1.2 Use of light verb constructions and their development

The use of light verb constructions is seen as determined by a number of syntactic and pragmatic considerations. It has been pointed out that light verb constructions allow for pragmatic reordering, which could not be achieved with simple verbs (e.g. Brinton 1996). (1) a. We dined. (1) b. We had dinner. Sentence (1a) lacks an object noun and the verb dine is in the stress position of the sentence. The light verb construction in sentence (1b), by contrast, provides an object noun for a transitive verb and it also allows a noun to fill the final stress position. The fact that the verbal group consists of two elements entails more syntactic flexibility that can be exploited for pragmatic benefits. In addition, the verbal group can also be semantically more specific. Especially aspectual specification can be marked in light verb constructions:

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(2) a. We walked. (2) b. We took a walk. In example (2a), the action of walking is not temporally restricted, in (2b) the action is temporarily bounded and is potentially repeatable (cf. Wierzbicka 1982: 757-8).

In addition to a view from syntactic and semantic perspectives, the use of light verb constructions has also been discussed as a potential language contact or acquisition feature. Here the use of light verb constructions has been thought to be favoured particularly in language contact varieties or in children’s speech (Poussa 1990, Tieken 1990). In language contact, the constructions have been argued to serve as vehicles for the incorporation of new concepts from contact languages into a target language (Danchev 1992), and it has been pointed out that this is particularly possible with the verb do (Hock & Joseph 1996). Perhaps due to this association of do with contact varieties, light verb constructions with do have also been identified as signs of colloquial speech, particularly so for Early Modern English (Nurmi 1999).

On the other hand, the structures can also be viewed as not stylistically low, but as symptoms of unduly complicated language, as in

(3) a. The council has decided to support the project. b. The council has taken a decision to support the project. Brinton (1996: 190) points out that they are often viewed as verbose, scientific or taken as signs of ‘officialese’ or administrative communication. Thus, two different characteristics of light verb constructions, colloquial and elevated style levels, have been argued for so far.

2 Studies on the development of light verb constructions in the history English

Light verb constructions have been investigated in the different periods of English, but typically from a synchronic perspective of the period in question rather than from a diachronic perspective. This becomes particularly obvious in Brinton & Akimoto (1999) mentioned above, which is a collection of essays investigating partly differing light verbs in all periods of English language history. Akimoto & Brinton (1999) themselves provide a pioneering study of the structures in Old English. They investigate the Old English equivalents of the light verbs which are most frequent in contemporary English, namely dōn, macian, sellan, giefan, niman and habban. Potential period-specific light verbs are not identified. Ronan (2012a) is a corpus based study, drawn from a corpus of

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about 109,000 words of Old English, which has been collected for cross-linguistic comparison with a morphologically even more synthetic language, Old Irish. The study suggests that morphological syntheticity is no restraining factor for the use of syntactically analytic light verb constructions.

For the Middle English period, Denison (1981) is a comprehensive survey of different kinds of group verbs in one text, the Ormulum, while Matsumoto (1999; 2008) draws on a large corpus in which she identifies uses of the most frequent light verbs. Ronan (2012b) investigates especially the use of foreign-derived predicate nouns in some Chaucer materials. For the Early Modern period, Hiltunen (1999) investigates light verbs in drama texts, Tanabe (1999) studies their use in the Paston Letters, while Kytö (1999) examines collocational and idiomatic properties of the most frequent verbs in the combinations. Claridge (2000) is a corpus-based study of different kinds of group verbs in the roughly 1.2 million word Lampeter Corpus, which spans the period from 1640 to 1740 (Claridge 2000: 5). Claridge (2000: 5, 132) identifies 32 verbs which are used in 241 light verb constructions, with make, take, give, have, put and do leading the table, followed by be, set, lay, beg, call, stand, crave, run, see and bring with more than 10 tokens each (2000: 122). These findings prove that looking beyond the most frequent verbs will provide considerable numbers of light verb types and tokens.

Predictably, a number of studies of light verb constructions in Modern English exists, but barring oversight, there are only few comprehensive corpus based studies. Hoffmann (1972) is a corpus based study of light verbs in American drama from the 1950ies and 1960ies. Allerton (2002) examines light verbs in the 1 million word Lancaster-Oslo-Bergin (LOB) corpus, collected in the early 1960ies, but the study is as yet restricted to predicate nouns starting with the letter a. Algeo (1995) has likewise examined LOB, as well as its American counterpart, the Brown corpus, for the five most frequent light verbs. In LOB, Algeo found the following counts of light verbs:

Table 1. Light verb tokens in the LOB and Brown corpora (after Algeo 1995: 214)

Light verb tokens in 1 mil. word LOB

tokens in 1 mil. word Brown

Tokens per 2 million words

have 100 55 155 make 67 59 126 give 40 40 80 Take 38 38 79 do 0 4 4 total 199 245 444 (222/ 1 mil.)

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Against this background of studies carried out on contemporary and earlier varieties, let us now move on to consider the developments in data which is sampled on one coherent principle from the Old English to the Early Modern English period.

3 Data and Method

The data for the present study has been obtained by manual and semi-automatic searches of ca. 50,000 words each of Old English, Middle English, and Early Modern English texts from mixed genres. For the Old English period, data has been collected from the Toronto Dictionary Corpus in Electronic form (diPaulo Healy et al. 2004), and the data is a subset of a ca. 108,800 word data set that contributed to an earlier study (Ronan 2012a). It represents a genre mix of poetry, historical-religious narrative in translation from Latin, original narrative and annalistic evidence (see table 2). The Middle English data mainly stems from the Helsinki Corpus (Kytö 1996 [1991]) and has been supplemented by data from the General Prologue and The Knights Tale from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (de Castro, n.d.). In addition to the latter, original religious narrative has been used in the form of data from The Book of Margery Kempe and short legal material from the Statutes of the Realm. Data from the Early Modern Period has been taken from the Helsinki Corpus only. The intention has been to collect in the corpus texts all instances of semantically low-content verbs that are predicated by predicate noun objects, and in which the resulting verbal group forms a single semantic unit. Thus, the predicate nouns are either action nouns, or abstract nouns whose collocation with verbs could be paralleled by simple verbs, e.g. make a story or do evil. The existence of a corresponding simplex at the period of attestation is not considered a strict criterion, however, as simplexes may have come into existence only later, such as in the case of a/to battle, or, conversely, they may have existed in the past as in the case of to take wife, to which Old English wīfian corresponded, but was lost later. Clearly, even if they are not at the time of attestation, light verb constructions may at some point in time be paralleled by a simplex. If any doubt existed as to whether a structure should be considered a light verb construction, inclusion has generally been opted for. Overtly aspectual or causal verbs, such as onginnan/gan ‘begin, start’, have however been excluded in this study. These sampling considerations have continuously been followed in all periods under scrutiny.

Particularly in more literary genres from the Middle English period onwards, a doubling of predicate nouns was repeatedly found. In order not to distort the counts of

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light verb constructions, here only the predicate noun closer to the verb is used2, e.g. (4) Ne yif us neither mercy ne refuge, … . (KnT 1720) ‘Give use neither mercy nor escape.’ (5) But swich a cry and swich a wo they make … . (KnT 900) ‘But they make such cry and such woe.’ In addition, cases were found where two verbs were used together with two

predicate nouns. In these cases one collocation each was counted, e.g. make corruption and worke disinherison in the following example.

(6) Provided also, That no Attainder for this Offence made Felonie by this Acte, shall make or worke any corruption of Blood Losse of Dower or disinherison of Heire or Heires. (Statutes IV 519-20)

This methodology has been adopted to make the frequency counts of light verb

constructions comparable throughout the periods. As will be seen in Sections 4. and 5, the frequencies of light verb constructions remain high for the Middle English period in spite of the count being based on the attestation of verbs rather than predicate nouns.

After these methodological preliminaries, we will describe the structures in Old-, Middle and Early Modern English.

4 Data from the history of English

4.1 Old English Data

The Old English data investigated for this study consists of approximately 45,000 words (cf. Table 2). It predominantly stems from texts from the later Anglo-Saxon period, but the composition date of one text, Beowulf, is still disputed (cf. Orchard 2003: 19-25).

In the Old English sample corpus investigated for this study, 93 light verb tokens have been found. In the corpus data, the most frequent verbs do not correspond to contemporary English attestations. Instead, the most frequent verbs were fremman, niman, habban, wyrcan, and dōn and sellan. Particularly interesting is fremman ‘perform’, which does appear in Bede, but is disproportionately frequent in Beowulf.

2 The author is aware that this can potentially result in incomplete attestation of the predicate nouns in the corpus material. However, as the corpus texts are only a very small selection of the extant material for each of the periods, complete attestation of all light verb constructions within the period cannot be aimed for in the context of this study and it seemed most important to focus on comparability of frequency counts.

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Table 2. Old English corpus texts

Text Words Genre Period Light verb frequencies/ 100,000

Anglo-Saxon Chron A

15 000 Chronicle 9th-10th century

187

Beowulf 12 000 Poetry 9th – 10th century

333

Ohthere and Wulfstan

2500 Travel narrative

10th century 120

Bede I (extract)

16 500 Historical narrative

10th-11th century

133

Old English total

45000 207

(7) …swa deorlice dæd gefremede fagum sweordum

‘He performed a valuable deed with shining swords.’ (Beo [0162 (583)]) (8) .. ac ymb Hreosnabeorh eatolne inwitscear oft gefremedon.

‘But often committed dreadful malicious slaughter at Hreosnabeorh.’ (Beo [0681 (2472)]) Fremman seems to correspond to later dōn and macian collocations and denotes

active implementation of the action described by the predicate noun. Fremman is used in 15 different types, and particularly help and dæd ‘deed’ show notable token frequencies at 4 and 3 respectively. The predicate nouns may either have an equivalent verb or not, though the latter is rarer in the sample. There are no examples of fremman in the samples from Chronicle A or Ohthere and Wulfstan. This may indicate that fremman is used more in poetic diction than in non-literary contexts. Semantically, fremman shares some space with wyrcan ‘cause, work’, which is also used in the corpus material. While wyrcan might express causation more than implementation in some examples, in others the parallels to fremman are strong, e.g.

(9) & þær is mid Estum an mægð þæt hi magon cyle gewyrcan ‘The Estonians have the ability that they can create cold’ (Or1 [0148 (1.17.33)])

The parameters that govern this interaction need further research on the basis of a

larger corpus. From the sample texts it appears that in addition to semantic content and individual stylistic preferences, alliteration between light verb and predicate nouns also favours the use of light verbs constructions.

Next in frequency in the data sample is the light verb niman ‘to take’. This too is found with some instances in Bede I, but shows highest token frequency in the Chronicle A, where it particularly appears in apparently set expressions like sige niman ‘take victory’ and freod nimman ‘make peace’ (10 examples each). In contrast to fremman, the type frequency for niman in the sample is low, but the tokens appear

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repeatedly, which will be at least partly due to the subject matter of the Chronicles, which are of course much concerned with the topics of victory and peace.

(10) & þy ilcan geare gefeaht Ecgbryht cyning & Beornwulf cyning on Ellendune, & Ecgbryht sige nam ‘That same year king Ecgbryht and king Beornwulf fought at Ellendune and Ecgbryht took victory.’ (ChronA [029810 (823.2)])

In spite of its high attestation numbers in these cases, niman may not be entirely

grammaticalized in the contexts, as alternative structures exist with habban, as in (11) below. By and large, the collocations with niman indicate or emphasize that the agent benefits from the predicate noun.

Habban ‘have’ is a further high-frequency light verb in the sample corpus. Akimoto and Brinton (1999: 50) point out that one of the effects of using this light verb with predicate nouns is that using an otherwise obligatory object of an action noun may be avoided, as in cyððe habban ‘to have knowledge’ as opposed to X cyðan ‘make X known’. They further stress that in the nominal construction, the predicate noun may be modified by an adjective, and that this is not possible with the simple verb. The collocation of habban and predicate noun typically expresses a state or a result state as illustrated by

(11) hi sona wið heora feondum gefuhtan, & sige hæfdan ‘they soon fought with their enemies and had victory.’ (B1 0134 (9.44.28)].

This example illustrates the resultant state of peace. The example is also interesting

because sige ‘victory’ has no corresponding simple verb. That this is not of paramount importance for the use of the light verb construction, however, is shown by the fact that its synonym sib, which is paralleled by the simplex sibbian ‘to make peace’, is also used in light verb constructions with habban. A survey of the instances of light verb constructions in the Old English sample corpus is given in Table 3 below.

Overall, in the sample texts, the frequency of the light verb constructions was highest in the poetic text of Beowulf with 40 tokens corresponding to a frequency of 333 per 100,000 words. This is followed by the historical Chronicle A, whose 28 tokens correspond to a frequency of 187 per 100,000 words. There is a clear drop in the narrative genres with a frequency of 133 in Bede I (22 tokens) and Ohthere and Wulfstan at a frequency of 120, albeit on the basis of only few tokens (3 tokens). This suggests that genre of the text, stylistically elevated or aiming for exactness of expression, is a more important incentive for the use of the construction in Old English than is the question of whether the text is translated from Latin or not. An overview of the attestations of light verb constructions in the corpus are provided in Table 3.

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Table 3. Frequencies of light verb constructions in the Old English sample

Verb Types Tokens Frequency per 100,000

Fremman 15 23 51 Niman 4 22 49 Habban 15 18 40 Wyrcan 8 9 20 Don 7 7 16 Sellan 7 7 16 Limpan 2 3 7 Beran 1 2 4 Dælan 1 1 2 Giefan 1 1 2 Total counts 61 93 207

4.2 Middle English Data

The Middle English data set for this study consists of approximately 51,000 words taken from different genres. The source texts from the Helsinki Corpus are The Book of Margery Kempe, and the roughly contemporary legal materials from the Statutes of the Realm II from the Helsinki Corpus (Kytö, 1996 [1991]). Two examples of Chaucer’s late 14th century Canterbury Tales, The Prologue and the Knight’s Tale are taken from the eChaucer corpus (Ne Castro, 2007). Texts and data are tabulated in Table 4.

In the Middle English sample texts, the line-up of light verbs has changed considerably from the Old English sample. The most frequently used light verbs are have (114), make (61), do (45), take (26), and give (18). Further examples are found with get, go, grant, hold, bring, perform, say, work, arrange, bear, commit, exercise, find, hold, pursue, purvey and put. Compared to the Old English data, both the raw number of tokens, as well as the number of different types of predicate nouns used with the light verbs of higher frequency has increased. Particularly make, take and give have gained ground,

Table 4. Middle English corpus texts

Text Words Genre Period Light verb frequencies/ 100,000

Chaucer 8422+ 21872 Poetry -1380-1400 494 Kempe 9670 Narrative 1436 672 Statutes II 11 271 Legal 1420-1500 790 MidE total 51235 595

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while have and do remain well represented. The most frequent collocation in the samples is have power, of which multiple examples are found in each text, e.g.

(12) þat þei schal no powyr haue ouyr þe neyþyr in body ne in sowle; ‘That they shall not have power over you neither in body nor in soul.’ (Kempe 151-2) (13) that all such Commyssioners shuld have full power to make ordeigne and execute Statutes. ‘That all such commissioners should have full power to make, ordain and execute Statutes.’ (Statutes II, 25-7)

Have collocations are notably better attested than other verbs in the simple

narrative style of The Book of Margery Kempe. Light verb constructions with do are not very well represented in Kempe nor in the

Statutes, but they are found with higher frequency (106/100,000 words) in the Chaucer texts. With the do collocations, predicate nouns which have either a French or a Latin heritage are frequent (cf. Ronan 2012b). Kempe uses 2 of 4 foreign derived nouns with do, do diligence and do message, but also the English derived do business and do evil. In the Statutes II, 5 of 9 predicate nouns are foreign derived. Foreign derived predicate nouns are, however, disproportionally frequent in the Chaucer data (26 of 32 predicate nouns), e.g.

(14) And seith " Arys, and do thyn observaunce." ‘And says “Arise and do your observance”.’ (KnT 1045)

Particularly in rhymed texts, such as the Canterbury Tales, the question of course

arises whether the use of light verb constructions must be considered due to a desire to create rhyme. This may hold in some cases, such as do thyn observaunce, which is followed by

(15) This maked Emelye have remembraunce To doon honour to May, and for to ryse. ‘This caused Emily do remember to do honour to May, and to rise.’ (KnT 1046-7)

In the consecutive eamples (14) and (15), observance and remembraunce with their

rhyming French suffix may well have been chosen for rhyming purposes, but the example in the following line, doon honour is clearly not driven by this consideration. But here, too, the effect of the light verb construction to increase syllable count as compared to the simplex may have been an incentive (cf. Ronan 2012b). Stylistic considerations may also play a role in legal texts such as the Statutes, which display a strong tendency to consider every angle of a problem (e.g. Stat II, 406-7 below), but in the narrative of Kempe typically few overt stylistic explanations of this sort apply.

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(16) By which Co[m]myssions, and auctoritie yeven to the seid Co[m]myssioners in the seid fourme, meny greate hurtes and inconvenyences in dyv[er]s p[ar]ties of this yor realme doon and had by encresse of Water were necessarily redressed refourmed and amended… ‘Many great hurts and inconveniences done and had in diverse parts of your realm by increase of water were necessarily redressed, reformed and amended by the commissioners and the authority given to the said commissioners in the said form.’ (Statutes II 68-72) (17) & so sche dede hir massage as sche was comawndyd. ‘And so she did her errand as she was commanded.’ (Kempe 218-19)

While in some cases stylistic considerations like rhyme, rhythm or other pragmatic

considerations may cause the use of the light verb, in this last example no clear alternative involving a simple equivalent to do a message seems to exist.

The new light verbs in this period, make and take ostensibly replace fremman and niman, and give replaces sellan, which had become more restricted in meaning after the OE period. Though it has a more recent history as a light verb than do, make has overtaken it in the sample texts from the Middle English period, where it is already well represented with 38 tokens, though this might look different in a larger corpus. Statutes II particularly use it in the context make feoffment ‘grant a fief’, for which the simplex feoffen also existed (OED, sv feoff). Otherwise, make mention is well attested, and make act and make list are also found repeatedly.

(18) þe creatur of whom þis tretys makyth mencyon ‘The creature of whom this treatise makes mention.’ (Kempe 456-7)

There are also further examples with rarer verbs which continue to be medium frequent or rare support verbs in contemporary English, such as grant or put (in) (Allerton, 2002, pp. 186, 190), and an example of commit is in evidence: (19) … where the Attourney named in the seid Warrant put the seid Article in execucion ‘where the attorney named in the said warrant put the said article in execution’ (Statues II 628-9) (20) all man~ of accions […] to graunt to ev~y of such p~sones p~teccion […] ‘all manner of actions to grant protection to all such persons’ (Statutes II, 292-4) (21) Forasmuche as Thomas Crofte commytted a detestable murdre within the Marches of Wales ‘Forasmuch as Thomas Crofte committed a detestable murder within the Marches of Wales’ (Statutes II, 829)

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The distributions of light verbs in the Middle English samples are shown in Table 5.

Table 5. Light verbs in the Middle English sample

Verb Types Tokens Token f/100,000 Have 75 114 223 Make 38 61 119 Do 32 45 88 Take 18 26 50 Give 14 18 35 Others 25 41 61 Total counts 232 305 595

Table 5 shows that the frequency of light verb constructions has risen to 595

examples per 100,000 words in the sample corpus, as compared to 207 examples per 100,000 words in the Old English sample texts. While the increase of almost 200% is indeed very notable, it is not so exorbitant that we could argue that the structure is only emerging in the Old English period. But the higher type frequencies in Middle English indicate that the semantic spread of the constructions seems to be increasing.

4.3 Early Modern English Data

The Early Modern data sample totals about 53,000 words, all taken from the Helsinki Corpus . A genre mix has again been attempted. The eight textual extracts also contain legal material from the Statutes of the Realm IV, rhyming drama as well as non-rhyming drama, historical writing, travelogue and a sermon as indicated in Table 6.

In the Early Modern material, have and make retain their positions as most frequent light verbs. They are joined by give, do, commit and take as more frequently used verbs, and further examples are found with exercise (5), put (5), hold (4), use (4), fight (3), levy (3), practice (3), receive (3) and work (3). Execute, get, grant, keep, minister and perform have 2 attestations each, bring, break, come, draw, gain, lead, obtain, offer, perpetrate, serve, set, stand, undertake and yield have one attestation each in the corpus.

The data in Table 7 shows that in comparison with the Middle English sample, the frequencies of light verb constructions are lower in the Early Modern sample texts. The data displays a large diversification in light verbs. At the same time, the five most prominent light verbs are already those generally observed in Modern English. Commit has an equally high token frequency as take. This however, may be document specific

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Table 6. Early Modern English corpus texts

Text Words Genre Period Light verb frequencies/ 100,000

Statutes IV 11 795 Legal 1588-1604 678 Merry Wives of Windsor - Shakespeare

6245 Comedy - rhyming

1597-1623 464

A chaste maid in Cheapside, Middleton

5708 Comedy – non-rhyming

1630 210

History of Britain Milton

6002 History 1670 450

On the folly of scoffing at religion Tillotsen

6702 Sermon 1671 433

New account of East India and Persia Fryer

5438 Travelouge 1698 221

Reign of Charles II Burnet

5280 History 1703 704

Beaux Strategem Farquhar

5704 Drama 1707 245

Total EModE 52874 463 Table 7. Light verbs in the Early Modern sample

Verb Types Tokens Token f/ 100.000 Have 42 58 110 Make 39 52 98 Give 25 25 47 Do 18 20 39 Take 11 16 30 Commit 3 16 30 Exercise 4 5 9 Put 3 5 9 Hold 4 4 8 Use 4 4 8 Others 37 41 78 Total counts 186 245 463

as the high counts are mainly based on the high type frequencies of commit offence in the Statutes IV (13 tokens).

In the restricted sample corpus, only a small number of light verb types are found repeatedly, and repetition is predictably most prominent in light verbs of high

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frequency. Do and give largely have single attestations with their predicate nouns (excepting do evil, felony and evil at 2 tokens each). The light verbs have, make and take, on the other hand, show a higher number of multiple attestations. This holds for have power, have regard, have authority, have faculty, and for have charme, confidence, means, need and opportunity. Make is found with multiple instances of use, discovery, statute, claim, peace, proof, provision and rates. Take is found in the collocations take heed, leave, care and distress. The latter is used in the sense of ‘detention’ in the Statutes, and is paralleled by a simple verb from 1490 on (OED sv distress n II). The following samples illustrate the Early Modern English usage in the data sample:

(22) He had a faculty of speaking indefatigably upon every subject (Burnet, Reign 228-9) (23) … of whose Treason, the King having now made use as much as serv’d his turn (Milton, 425-7) (24) … and the surplusage or remainder over and above to be delivered to the partie of whome the distresse was taken (Statutes IV 450-1)

The question has previously been raised, whether the presence of a definite article

in the context of a predicate noun of a light verb means that the collocation cannot be considered a light verb construction. Particularly for earlier stages of the English language, this is contradicted by researchers who point out that the article system was less fixed at earlier stages of English (e.g. Matsomoto 2008: 84 for Middle English). Wierzbicka (1982: 758) finds the presence of an indefinite article to be most typical in Present Day English, and she identifies it as semantically singularizing and delimiting. If we are prepared to admit indefinite articles in collocations like to take a decision or to have a think, some situations may also call for the use of the definite article, especially where previously mentioned light verb constructions are referred to, e.g. have you taken the decision we are waiting for? These two factors, less fixed state of articles especially in pre-Early Modern English, and contextual anchoring of definiteness, suggest that light verb constructions with definite articles should not be dismissed.

In the corpus material from this period it is noteworthy that as indicated above there is considerable variety in the light verbs used, such as

(25) And if any Weaver shall use any Deceipte in mynglinge his Yearne (Statutes IV 348) (26) when I absolutely renounce their Authority, I do yield a most perfect submission and obedience to it (Tillotson, 444-5) (27) Therefore when we undertake this Journy (Fryer, 347-8)

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This large variety of different light verbs may in part be influenced by the presence of large groups of morphologically differing eventive nouns that have become available at the beginning of the Early Modern period. On the other hand, the fact that denominal verbs could also be formed to a larger extent may have meant that it was often not necessary to use a light verb construction anymore because a simplex had become available. This latter possibility may cause frequency decreases in light verb constructions in the Early Modern English period.

Overall, in the corpus material especially high frequencies are found in the examples of legal language, a mid-position is taken by rhyming drama, historical and religious writing, the lowest frequencies are presented in the more casual speech genres of non-rhyming drama and travelogue. Burnet’s Reign of Charles II seems an unexpected outlier (704 examples per 100,000 words). Even the Statutes IV, earlier than Burnet, have fewer examples (678 per 100,000)3. It is noteworthy that the average frequency is lower in the Early Modern English data compared to the Middle English data, even in examples of identical genres such as statutes.

5 Discussion

The corpus material indicates that attestations of light verb constructions rose over time. The rise of frequency was not steady, however. We can observe an increase of light verb constructions, both in terms of frequencies and attested structures in the Middle English data as compared to the Old English data. This rise in frequency from Old to Middle English is not exorbitant: the constructions are about two times more frequent in the Middle English data than in the Old English data. The differences in frequencies of support verb constructions between Old-, Middle- and Early Modern English corpus texts is statistically highly significant at a significance level of p < 0.0001%.

This rise is clear, but it does not seem a sufficient basis for claiming that the constructions were badly attested in Old English. The overall distribution of light verb constructions in the corpus material is plotted in Graph 1.

The graph illustrates a rise from Old English to Middle English, which is followed by a fall in the Early Modern English corpus data. For the rise in Middle English frequencies, a number of possible reasons may be found. One important reason for using light verb constructions is to augment the lexicon. Augmentation may prove necessary or desirable because a simple expression did not exist at the time,

3 The difference between Burnet’s Reign of Charles II and the other EModE texts is statistically significant at a significance level of 0.04% according to the chi-square test.

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Graph 1. Frequencies of light verb constructions per 100,000 words in the corpus texts

for example where technical innovations are concerned, or where concepts are loaned from other languages. Particularly in cases of loaned verbs from other languages, these often are loaned as agent nouns first, and used with a light verb, particularly do, before they are fully integrated into the language as inflected verbs. This is due to the fact that nouns are more easily borrowed from other languages than verbs (cf. Matras 2008: 172). An example of this is I, that wende and hadde a great opinioun… ‘I supposed and had a great notion’ (Chaucer, Knight’s Tale, 1268). Opinion is a loan from French or late Latin, the verb opinion also comes to be used in English, but only after Chaucer’s time (cf. Ronan 2012b). In this respect, light verb construction may be seen as a language contact phenomenon, and it has been argued that they are frequently found in contexts of second language acquisition (Poussa 1990; Rissanen 1991: 333-35; Danchev 1992: 30). As language contact was very strong particularly in the Middle English period, high frequencies of light verb constructions would not have been unexpected at this time.

In addition to language contact phenomena playing a role, it has been suggested that the decrease in morphological affixation may have favoured the use of analytic structures and thus of light verb constructions (Hiltunen 1983). Since growing analyticisation was particularly observable in the Middle English period, this would also favour the use of light verb constructions in Middle English. In this context, the increasing fixation of the word order of English may also have favoured analytic expressions that allow syntactic and pragmatic modification of the sentence structure.

A further point that has not been examined in this study, but that would offer interesting insights into the use of light verb constructions, is the question of how the spread of literacy during the Middle and particularly Early Modern periods may have

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influenced the use of light verb constructions. That the sociolinguistic context may have played a role is possible, given that Nurmi (1999) identified particularly do periphrasis as a feature that is prominent in the language of speakers of lower social classes. There is some suggestion that education may have an influence in the fact that the data from The Book of Margery Kempe, who was herself illiterate and uneducated and had a local clergyman write for her, shows a high frequency of light verb constructions, particularly with the light verb have.

It is also interesting to note that the data from the Early Modern texts in the corpus do not indicate a further rise in the frequencies of light verb constructions after the Middle English period, except for the outlier of Burnet’s Reign of King Charles. On the one hand, this may be due to data selection and only a considerably larger data sample from each period of English can prove the frequency changes. On the other hand, Danchev (1992) has argued that during English language history, periods of decreased language contact have always resulted in a more synthetic language structure. For the Early Modern English period it can probably be argued that there was comparatively less language contact than during the Middle English period, which could have meant an increasing syntheticity of the verbal paradigm not only in terms of Latinate prefixes, but also in terms of a reduced incentive to use light verb construction.

6 Conclusion

This investigation of light verb constructions shows differences from previous corpus-based surveys which predominantly investigated the distribution of high-frequency light verb constructions, which were partly selected on the basis of frequencies of light verbs in Present Day English.

When using identical selection criteria for light verb constructions, we find that the frequencies of attestations rise considerably in the later Middle English period as compared to Old English. The overall frequencies in the Middle English data are in fact the highest in the corpus material, after the late Middle English period, a slight drop in frequencies is observable in the Early Modern English corpus texts. In contrast to earlier studies the corpus material suggests, however, that the frequencies of light verb constructions in Old English are not insignificant or negligible as the frequencies amount to more than 1/3 of the high Middle English frequencies, or in other words, the Middle English frequencies are almost 200% higher than the frequencies of the Old English corpus data. The misapprehension that there were hardly any light verb constructions in Old English at least partly seems to arise from the practice of investigating predominantly those light verbs which are still frequent in Present Day English. The most frequent Present Day English light verbs are already well represented

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in the Middle English corpus data, but in Old English there is only a partial overlap with Present Day English verbs, which means that a large percentage of Old English structures is overlooked in that approach. The present study has also asked the question of why the numbers of attestation may be the highest in Middle English corpus data and it is suggested that language contact may have played an important role in the increase in frequency. However, this assumption, as well as the observed frequencies, should be tested on considerably larger corpora comprising more varied corpus texts and genres.

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