Syntactic and semantic patterns of the verb stellen with focus on its use as a light verb

an analysis based on the construction grammar

Abstract

This article aims at exposing the main results of a syntactic and semantic investigation of the verb stellen, emphasizing its use as a light verb. This analysis was carried out according to the principles of construction grammar – more specifically following Goldberg's perspective (1995). The author assumes that the argument structure constructions carry meaning regardless of other lexical items in the sentence. The analysis of the light verb constructions is based on the scientific research of Wittenberg and Piñango (2011) and Wittenberg (2016): They investigate how the light verb constructions are processed. The analysis, which is based on corpus, confirmed the principle of the semantic economy because the meanings, which are traditionally assigned to the verb stellen, can be understood as the result of the relations between the verb and the argument structure constructions that it can integrate. The results of the analysis of deverbal light verb constructions suggest that both the argument structure of the light verb and the argument structure of the nominal element influence the entire meaning of the construction. In turn, the highly lexicalized light verb constructions are considered as units included in the lexicon.