A compositional analysis on Aktionsart for light verb constructions

Abstract

This paper examines the Aktionsart of light verb constructions, by analyzing how the elements constituting them interfere on the Aktionsart of the predicate; moreover, this study analyzes how a verbal situation can belong to different aspectual groups, when they are expressed by full verbs or by light verb constructions. Thus, based on assumptions from Formal Semantics and Lexical Semantics, the main goal of the present work is to investigate the linguistic devices playing some role on the aspectual composition of light verb constructions. Hence, this work concludes that (i) the light verbs present a certain preference for some aspectual groups; (ii) the kind of determiner influences both interpretation and Aktionsart; (iii) the light verb constructions can make a given predicate shift its aspectual properties.