Light Verbs in Slovak

Resumen

The paper aims at a lexical description of light verbs (LVs) in Slovak, with some implications for processing such verbs within the project of preparing the Dictionary of Multi-Word Naming Units. Analysis based on data gained from the Slovak National Corpus aims at a description of their status from the perspective of lexicalization and grammaticalization theory. The semantic status of LVs is discussed in theoretical works ranging from opinions favouring semantic emptiness of LVs, to assuming that LVs are not empty of meaning and have semi-lexical status. Corpus data also serve as the basis for an investigation of non-composionality, non-substitutability and non-modifiability as well as productivity patterns of particular LVCs. The paper also examines the opinions according to which LVs are in the initial stages of grammaticalization. In the paper Himmelmann´s idea (2004) of grammaticalization and lexicalization as processes that can be orthogonal or may even run in parallel is adopted.