Light verb constructions in Humanistic Czech

Light verb constructions in Humanistic Czech This thesis surveys the supposed properties of light verb constructions (LVC, in Czech analytická verbonominální spojení, AVNS, in German Funktionsverbgefüge) on an extensive corpus of Czech texts dating from the Humanistic period. The LVC, a combination of a semantically bleached (light, semantically weak) verb and an abstract noun (a preposition and such a noun, respectively), are defined rather broadly and understood not necessarily as a syntactic unit (predicate) but rather as a lexical unit different from both free collocations and phrasemes. Special attention is paid to transitional examples of these constructions with non- prototypical properties of the verb or noun. In the individual chapters, the semantic and syntactical properties of the light verbs are discussed, as well as the word formation (derivation) patterns of the abstract nouns forming the LVC. The core of the analysis lies in the prepositional constructions, on which the LVC-delimitation criteria are applied. It is shown that the meanings of such constructions are subjects to stabilizing and develop from spatial (or directional, respectively) to abstract meanings, including their lexicalization. Moreover, the possibilities of using alternative means of expression are examined. The last chapter..