Compound verb
Encyclopedia
In linguistics
, a compound verb or complex predicate is a multi-word
compound
that acts as a single verb
. One component of the compound is a light verb
or vector, which carries any inflection
s, indicating tense
, mood
, or aspect
, but provides only fine shades of meaning. The other, "primary", component is a verb or noun which carries most of the semantics
of the compound, and determines its arguments
. It is usually in either base
or conjunctive participial form.
A compound verb is also called a "complex predicate
" because the semantics, as formally modeled by a predicate, is determined by the primary verb, though both verbs appear in the surface form. Whether Noun+Verb (N+V) compounds are considered to be "compound verbs" is a matter of naming convention. Generally, the term complex predicate usually includes N+V compounds, whereas the term compound verb is usually reserved for V+V compounds. However, several authors also refer to N+V compounds as compound verbs.
Compound verbs are to be distinguished from serial verbs which typically signify a sequence of actions, and in which the verbs are relatively equal in semantic and grammatical weight, and from auxiliary verb
s.
than in Dravidian languages
. In addition to Hindi-Urdu and Panjabi
, they occur in other Indo-Iranian languages like Persian
, Marathi
and Nepali
, in Tibeto-Burman languages like Limbu
and Newari. Also, they are very frequent in Altaic languages like Korean
, Japanese
, and in Central Asian Turkic languages Kazakh
, Uzbek
, and Kyrgyz
, and in northeast Caucasian languages like Tsez and Avar
. The Indo-European language Greek also possesses some verb–verb compounds.
or other lexical mechanisms. Examples here include was starting, had lived, had been seen, etc. This usage reduced the need to create complex predicates.
Though V+V compound verbs are rare in English
, one may illustrate the form with the example "start reading". In some interpretations, one may consider "start" as a light verb
, which carries markers like tense. However, the main part of the meaning, as well as the arguments of "started reading", i.e. answers to questions such as who? (agent), or what was it that he "started reading" (object) are determined by the second, primary verb, "read". Note that "start" also modifies the meaning or the semantics
, by focusing on the early part of the "reading". Also note that "start" carries plural/tense markers (they start|he starts reading), whereas "reading" appears in this fixed form, and does not change with tense, number, gender etc.
Whether gerund
ive forms like "start reading" are compound verbs is controversial in English; many linguists prefer to treat "reading" as a nominal in its gerund
ive form. However, the compound verb treatment may have some advantages, particularly when it comes to semantic analysis. For example, in X starts reading Y, the question what did X start is less revealing than what did x "start reading".
English has many examples of N+V compound predicates: see stretched verb
.
Sometimes examples from English cited for compound verbs turn out to be serial verbs, e.g.: What did you go and do that for?; or your business might just up and leave.
, such as Hindi-Urdu and Panjabi
, where as many as 20% of the verb forms in running text may be compounds.
For example, Hindi निकल गया nikal gayā, lit. "exit went", means 'went out', while निकल पड़ा nikal paRā, lit. "exit fell", means 'departed' or 'was blurted out'. In these examples निकल nikal is the primary verb, and गया gayā and पड़ा paRā are the light verbs.
Approximately half of all Hindi compound verbs use karna (to do) as the light verb, and another 20% use hona (to be) as the light verb.
.
Similarly, in both English start reading and Japanese 読み始める yomihajimeru "start-CONJUNCTIVE-read" "start reading," the vector verbs start and 始める hajimeru "start" change according to tense, negation, and the like, while the main verbs reading and 読み yomi "reading" usually remain the same. An exception to this is the passive voice
, in which both English and Japanese modify the main verb, i.e. start to be read and 読まれ始める yomarehajimeru lit. "read-PASSIVE-(CONJUNCTIVE)-start" start to be read.
Some Japanese compounds have undergone grammaticalisation
, as reflected in the orthography. Many Japanese words are formed by connecting two verbs, as in , and in Japanese orthography lexical items are generally written with kanji
(here 行く and 聞く), while grammatical items are written with hiragana
(as in the connecting て). Compound verbs are thus generally written with a kanji for each constituent verb, but some suffixes have become grammaticalized, and are written in hiragana, such as , from , as in .
Note that only native Japanese verbs (yamato kotoba
verbs) are compounded in this way; Japanese verbs are closed class
, and borrowed words, which can be used as verbs via the auxiliary verb , do not compound – the verb suru itself can be modified (as in shitemiru – (to) try doing (something)), but will not combine with another verb.
substrate speakers living in the Ecuadorian altiplano
have innovated compound verbs in Spanish:
Examples: μπαίν-ω ['beno] 'I go in' + βγαίν-ω ['vjeno] 'I come out' = μπαινοβγαίνω [beno'vjeno] 'I go in and out'; ανάβ-ω [a'navo] 'I light up' σβήν-ω ['zvino] 'I put out (a light)' = αναβοσβήνω [anavo'zvino] 'I flash on and off'. Semantically these equal the phrases μπαίνω και βγαίνω 'I go in and go out', ανάβω και σβήνω 'I light up and put out'.
Thus, in the Hindi compound nikal paRā (exit+fall), paRā has almost none of its "fall" meaning, though some of the finality of the fall also is transferred as a perfective aspect. On the other hand, the Japanese "hajimeru" (start) retains a good deal of its independent word meaning even in the compound.
In the long run, it has been suggested that LVs that are particularly frequent, may become grammaticalized, so that they may now occur systematically with other verbal constituents, so that they become
an auxiliary verb
(e.g. the English verb "be", as in "I am eating", or "had" in "they had finished"), or, after sound change, even a clitic
(a shortened verb, as in "I'm"). In particular, some verb inflections (e.g. Latin future tense inflections) are thought to have arisen in this manner.
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
, a compound verb or complex predicate is a multi-word
Word
In language, a word is the smallest free form that may be uttered in isolation with semantic or pragmatic content . This contrasts with a morpheme, which is the smallest unit of meaning but will not necessarily stand on its own...
compound
Compound (linguistics)
In linguistics, a compound is a lexeme that consists of more than one stem. Compounding or composition is the word formation that creates compound lexemes...
that acts as a single verb
Verb
A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...
. One component of the compound is a light verb
Light verb
In linguistics, a light verb is a verb participating in complex predication that has little semantic content of its own, but provides through inflection some details on the event semantics, such as aspect, mood, or tense...
or vector, which carries any inflection
Inflection
In grammar, inflection or inflexion is the modification of a word to express different grammatical categories such as tense, grammatical mood, grammatical voice, aspect, person, number, gender and case...
s, indicating tense
Grammatical tense
A tense is a grammatical category that locates a situation in time, to indicate when the situation takes place.Bernard Comrie, Aspect, 1976:6:...
, mood
Grammatical mood
In linguistics, grammatical mood is a grammatical feature of verbs, used to signal modality. That is, it is the use of verbal inflections that allow speakers to express their attitude toward what they are saying...
, or aspect
Grammatical aspect
In linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb is a grammatical category that defines the temporal flow in a given action, event, or state, from the point of view of the speaker...
, but provides only fine shades of meaning. The other, "primary", component is a verb or noun which carries most of the semantics
Semantics
Semantics is the study of meaning. It focuses on the relation between signifiers, such as words, phrases, signs and symbols, and what they stand for, their denotata....
of the compound, and determines its arguments
Verb argument
In linguistics, a verb argument is a phrase that appears in a syntactic relationship with the verb in a clause. In English, for example, the two most important arguments are the subject and the direct object....
. It is usually in either base
Uninflected word
In the context of linguistic morphology, an uninflected word is a word that has no morphological markers such as affixes, ablaut, consonant gradation, etc., indicating declension or conjugation...
or conjunctive participial form.
A compound verb is also called a "complex predicate
Predicate (grammar)
There are two competing notions of the predicate in theories of grammar. Traditional grammar tends to view a predicate as one of two main parts of a sentence, the other being the subject, which the predicate modifies. The other understanding of predicates is inspired from work in predicate calculus...
" because the semantics, as formally modeled by a predicate, is determined by the primary verb, though both verbs appear in the surface form. Whether Noun+Verb (N+V) compounds are considered to be "compound verbs" is a matter of naming convention. Generally, the term complex predicate usually includes N+V compounds, whereas the term compound verb is usually reserved for V+V compounds. However, several authors also refer to N+V compounds as compound verbs.
Compound verbs are to be distinguished from serial verbs which typically signify a sequence of actions, and in which the verbs are relatively equal in semantic and grammatical weight, and from auxiliary verb
Auxiliary verb
In linguistics, an auxiliary verb is a verb that gives further semantic or syntactic information about a main or full verb. In English, the extra meaning provided by an auxiliary verb alters the basic meaning of the main verb to make it have one or more of the following functions: passive voice,...
s.
Structure
Thus, there are two classes of complex predicates:- V+V compounds: The true compound verb, where the first verb (or the second...) is a Light verb (LV), followed by (or preceded by...) a primary or Heavy verb. With a few exceptions all compound verbs alternate with their simple counterparts. That is, removing the light verb / vector does not affect grammaticality at all nor the meaning very much: निकला nikalā '(He) went out.' In a few languages both components of the compound verb can be finite forms: KurukhKurukh languageKurukh , also called Kurux, Kuṛux or Kuruḵẖ, is a Dravidian language spoken by the Oraon and Kisan tribal peoples of Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and West Bengal, India, as well as in northern Bangladesh. It is most closely related to Brahui and Malto...
kecc-ar ker-ar lit. "died-3pl went-3pl" '(They) died.' - N+V compounds: A compound with Noun+verb, converting the noun into a verbal structure; the arguments and the semantics are determined by the N and the tense markers / inflections are carried by the V. This would include English stretched verbStretched verbA stretched verb is a complex predicate composed of a light verb and an eventive noun. An example is the English phrase "take a bite out of", which is semantically similar to the simple verb "bite". The concept has been used in studies of German and English....
examples like take a walk or commit suicide. Often the Verbs participating N+V compounding are also those that participate as LVs in V+V compounds. The N+V compound appears in almost all languages, especially with LVs such as "do," "make," etc., and are sometimes not considered to be a true compound verb.
Languages with compound verbs
Compound verbs are very common in all the languages of India, though they are more frequent in the northern Indo-Aryan languagesIndo-Aryan languages
The Indo-Aryan languages constitutes a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages, itself a branch of the Indo-European language family...
than in Dravidian languages
Dravidian languages
The Dravidian language family includes approximately 85 genetically related languages, spoken by about 217 million people. They are mainly spoken in southern India and parts of eastern and central India as well as in northeastern Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Iran, and...
. In addition to Hindi-Urdu and Panjabi
Punjabi language
Punjabi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by inhabitants of the historical Punjab region . For Sikhs, the Punjabi language stands as the official language in which all ceremonies take place. In Pakistan, Punjabi is the most widely spoken language...
, they occur in other Indo-Iranian languages like Persian
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
, Marathi
Marathi language
Marathi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people of western and central India. It is the official language of the state of Maharashtra. There are over 68 million fluent speakers worldwide. Marathi has the fourth largest number of native speakers in India and is the fifteenth most...
and Nepali
Nepali language
Nepali or Nepalese is a language in the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European language family.It is the official language and de facto lingua franca of Nepal and is also spoken in Bhutan, parts of India and parts of Myanmar...
, in Tibeto-Burman languages like Limbu
Limbu language
Limbu is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim, Kashmir and Darjeeling district, West Bengal, India, by the Limbu community. Virtually all Limbus are bilingual in Nepali....
and Newari. Also, they are very frequent in Altaic languages like Korean
Korean language
Korean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...
, Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
, and in Central Asian Turkic languages Kazakh
Kazakh language
Kazakh is a Turkic language which belongs to the Kipchak branch of the Turkic languages, closely related to Nogai and Karakalpak....
, Uzbek
Uzbek language
Uzbek is a Turkic language and the official language of Uzbekistan. It has about 25.5 million native speakers, and it is spoken by the Uzbeks in Uzbekistan and elsewhere in Central Asia...
, and Kyrgyz
Kyrgyz language
Kyrgyz or Kirgiz, also Kirghiz, Kyrghiz, Qyrghiz is a Turkic language and, together with Russian, an official language of Kyrgyzstan...
, and in northeast Caucasian languages like Tsez and Avar
Avar language
The modern Avar language belongs to the Avar–Andic group of the Northeast Caucasian language family....
. The Indo-European language Greek also possesses some verb–verb compounds.
English
Conventionally, the English language expresses fine distinctions as to the beginning, duration, completion, or repetition, of an action in the form of compound verbs, using auxiliariesAuxiliary verb
In linguistics, an auxiliary verb is a verb that gives further semantic or syntactic information about a main or full verb. In English, the extra meaning provided by an auxiliary verb alters the basic meaning of the main verb to make it have one or more of the following functions: passive voice,...
or other lexical mechanisms. Examples here include was starting, had lived, had been seen, etc. This usage reduced the need to create complex predicates.
Though V+V compound verbs are rare in English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, one may illustrate the form with the example "start reading". In some interpretations, one may consider "start" as a light verb
Light verb
In linguistics, a light verb is a verb participating in complex predication that has little semantic content of its own, but provides through inflection some details on the event semantics, such as aspect, mood, or tense...
, which carries markers like tense. However, the main part of the meaning, as well as the arguments of "started reading", i.e. answers to questions such as who? (agent), or what was it that he "started reading" (object) are determined by the second, primary verb, "read". Note that "start" also modifies the meaning or the semantics
Semantics
Semantics is the study of meaning. It focuses on the relation between signifiers, such as words, phrases, signs and symbols, and what they stand for, their denotata....
, by focusing on the early part of the "reading". Also note that "start" carries plural/tense markers (they start|he starts reading), whereas "reading" appears in this fixed form, and does not change with tense, number, gender etc.
Whether gerund
Gerund
In linguistics* As applied to English, it refers to the usage of a verb as a noun ....
ive forms like "start reading" are compound verbs is controversial in English; many linguists prefer to treat "reading" as a nominal in its gerund
Gerund
In linguistics* As applied to English, it refers to the usage of a verb as a noun ....
ive form. However, the compound verb treatment may have some advantages, particularly when it comes to semantic analysis. For example, in X starts reading Y, the question what did X start is less revealing than what did x "start reading".
English has many examples of N+V compound predicates: see stretched verb
Stretched verb
A stretched verb is a complex predicate composed of a light verb and an eventive noun. An example is the English phrase "take a bite out of", which is semantically similar to the simple verb "bite". The concept has been used in studies of German and English....
.
Sometimes examples from English cited for compound verbs turn out to be serial verbs, e.g.: What did you go and do that for?; or your business might just up and leave.
Hindi
Compound verbs are very common in Indo-Aryan languagesIndo-Aryan languages
The Indo-Aryan languages constitutes a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages, itself a branch of the Indo-European language family...
, such as Hindi-Urdu and Panjabi
Punjabi language
Punjabi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by inhabitants of the historical Punjab region . For Sikhs, the Punjabi language stands as the official language in which all ceremonies take place. In Pakistan, Punjabi is the most widely spoken language...
, where as many as 20% of the verb forms in running text may be compounds.
For example, Hindi निकल गया nikal gayā, lit. "exit went", means 'went out', while निकल पड़ा nikal paRā, lit. "exit fell", means 'departed' or 'was blurted out'. In these examples निकल nikal is the primary verb, and गया gayā and पड़ा paRā are the light verbs.
Approximately half of all Hindi compound verbs use karna (to do) as the light verb, and another 20% use hona (to be) as the light verb.
Japanese
Japanese has many compound verbs, reflecting the agglutinative nature of Old JapaneseOld Japanese
is the oldest attested stage of the Japanese language.This stage in the development of Japanese is still actively studied and debated, and key Old Japanese texts, such as the Man'yōshū, remain obscure in places.-Dating:...
.
Similarly, in both English start reading and Japanese 読み始める yomihajimeru "start-CONJUNCTIVE-read" "start reading," the vector verbs start and 始める hajimeru "start" change according to tense, negation, and the like, while the main verbs reading and 読み yomi "reading" usually remain the same. An exception to this is the passive voice
Passive voice
Passive voice is a grammatical voice common in many of the world's languages. Passive is used in a clause whose subject expresses the theme or patient of the main verb. That is, the subject undergoes an action or has its state changed. A sentence whose theme is marked as grammatical subject is...
, in which both English and Japanese modify the main verb, i.e. start to be read and 読まれ始める yomarehajimeru lit. "read-PASSIVE-(CONJUNCTIVE)-start" start to be read.
Some Japanese compounds have undergone grammaticalisation
Grammaticalisation
In linguistics, grammaticalization is a process by which words representing objects and actions transform through sound change and language migration to become grammatical objects...
, as reflected in the orthography. Many Japanese words are formed by connecting two verbs, as in , and in Japanese orthography lexical items are generally written with kanji
Kanji
Kanji are the adopted logographic Chinese characters hanzi that are used in the modern Japanese writing system along with hiragana , katakana , Indo Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet...
(here 行く and 聞く), while grammatical items are written with hiragana
Hiragana
is a Japanese syllabary, one basic component of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana, kanji, and the Latin alphabet . Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems, in which each character represents one mora...
(as in the connecting て). Compound verbs are thus generally written with a kanji for each constituent verb, but some suffixes have become grammaticalized, and are written in hiragana, such as , from , as in .
Note that only native Japanese verbs (yamato kotoba
Yamato kotoba
are native Japanese words, meaning those words in Japanese that have been inherited from Old Japanese, rather than being borrowed at some stage. They are also known as...
verbs) are compounded in this way; Japanese verbs are closed class
Closed class
In linguistics, a closed class is a word class to which no new items can normally be added, and that usually contains a relatively small number of items. Typical closed classes found in many languages are adpositions , determiners, conjunctions, and pronouns.Contrastingly, an open class offers...
, and borrowed words, which can be used as verbs via the auxiliary verb , do not compound – the verb suru itself can be modified (as in shitemiru – (to) try doing (something)), but will not combine with another verb.
Quichua-influenced Spanish
Under the influence of a QuichuaKichwa
Kichwa is a Quechuan language, and includes all Quechua varieties spoken in Ecuador and Colombia by approximately 2,500,000 people...
substrate speakers living in the Ecuadorian altiplano
Altiplano
The Altiplano , in west-central South America, where the Andes are at their widest, is the most extensive area of high plateau on Earth outside of Tibet...
have innovated compound verbs in Spanish:
- De rabia puso rompiendo la olla, 'In anger (he/she) smashed the pot.' (Lit. from anger put breaking the pot)
- Botaremos matándote 'We will kill you.' (Cf. Quichua huañuchi-shpa shitashun, lit. kill-CP throw.1plFut, तेरे को मार डालेंगे )
Greek (modern)
The compound verbs of modern Greek are formed as other compounds in the language, creating a compound stem by prefixing the stem of a second verb to another verb with the compounding interfix -o-. Although only the second verb is inflected, the typical Greek compound verb is a coordinative compound formed by two semantically opposed, equal verbs, and in semantic terms neither can be nominated the compound head with the other as a dependent. The action expressed by the verb is semantically equal to using both verbs individually, linked by a conjunction.Examples: μπαίν-ω ['beno] 'I go in' + βγαίν-ω ['vjeno] 'I come out' = μπαινοβγαίνω [beno'vjeno] 'I go in and out'; ανάβ-ω [a'navo] 'I light up' σβήν-ω ['zvino] 'I put out (a light)' = αναβοσβήνω [anavo'zvino] 'I flash on and off'. Semantically these equal the phrases μπαίνω και βγαίνω 'I go in and go out', ανάβω και σβήνω 'I light up and put out'.
Historical processes and grammaticalization
As languages change, the vector or light verb may retain its original meaning to different degrees of bleaching, part of the process of grammaticalization.Thus, in the Hindi compound nikal paRā (exit+fall), paRā has almost none of its "fall" meaning, though some of the finality of the fall also is transferred as a perfective aspect. On the other hand, the Japanese "hajimeru" (start) retains a good deal of its independent word meaning even in the compound.
In the long run, it has been suggested that LVs that are particularly frequent, may become grammaticalized, so that they may now occur systematically with other verbal constituents, so that they become
an auxiliary verb
Auxiliary verb
In linguistics, an auxiliary verb is a verb that gives further semantic or syntactic information about a main or full verb. In English, the extra meaning provided by an auxiliary verb alters the basic meaning of the main verb to make it have one or more of the following functions: passive voice,...
(e.g. the English verb "be", as in "I am eating", or "had" in "they had finished"), or, after sound change, even a clitic
Clitic
In morphology and syntax, a clitic is a morpheme that is grammatically independent, but phonologically dependent on another word or phrase. It is pronounced like an affix, but works at the phrase level...
(a shortened verb, as in "I'm"). In particular, some verb inflections (e.g. Latin future tense inflections) are thought to have arisen in this manner.
See also
- Auxiliary verbAuxiliary verbIn linguistics, an auxiliary verb is a verb that gives further semantic or syntactic information about a main or full verb. In English, the extra meaning provided by an auxiliary verb alters the basic meaning of the main verb to make it have one or more of the following functions: passive voice,...
- Modal verbModal verbA modal verb is a type of auxiliary verb that is used to indicate modality -- that is, likelihood, ability, permission, and obligation...
- PeriphrasisPeriphrasisIn linguistics, periphrasis is a device by which a grammatical category or grammatical relationship is expressed by a free morpheme , instead of being shown by inflection or derivation...
- Phrasal verbPhrasal verbA phrasal verb is a combination of a verb and a preposition, a verb and an adverb, or a verb with both an adverb and a preposition, any of which are part of the syntax of the sentence, and so are a complete semantic unit. Sentences may contain direct and indirect objects in addition to the phrasal...
- Stretched verbStretched verbA stretched verb is a complex predicate composed of a light verb and an eventive noun. An example is the English phrase "take a bite out of", which is semantically similar to the simple verb "bite". The concept has been used in studies of German and English....
- Serial verb
- Verb phraseVerb phraseIn linguistics, a verb phrase or VP is a syntactic unit composed of at least one verb and the dependents of that verb. One can distinguish between two types of VPs, finite VPs and non-finite VPs . While phrase structure grammars acknowledge both, dependency grammars reject the existence of a...