Institute of Formal and Applied Linguistics

Abstract: Light verbs – representing a type of complex predicates – pose a serious challenge for both theoretical and applied linguistics as their syntactic structures are determined not solely by verbs alone but also by predicative elements with which light verbs combine. In this contribution, syntactic and semantic properties of Czech light verbs combined with predicative nouns will be discussed and an adequate and economical lexicographic representation of these phenomena will be proposed. Moreover, two tasks will be addressed: compiling an inventory of Czech light verbs entering into combination with predicative nouns and adopting criteria for distinguishing light verbs from main verbs.