Funktionsverbgefüge: Familien und Komposition (FFK) / Light verb constructions: Families and composition (first phase: October 2020 - September 2023; second phase: April 2025 - March 2028)

Funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

Light verb constructions (LVCs) are complex predicates that consist of a semantically reduced verb – known as a light verb – and a phrasal element (a noun phrase or prepositional phrase). The project is fundamentally based on the assumption that such LVCs are formed compositionally. Evidence for this assumption is that LVCs form families. The term LVC-family is defined in the project as: LVCs that exhibit the same interpretation pattern and vary only with respect to their nominal element. 

In the first phase of the project, LVC families were identified based on corpus data. The focus was on German LVCs formed with the functional verb stehen 'stand' and one of the prepositions unter 'under' or vor 'in front of'. The identification of LVC families allows for the systematic semantic contribution of each component to the overall meaning of the LVCs to be determined. 

The second phase of the project focuses on the light verbs and investigates what semantic contribution they make to the meaning of the LVC. In the research literature, light verbs are generally attributed general meanings such as 'inchoative', 'stative', or 'causative'. The consequence is that LVCs like unter Beobachtung stehen 'be under observation' (lit. under observation stand) and unter Beobachtung sein 'be under observation' (lit. under observation stand) should be synonymous, since both constructions contain a stative light verb. Whether these constructions are truly synonymous, and if not, how they differ, represents one of the central research questions of the second phase of the project. 

Do light verbs arise from a desemanticization process from lexical full verbs, and if so, do they represent an intermediate step in the development of auxiliaries? This constitutes the second central question in the second phase of the project, thereby expanding it with a diachronic perspective.

Project papers & Manuscripts

Fleischhauer, Jens & Anna Riccio (eds.). under contract. Light verb constructions from a cross-linguistic perspective. Berlin: De Gruyter. [Open Access, expected Autumn 2024]

Fleischhauer, Jens. accepted. The syntactic flexibiliyt of light verb constructions - An RRG analysis. In Zahra Ghane & Vaki Rezai (eds.). The Springer Handbook of Applying Role and Reference Grammar in Persian. Berlin: Springer.

Bogaards, Marten & Jens Fleischhauer. accepted. Prospective aspect constructions in West Germanic. A comparative corpus study of German and Dutch. Leuvense Bijdragen - Leuven Contribution in Linguistics and Philology.

Fleischhauer, Jens. 2023. Prospective aspect and current relevance - A case study of the German prospective 'stehen vor NP' construction. Journal of Germanic linguistics 35 (4): 371-408.

Wiskandt, Niklas & Dila Turus. in press. Verb-LVC pairs with experiencer objects in German: Differences in usage and meaning. In Jóhanna Barðdal, Gauthier Delaby, Torsten Leuschner & Anaïs Vajnovszki (eds.). How to Do Things with Corpora – Methodological Issues and Case Studies. Empirical and Theoretical Linguistics Series. Berlin: J.B. Metzler.

Wiskandt, Niklas & Dila Turus. 2023. Wie man Linguisten in Begeisterung versetzt: Drei Muster von Funktionsverben mit Objekt-Experiencern. Germanistische Werkstatt 12: 149-162.

Fleischhauer, Jens & Stefan Hartmann. 2023. Der Weg von kommen zum Funktionsverb. In Christian Braun & Elisabeth Scherr (eds.). Methoden zur Erforschung grammatischer Strukturen in historischen Quellen, 117-138. De Gruyter: Berlin. 

Fleischhauer, Jens. 2023. German light verb constructions with non-eventive nouns. In Jean-Pierre Colson (ed.). Phraseology, constructions and translation. Corpus-based, computational and cultural aspects: 387-398. Louvain: Presses Universitaires de Louvain.

Fleischhauer, Jens. 2022. stehen unter-Funktionsverbgefüge und ihre Familien. Zeitschrift für germanistische Linguistik 50 (2), 247-288.

Fleischhauer, Jens & Dila Turus. 2022. Families of Light Verb Constructions in German Legal Language Contexts: A Case Study on the 'Passive'-Family of stehen unter-Light Verb Constructions. In Daniel Green & Luke Green (eds.). Contemporary Approaches to Legal Linguistics, 173-198. Münster: LIT Verlag.

Fleischhauer, Jens. 2021. Warum steht der Fußballspieler unter Vertrag? - Eine Fallstudie zu Funktionsverbgefügen des Typs 'stehen unter NP'. Sprachwissenschaft 46 (3): 343-374.

Fleischhauer, Jens. 2021. Light Verb Constructions and Their Families - A Corpus Study on German stehen unter-LVCs. In: Proceedings of the 17th Workshop on Multiword Expressions (MWE 2021), 63-69. Online: Association for Computational Linguistics.

Fleischhauer, Jens & Dila Turus. 2021. Der Angeklagte steht unter Schutz, wird er aber auch geschützt? Eine Analyse passivischer Funktionsverbgefüge vom Typ stehen unter. In Gabriela Jelitto-Piechulik et al. (eds.). Germanistische Werkstatt 11, 73-84. Oppeln: Uniwersytet Opolski.

Fleischhauer, Jens & Stefan Hartmann. 2021. The emergence of light verb constructions: A case study on German kommen 'come'. In Yearbook of the German Association of Cognitive Linguistics 9, 135-156. Berlin/ Boston: de Gruyter.

Fleischhauer, Jens. 2020. Predicative multi-word expressions in Persian. In Proceedings of the 34th Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computation, 552-561. Association for Computational Linguistics: Hanoi, Vietnam.

Fleischhauer, Jens & Dila Turus. 2022. Leitfaden zur Identifikation von Funktionsverbgefügen in Korpusdaten. Universität zu Köln/ Heinrich-Heine Universität Düsseldorf. [Download]

Project presentations

Boogards, Maarten, Jens Fleischhauer & Roné Wierenga. A prospective sandwich: Prospective aspect in German, Dutch, Afrikaans and English. Germanic Sandwich 9, Lancaster.

Boogards, Maarten, Jens Fleischhauer & Roné Wierenga. A corpus-based analysis of periphrastic prospective constructions in West-Germanic. Chronos 15, Toulouse.

Fleischhauer, Jens. 2024. On the presence versus absence of articles in German light verb constructions. Grammatical and semantic determination: categorization, cognition and acquisition. Amiens, France.

Fleischhauer, Jens. 2023. The 'principle of no synonymy' and light verb constructions –  A case study on German stative light verbs. ICLC 16. Düsseldorf, Germany.

Fleischhauer, Jens. The non-synonymy of German light verbs – A case study on stehen and sein. CogLing Days 2022. Tilburg, The Netherlands.

Wiskandt, Niklas & Dila Turus. 2022. Systematic semantic differences between object-experiencer LVCs and corresponding simplex verbs in German. Grammar and Corpora 2022. Ghent, Belgium.

Boogards, Maarten & Jens Fleischhauer. 2022. Prospective aspect constructions in Dutch and German. A Germanic Sandwich 2022. Cologne, Germany [online].

Wiskandt, Niklas & Dila Turus. 2022. Bringing experiencers into rage and excitement: Light verb constructions with experiencer object in German. Forum for Germanic Language Studies. Reading, Great Britain.

Fleischhauer, Jens. 2022. Semantic restrictions on German causative light verb constructions. The Grammar of Causation III. Paris, France.

Fleischhauer, Jens. 2022. Stellen or setzen - The distribution of causative light verbs in German. 9. DGKL. Erfurt, Germany.

Fleischhauer, Jens. 2021. A data-driven (bottom-up) approach to German light verb constructions. CLAVIER 21. Modena, Italy (online).

Fleischhauer, Jens. 2021. Light verb constructions and their families - A corpus study on German stehen unter-LVCs. 17th Workshop on Multiword Expressions. Bangkok, Thailand (online).

Fleischhauer, Jens. 2021. Families of light verb constructions - A corpus study on German stehen unter-LVCs. Europhrase 2021. Louvaine, France (online).

Fleischhauer, Jens & Stefan Hartmann. 2021. The desemantisation of German kommen and the emergence of light verb constructions. 12th International Corpus Linguistics Conference. Murcia, Spain.

Fleischhauer, Jens. 2021. LVC-families across languages. 9. International Contrastive Linguistics Conference. Santa Margherita-Protofino, Italy.

Hartmann, Stefan & Jens Fleischhauer. 2021. Zur Analyse emergierender Funktionsverbgefüge im Mittelhochdeutschen - Methodische Herausforderungen und Lösungsansätze. Grammatische und textgrammatische Strukturen in alt- und mittelhochdeutschen Quellen. Graz, Austria.

Fleischhauer, Jens. 2021.The use of spatial metaphors in German light verb constructions. RaAm 14: Metaphor and Space. Volnius, Lithuania.

Fleischhauer, Jens. 2021. The expression of prospective aspect in German. New perspectives on aspect: from the 'Slavic model' to other languages. Paris, France. [Video of the presentation]

Fleischhauer, Jens. 2021. The syntactic expression of prospective aspect in German. DGfS Workshop Encoding aspectuality in Germanic languages – empirical and theoretical approaches. Freiburg, Germany.

Fleischhauer, Jens. 2020. Light uses of 'stehen' - A corpus-study on German light verb constructions. 56th Linguistics Colloquium. Athene, Greece.

Fleischhauer Jens & Dila Turus. 2020.  'Der Angeklagte hat unter Alkoholeinfluss gestanden' – Funktionsverbgefüge in der Rechts- und Alltagssprache. 9. Internationale Germanistische Werkstatt. Oppeln, Polen.

Fleischhauer, Jens. 2020. Predicative multi-word expressions in Persian. PACLIC Workshop on Multiword Expressions in Asian languages. Hanoi, Vietnam.