What They Did
The researcher explored the use of “light verbs” in Hindi to
create new grammatical constructs. For example, the verb “rəhnɑ”
meaning “to stay” can work as a light verb that indicates the progressive
tense, such as the difference between “writes” and “writing.” It can even
combine with itself to mean “staying.”
When “rəhnɑ” is used that way, it loses the meaning it has on its
own: to be writing doesn’t mean to write in one place. Similarly, the verb “gəyɑ” meaning
“went” loses the meaning of having gone somewhere when it’s used as a light
verb to express past tense. Adding it can change the meaning of a verb from
“sit” to “sat” but it doesn’t mean the person physically moved somewhere else
to sit, just that the sitting action occurred in the past.
In Hindi, some of these light verbs can also combine with
nouns to create phrases that work like verbs. For example, “remember” is more
directly translated as “do remembrance.” The word “ɑwɑz” meaning “call” is only a
noun; to call someone would be to “give call.” Light verbs can also change the
connotation of the main verb. The word “lenɑ” means “to take” while “genɑ”
means “to give.” For the sentence “He read my letter,” using “lenɑ”
to mark past tense implies that the person shouldn’t have read the letter,
while using “genɑ” implies that the person read the letter as a favor to the
addressee. Therefore, these light verbs keep part of their original meaning.
Further Exploration
I know I didn’t do this article justice; that would require more
time and words than are feasible for my free-time blog. I’m fascinated by
linguistics but have never formally studied it. My knowledge comes mostly from
the books and videos of John McWhorter plus a smattering of others and whatever
internet articles I happen to stumble upon.
It was surprising to me that Hindi doesn’t have verbs for “to
remember”, “to call”, and several others, but of course other languages have
verbs that English doesn’t, like the different words for “to know (a fact)” and
“to know (through familiarity)” that occur in French and Spanish. It’s also fun
that in English, “call” is both a noun and a verb, so “call me” works, but so
does “give me a call.” The way Hindi light verbs affect connotation sounded new
to me, so I looked for more information on their role in English (see https://blog.oup.com/2022/02/what-are-light-verbs). There
are so many more than I realized; once you start looking, they’re everywhere!
My favorite example of light verbs affecting connotation in English is the difference
between “having coffee” and “drinking coffee.” It’s also funny how we say “doing
homework” and don’t have “homeworking” as its own verb.
I noticed that the journal today’s article appears in is called Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow, which is also a phrase from the Christian hymn “Great is Thy Faithfulness.” I wonder what the story is there, but that’s a rabbit hole for another day!
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