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Reciprocity in Czech Light Verb Constructions: The Dependency Perspective

Publication at Faculty of Mathematics and Physics |
2020

Abstract

In this paper, we draw attention to reciprocity in Czech light verb constructions - a language phenomenon, which has not been discussed yet. Reciprocity is contributed to light verb constructions by predictive nouns, as they are the nouns that represent the semantic core of these constructions.

Here we focus on reciprocal light verb constructions derived by the syntactic operation of reciprocalization. We show that the complex mapping of semantic participants onto valency complementations, characteristic of reciprocalization, is reflected in reciprocal light verb constructions in the same way as in reciprocal nominal constructions.

The main difference between reciprocal nominal constructions and reciprocal light verb constructions lies in the morphosyntactic expression of reciprocalized participants. We demonstrate that surface syntactic changes in reciprocal light verb constructions are regular enough to be described on the rule basis: the rule based generation of reciprocal light verb constructions