Irish Constructions with Bain
Viktor Bayda
Moscow State University
Abstract
Irish has a large number of constructions consisting of a verb of general meaning (a light verb), a noun (usually abstract) and a preposition. These light-verb constructions (LVCs) form a unit: the light verb fulfils the grammatical functions while also retaining some of its lexical semantics, and the noun conveys the core semantics of the whole, so that the meaning of the predicate is distributed among the parts of the construction. The tendency to use periphrastic means of conveying predicates in Irish has been discussed by Wagner (1959) and Greene (1966) and the same phenomenon has recently been discussed by Wigger (2004, 2008 and 2009) from a contrastive and lexicological point of view. LVCs containing verbal nouns (NV-LVCs) have been discussed by Bloch-Trojnar (2009a, 2009b and 2010) with particular stress on their aspectual characteristics and the interaction between the verb-noun predicate and the choice of the light verb. The present paper is intended as an attempt to introduce LVCs involving simple (non-verbal) nouns into the discussion.