A corpus-based analysis of the constructions have/take/get a bath and have/take/get a rest in British English

Abstract

Light verb constructions have been studied in different languages and from different perspectives by a number of scholars. The present research focuses on the constructions with light verbs have, get, and take followed by deverbal nouns a bath and a rest and attempts to answer the questions to what extent light verbs have, take, and get are interchangeable when followed by the same deverbal nouns and what influences their choice. The study aims at giving a qualitative analysis of the structures in question in British English on the basis of corpus data. All the data for analysis are collected from the BNC corpus. Constructions have/take/get a bath and have/take/get a rest are investigated in terms of grammatical and lexical features which include morphological forms, immediate collocations of deverbal nouns, combinability patterns as well as distribution across registers. The analysis shows that light verbs have, take, and get could be interchangeable in some situations as they have similar morphological forms, combinability patterns, collocations with adjectives, but show some differences in expressing modality and the distribution across registers.