Celebrating diversity: The origins and pathways of three support-verb constructions

Abstract

Support-verb constructions are combinations of a verb and a noun that fill the predicate slot of a sentence, such as to make a suggestion in I made the suggestion that she join us. While qualifying as semantic-lexemic phrasemes (collocations and idioms) in Mel’čuk’s Sens-Texte framework, they sit at the lexicon-syntax interface. They qualify as verbal multi-word expressions lexically speaking and form complex predicates syntactically. In classical and post-classical Greek, support-verb constructions form an internally heterogenous group of constructions, yet one that has existed since the earliest records of the language and survives into the modern variety. The present chapter capitalises on the over 2000 years of continuous written history of Greek, and the internal heterogeneity of the group of support-verb constructions, in that it investigates the origins and pathways of three members of this group in the literary (Thesaurus Linguae Graecae) and documentary (Duke Database of Documentary Papyri) corpora of Greek. The bulk of documentary texts dates from the 3rd c. BC onwards, whereas the earliest literary texts date from around the 8th c. BC. The variety of sources allows us to trace the three structures of interest through the centuries in varying environments and thus to trace traditions and independent developments. δίκην δίδωμι dikēn didōmi existed as a collocation ‘to give judgement(s)’ from archaic times and into the medieval period, in classical times, the idiom δίκην δίδωμι dikēn didōmi ‘to pay the price for one’s actions’ arose and became indexed for the technical and higher registers. In χάριν ἀπολαμβάνω kharin apolambanō ‘to receive a favour’, the prototypical compound ἀπολαμβάνω apolambanō seems to be diatopically and subsequently diastratically indexed but retreats into the higher registers after the classical period; the canonical simplex verb λαμβάνω lambanō predates it in early classical verse and postdates it. προσέχω τὸν νοῦν prosekhō ton noun exists as an idiom especially in medical discourse from at least classical times onwards but in parallel also as a pragmateme from archaic times onwards. Support-verb constructions are a pattern that is considered near universal in languages, such that especially the methodological tool of the support-verb-construction field developed and drawn upon in this chapter is transferable beyond Greek.

Keywords

• idiom
• sens-texte framework
• lexical passive
• pragmateme
• support-verb-construction field