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Empty Verbs

This document discusses "empty verbs" or "light verbs" such as do, give, have, make, and take. These verbs are used frequently in everyday English expressions and contribute little inherent meaning. Rather, the real meaning is contained in the nouns or other words that accompany the empty verb. Some examples provided are "He's doing the washing up" (he's washing up), "She gave him a hug" (she hugged him), and "They're having lunch" (they're lunching). While empty verbs have little meaning on their own, there are still subtle differences in their uses, such as "She took a bath" versus "She gave the child a bath." A few other common verbs like

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1K views2 pages

Empty Verbs

This document discusses "empty verbs" or "light verbs" such as do, give, have, make, and take. These verbs are used frequently in everyday English expressions and contribute little inherent meaning. Rather, the real meaning is contained in the nouns or other words that accompany the empty verb. Some examples provided are "He's doing the washing up" (he's washing up), "She gave him a hug" (she hugged him), and "They're having lunch" (they're lunching). While empty verbs have little meaning on their own, there are still subtle differences in their uses, such as "She took a bath" versus "She gave the child a bath." A few other common verbs like

Uploaded by

Ariel Logacho
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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7th LEVEL UNIT 1

Empty Verbs
Hot verbs, empty verbs - Exercises with do, give, have, make, take A look at some common uses of the verbs do, give, have, make, take with lots of exercises for advanced students This lesson is for advanced students. If you are not at advanced level, you might be better trying some of the exercises linked to at the end of this post. Some of the exercises here are quite challenging. A couple of people have landed on this blog after googling 'hot verbs'. This is not a term I'm very familiar with, so I thought I'd better check it out. Hot verbs As far as I can see, the term hot verb is mainly used the in the New Headway series of course books for a few high-frequency verbs. They include both literal use and an 'empty' meaning which I'll discuss in a moment. In various units I've been able to find the following: come, do, get, go, have, make, take, put Apart from this, I've found an exercise at the Folkuniversitetet of Estonia on what they call hot verbs - do, get, make, take. A few other websites also refer to these four verbs as hot verbs. Most of the other references I've seen are simply questions on language forums asking what hot verbs are. Delexicalised verbs Occasionally people talk about delexicalised verbs. These are verbs that carry very little meaning. An article at the British Council website, for example, lists: get, go, take, make, do, have, give, set, put. Empty verbs Other people, for example English Result Upper-intermediate, use the term empty verbs with the same meaning. English Result lists: have, take, make, give. This is a bit less of a mouthful than delexicalised verbs, so that's the expression I'll use. Light verbs This is an expression commonly used by linguists to refer to delexicalised or empty verbs. Wikipedia and About.com agree on the main ones - do, give, have, make, take, although Wikipedia also includes get.

So what's so special about empty / light verbs? These are verbs that are frequently used in everyday expressions. Grammarian Martin Parrot, the inventor of the term empty verb, says "they contribute little or no meaning to the expression". The real meaning is usually contained in the word(s) that collocate with the empty verb. For example, we often use an empty verb plus noun rather than the corresponding action verb:

do - He's doing the washing up / the dishes - (he's washing up) give - She gave him a hug - (she hugged him) have - They're having lunch - (they're lunching) make - He made a complaint to the manager. - (he complained) take - She took a shower. - (she showered) What about get? We also use get in a lot of expressions such as get wet, get lost and get married. Here the verb doesn't carry a lot of meaning, but it is not entirely 'empty', as in these expressions it has one of its base meanings - become. It is also used reflexively in such expressions as get washed, get dressed etc. I've already devoted a post to this versatile verb (see below), so it won't feature very heavily here. Do empty verbs have no meaning at all then? They are not entirely without meaning, as can be seen in the difference between these two sentences. And in most uses, the choice of empty verb seems to make some sense, to this native speaker at least.

She took a bath (take = She bathed herself) She gave the child a bath (give = She bathed somebody else) Other verbs There are a few other verbs used like empty verbs, especially in certain expressions. These include come, pay, put. And there are quite a few expressions with go.

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