Functieverba in Nederlandse verbonominale constructies

Abstract

In comparison to the German Funktionsverbgefüge, the Dutch light verbs constructions are usually described from the lexicological point of view and not from the grammatical point of view. This article focuses on a brief characterization of the most frequent Dutch light verbs. These verbs have primarily a grammatical function and their lexical meaning is very. The research questions I try to answer are: How can the Dutch light verbs be characterized? What are the most frequently used light verbs in contemporary Dutch? In characterizing the Dutch verbs, I am partly inspired by the description of the German light verbs by Helbig & Buscha (2001: 79-105). The use of the most frequent light verbs in the Dutch light verbs constructions was verified, among others, with the help of the written corpus of contemporary Dutch (Corpus Hedendaags Nederlands).