stehen unter-Funktionsverbgefüge und ihre Familien

Abstract Light verb constructions (German ‚Funktionsverbgefüge‘) are complex predicates consisting of a semantically light verb and a phrasal element. A characteristic property of light verb constructions is that they come in families, i. e., groups of identically formed light verb constructions exemplifying different interpretation patterns. On the basis of a corpus study, the paper discusses the existence of three different families of stehen unter ‚stand under‘ light verb constructions. In a detailed study, it is demonstrated that the three families are associated with different characteristics like the semantic type of PP-internal nouns and the choice of a causative light verb.