A corpus-based study of the modification of light verb constructions with the deverbal noun laugh in British, American, and some Asian varieties of English

Abstract

The modification of light verb constructions (LVCs) has so far been studied only in native varieties of English. The present research seeks to analyse the modification of the constructions have/get/give a laugh in native British and American varieties of English and in non-native Indian, Singaporean, Malaysian Philippine, and Hong Kong varieties. As the investigation is corpus-based, all data for analysis have been collected from the GloWbE corpus. The LVCs are studied in terms of modification frequency, semantic types of modifiers, and structural modification patterns. The modification analysis of LVCs shows that the native and non-native varieties differ in several respects. The number of modified LVCs is higher in non-native English which also differs from native varieties in that the latter tend to select modifiers when the deverbal noun laugh combines with the light verb give, whereas in the former the most frequently modified LVCs are those with the light verb have. The description of semantic types of modifiers reveals that the diversity of types and the variety of modifiers is greater in native than non-native varieties of English. In addition, the research demonstrates that the structural patterns of modification are also more varied in native English varieties.