Event Structure and Support Verb Constructions

Support Verb Constructions (SVCs) pose interesting problems because of their mixed nature, with idiomatic properties in the sense that they do not seem to comply with general rules, and yet displaying a large number of regularities. The problems we will be concerned with in this paper are the following: • What is event structure, and how is expressed in SVCs? • What verbs may function as support verbs (SVs), and to what extent is their behaviour predictable from their behaviour in other uses? • What is the relation between prepositions used in SVCs and locative prepositions? • What is a predicative noun, and how and what does it contribute to the semantics of the SVC? The data will be taken from Danish, and the analysis offered will be presented within the framework of HPSG (Pollard and Sag, 1994). (1) through (3) show examples of various SVCs: (1) Ane Ane havde had / fik got / bragte brought situationen situation the under under kontrol. control (2) Ane Ane gav gave Bo Bo et a slag slap / et a spark kick / et a kys.