Light Verbs in Other Languages
Examples in other languages include the Yiddish geb in geb a helf (literally give a help, "help"); the French faire in faire semblant (lit. make seeming, "pretend"); the Hindi nikal paRA (lit. leave fall, "start to leave"); and the bǎ construction in Chinese. Light verbs are extremely common in Indo-Iranian languages, Japanese, and other languages in which verb compounding is a primary mechanism for marking aspectual distinctions.
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“It is time for dead languages to be quiet.”
—Natalie Clifford Barney (1876–1972)