The Delexical Verbs as Realized by Iraqi EFL University Students

Abstract

It is usually assumed that the sentence is not random collections of words, but strings of words which are organized according to certain rules. It is made up of two essential parts called the subject and the verb. The verb is the core of every sentence. In English, there are three types of verbs which are transitive, intransitive and copular. Concerning the first kind , it includes a particular group of verbs called delexical verbs which have more than one name like light verbs, empty verbs, weak verbs semantically …etc. The most common ones are: give, make, have, take…etc. The researchers will deal with such verbs and in specific with delexical structures and their constructions which are different from lexical ones. It is thought that the students of English have no a clear distinction between lexical and delexical ones. Another problem is that it is hard for them to comprehend the meaning of the sentences which consist of such verbs. Moreover, they have no idea of what delexical verbs are and if they know, they may not succeed to identify them as a single unit within a given context.