Zahraa Adnan Fadhil Al-Murib,
Department of English, College of Education, Islamic University, Babylon, Iraq
This study deals with light verb constructions as being syntactically functional and semantically bleached. It aims at investigating the difficulties faced by Iraqi EFL Learners (fourth-year university students) in recognizing and producing this kind of constructions. Thus, to achieve this aim, it is hypothesized that Iraqi EFL Learners are unable to collocate the light verb with its proper noun phrase both at the recognition and the production levels. And in order to achieve the aim of the study and examine its hypothesis, the following procedures are adopted: (1) Presenting a theoretical background about light verb constructions including their definition, structure, and their relationship with collocations, (2) Designing a diagnostic test to investigate the difficulties that might face the learners while being exposed to these constructions, (3) Analyzing the findings of the test to reveal the learner’s recognition and performance in dealing with light verb constructions.
Keywords: Light Verb Constructions, Collocations, Difficulties
The above abstract is a part of the article which was accepted at The Sixth International Conference on Languages, Linguistics, Translation and Literature (WWW.LLLD.IR), 9-10 October 2021, Ahwaz.
