A contrastive analysis of dar 'give' in English and Brazilian Portuguese: semantic syntactic relationships and implications for L2 instruction
In recent years, research on multiword lexical units has influenced second language acquisition research, but little work has been done on light verbs, especially comparing the use of light verbs in English and Brazilian Portuguese. This paper presents a comparative analysis of the syntactic and semantic aspects of dar and 'give' through the semantic continuum, event type, denominal verbs and incorporation. This study finds that distinct and varied semantic uses of light verbs present a unique challenge to second language learners in terms of both their understanding and their production. Furthermore, this study analyzes the semantic syntactic interrelationships and suggests implications for teaching English and Portuguese light verbs to second language learners.