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Agentive and non-agentive light verb constructions in Pahari-Pothwari

  • Farah Nazir
Published/Copyright: September 3, 2025

Abstract

This paper investigates two classes of Pahari-Pothwari (an understudied South Asian language) light verb constructions (LVCs), which comprise a light verb (LV) and nominal/adjectival/verbal coverb, forming one single verbal predicate. It is shown that four LVs contribute minimally two lexical semantic features: agentivity and, in a subset of cases, causation via language-internal and external diagnostics (Cruse 1973: 11–23). The agentivity distinction coincides with case marking patterns: non-agentive LVs e ‘come’ and lag ‘attach’ are restricted to an accusative/dative case marked experiencer subject; agentive LVs maɾ ‘hit’ and kaɾ ‘do’ are restricted to an ergative/nominative case subject. Using a series of morphosyntactic and syntactic diagnostics, the study shows that nominal coverbs are morphosyntactically distinct from nominal complements, despite sharing some surface properties. The data indicates that the LV and coverb contribute to the argument structure, and there are possible combinatory restrictions of N + V LVCs, which can give an insight into the status of nominal coverbs.


Corresponding author: Farah Nazir, University of York, York, UK, E-mail:

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my PhD supervisors, Andrew Koontz-Garboden and John Payne, whose guidance during my doctoral research helped lay the groundwork for this paper. I am also grateful to Elena Bashir for her support with more recent data analysis, and to the reviewers and editorial team for their constructive and detailed comments.

  1. Research ethics: Not applicable.

  2. Informed consent: Not applicable.

  3. Author contributions: The author has accepted responsibility for the entire content of this manuscript and approved its submission.

  4. Use of Large Language Models, AI and Machine Learning Tools: Chat GPT was used for (i) proofreading and improving awkward phrasing and syntax, (ii) formatting references.

  5. Competing interests: The author states no conflict of interest.

  6. Research funding: None declared.

  7. Data availability: Not applicable.

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Received: 2025-07-19
Accepted: 2025-07-21
Published Online: 2025-09-03
Published in Print: 2025-09-25

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