Compound verb

In linguistics, a compound verb or complex predicate is a multi-word compound that functions as a single verb. One component of the compound is a light verb or vector, which carries any inflections, indicating tense, mood, or aspect, but provides only fine shades of meaning. The other, "primary", component is a verb or noun which carries most of the semantics of the compound, and determines its arguments. It is usually in either base or [in Verb + Verb compounds] conjunctive participial form.

A compound verb is also called a "complex predicate" because the semantics, as formally modeled by a predicate, is determined by the primary verb, though both verbs appear in the surface form. Whether Noun+Verb (N+V) compounds are considered to be "compound verbs" is a matter of naming convention. Generally, the term complex predicate usually includes N+V compounds, whereas the term compound verb is usually reserved for V+V compounds. However, several authors [especially Iranists] refer to N+V compounds as compound verbs.

Compound verbs are to be distinguished from serial verbs which typically signify a sequence of actions, and in which the verbs are relatively equal in semantic and grammatical weight. They are also to be distinguished from sequences of auxiliary plus main verbs.

Thus, there are two classes of complex predicates:

Compound verbs of both types (V+V and N+V) are very common in all the languages of India, though V+V compounds are more frequent in the northern Indo-Aryan languages than in Dravidian languages. In addition to South Asian languages, V+V compounds occur in Turkic languages like Uzbek, Kyrgyz and Uyghur, in Tibeto-Burman languages like Limbu and Newari, in Korean and Japanese, in northeast Caucasian languages like Tsez and Avar, and in Quichua, a variety of Quechua. The Indo-European language Greek also possesses some verb–verb compounds. V+V compounds do not occur in Iranian languages. What are called "compound verbs" by Iranists are N+V compounds.

The English lexicon contains a few true compound verbs, such as stirfry, kickstart and forcefeed. These are not serial verbs – though, as with many compounds, they may be spelled as two words (or hyphenated). Rather, the first verb expresses how the action expressed by the second verb is carried out. The second verb is the only one which may express tense.

English also expresses aspectual distinctions as to the beginning, duration, completion, or repetition of an action using auxiliaries. Examples here include was starting, had lived, had been seen, etc. These sequences function in place of morphologically complex predicates like the inchoative or inceptive stems of Latin (amo, 'I love'; amasco, 'I'm starting to love', 'I'm falling in love'; florere, 'to flower'; florescere, 'to start flowering'; etc.), and of Russian (smeyat'sya, смеяться, 'to laugh'; zasmeyat'sya засмеяться, 'to start laughing').

Though verb + verb compounds are rare in English, one may illustrate the form with the example "to go crashing [through the door]". In some interpretations, one may consider "go" as a light verb, which carries markers like tense. However, the main part of the meaning, as well as the arguments, i.e. answers to questions such as who? (agent) or what was it that "went crashing"? (subject), are determined by the second, semantically primary verb, "crash". "Go" carries plural/tense markers (they go | he goes crashing), whereas "crashing" appears in this fixed form and does not change with tense, number, gender, etc. Whether gerundive forms like "went crashing" are compound verbs is controversial in English; many linguists prefer to treat "crashing" as a nominal in its gerundive form. However, the compound verb treatment may have some advantages, particularly when it comes to semantic analysis. For example, in response to She went crashing, the question "Where did she go?" is less revealing than "Where did she go crashing?".