A VERB and TAKE A VERB construction

Parallel to Mary walked in the garden we can say Mary had a walk in the garden. Here the verb have substitutes for walk, and takes tense inflection. The original verb base walk now functions as head of an NP which follows have, with the singular indefinite article a. The locational phrase in the garden is carried over unaltered. These two sentences, Mary walked in the garden and Mary had a walk in the garden, have a similar meaning; there is, however, a definite and predictable semantic difference.

There is also the TAKE A VERB construction, built on similar principles— compare John kicked at the ball and John took a kick at the ball. TAKE A VERB, like HAVE A VERB, is most frequently used with intransitive verbs (there are exceptions). The GIVE A VERB construction differs in that it most often involves a transitive verb, e.g. Mary punched John and Mary gave John a punch. Here give substitutes for the original verb, which becomes (in base form) the head of a ‘second object’ NP, again preceded by the indefinite article a.

Many verbs occur with HAVE A, TAKE A and GIVE a, but there are many others which resist use in such constructions. Compare the following samples:

In British English, the verbs which occur with TAKE A appear to be a subset of those which occur with HAVE A. One can take a walk, take a swim or take a look but not *take a sit-down, *take a think or *take a talk. Parallel to have a kick and have a bite there are take a kick and take a bite; but although it is possible to say have a shave or have a laugh, it is not permissible to say *take a shave or *take a laugh.

Turning now to GIVE A, we can contrast:

I have examined about 700 of the most common English verbs and find that about one-quarter of them can occur in at least one of the constructions HAVE A VERB, TAKE A VERB and GIVE A VERB. Whether or not a verb can occur in one or more of these constructions is largely semantically based, as we shall show.

Most grammars of English scarcely mention the HAVE A, GIVE A and TAKE A construction types. The linguist Edward Sapir did mention them, putting give him a kick alongside kick him, and take a ride with ride. He commented (Sapir 1949: 114): ‘at first blush this looks like a most engaging rule but . . . anyone who takes the trouble to examine these examples carefully will soon see that behind a superficial appearance of simplicity there is concealed a perfect hornet’s nest of bizarre and arbitrary usages. . . .We can ‘‘give a person a shove’’ or ‘‘a push,’’ but we cannot ‘‘give them a move’’ nor ‘‘a drop’’ (in the sense of causing them to drop).’ The aim of the discussion below will be to show that the occurrence of verbs with HAVE A, TAKE A and GIVE A is not at all arbitrary.

These constructions tend to carry an overtone of friendliness and intimacy, and are found far more frequently in colloquial than in formal styles of English. Some examples are found in the older literature, e.g. give a cry from 1300, have a run from 1450, but these are comparatively rare. Note, though, that very little of premodern literature reflected colloquial usage.

It does seem likely that the use of the constructions has increased over the past 200 years, and that it has done so in different ways in different dialects. In British (and Australian) English HAVE A VERB has increased in popularity while TAKE A VERB may actually have dropped in frequency; in American English the TAKE A construction has become more common and HAVE A appears to have contracted. This would account for the fact that Americans prefer to say take a run/kick/swim/look where an Englishman would use have a run/kick/swim/look (although the TAKE A construction is also possible in British English and differs in meaning from HAVE A, as will be discussed below). GIVE A appears also to occur with a more limited range of verbs in American English, e.g. give the child a carry is generally accepted by speakers of British English but rejected by Americans.

There are also periphrastic constructions with make, do and pay that show some similarity to HAVE A/GIVE A/TAKE A VERB. Pay is very restricted—the main verbs it occurs with are visit and compliment, as in visit Mary, pay Mary a visit; compliment Mary, pay Mary a compliment. Do occurs with a slightly larger set of verbs, e.g. do a dance/mime/dive/jump/pee (and in ‘The Stock-broker’s Clerk’, a client tells Sherlock Holmes that he was sitting doing a smoke). Make occurs with quite a number of verbs from the THINKING, DECIDING, SPEAKING, ATTENTION and COMPARING types. Sometimes the plain verb base becomes head of an NP following make (with the indefinite article a), e.g. make a remark/claim/comment/report/mention/request, but in most cases it is a derived nominal, e.g. make a statement/suggestion/complaint/confession/enquiry/decision/assumption/inspection/comparison. MAKE/ DO/PAY A VERB constructions fall outside the scope of our discussion. (Under REST-c we mentioned the periphrastic use of put, as in put the blame on, put trust in, put a question to; these also fall outside the present discussion.)

Later we will discuss the criteria for distinguishing between the HAVE A, GIVE A and TAKE A constructions which are the topic, and other constructions involving these verbs.