This study examines composite predicates (CPs) in the history of American English and uses an exemplar-based model to explain changes in the frequency of verb–noun pairings over time. Two different types of verb-nominal CPs are considered, including those like take a look, in which a light verb occurs with an abstract nominal object, and others like lose sight, with a more lexically specific verb. Using a corpus of texts written between 1820 and 2009, I track the frequency of different CPs and analyze several families of semantically related nouns that occur with the same verb (e.g. take a look, peak, etc.). Representative families are analyzed to determine the presence of highly frequent verb–noun pairings, or exemplars, that separate themselves over time. The success of exemplars is evaluated according to several factors that may shape patterns of use, including the relative size of noun families, the frequency band of tokens of each family and the distribution of tokens across types within a family. Results indicate that the two types of CPs differ with respect to the evolution and success of exemplary verb–noun pairings and indicate that frequency bands play a role while the size of the noun family and their distributional patterns do not.

本研究考察了美国英语历史上的复合谓词 (CP)，并使用基于范例的模型来解释动词-名词配对频率随时间的变化。考虑了两种不同类型的动词-名词 CP，包括像take a look，其中轻动词与抽象名词对象一起出现，而另一些，如lost vision，具有更词汇特定的动词。使用 1820 年至 2009 年间编写的文本语料库，我跟踪不同 CP 的频率并分析出现在同一个动词上的几个语义相关名词家族（例如take a look、peak， ETC。）。分析有代表性的家庭以确定是否存在高度频繁的动词-名词配对或范例，它们会随着时间的推移而分开。示例的成功是根据可能影响使用模式的几个因素来评估的，包括名词族的相对大小、每个族的标记的频带以及族内不同类型的标记的分布。结果表明，两种类型的 CP 在示例性动词-名词配对的演变和成功方面存在差异，并表明频带发挥作用，而名词家族的规模及其分布模式则没有。