ABSTRACT
It was made clear as early as section I.1.i that stretched verb constructions need to be recorded in the lexicon of a given language, because they represent a phenomenon that is partly arbitrary and language-specific. Languages may have similar construction potentials, but each language seems to make its own selection between its constructions for any individual construction, and this takes on its own specific meaning. To recall some examples, English has run the risk of smth but not *run (the) danger of smth, whereas German has precisely the equivalent of this, namely Gefahr laufen; or, in English there is make or lodge a complaint, while French has the equivalent of *carry/put down a complaint, namely porter/déposer une plainte, and German has *put in/raise a complaint, namely eine Beschwerde einlegen/erheben. Despite these differences the general pattern is similar in these cases, and so we are naturally led to ask just how similar and how different languages are both in their potential for the general pattern and in their actual occurrence of individual stretched verb constructions.
