Verbal group complexes in Norwegian

• Corpus-based and data-driven description of hypotactic verbal group complexes in Norwegian. • Focus on verbal group complexes expressing conation, time phase and usuality. • Analysis of the meanings that arise from the collocation of the primary and secondary verbs of VGCs. • Contributions of hypotactic verbal group complexes alongside the systems of tense and modality. • Semantic prosodies of meaning-based categories of hypotactic verbal group complexes. This article presents a corpus-based study of hypotactic verbal group complexes (VGCs) in Norwegian with the form ‘verb^infinitive marker^verb’, for instance begynne å lese (‘begin to read’). The aims are to identify the meanings expressed by such VGCs in terms of the primary and secondary verbs that occur in them, thereby illuminating the nature of the verbs that occur in such VGCs and any additional meanings that arise from the collocation of primary and secondary verb. Particular attention is paid to VGCs expressing conation, time phase, and usuality. Findings show that meaning categories are unequally represented in the corpus in terms of frequency. A large majority of VGCs express material processes. While some of the VGC meanings overlap with those of tense, aspect or modality, others go beyond these systems. VGCs can thus be seen as a supplement to the systems of tense and modality in that they can include meanings in the verbal group that are not fully grammaticalized. In addition, some of the meaning categories are associated with particular semantic prosodies, especially involving ‘effort’, ‘difficulty’ and ‘voluntary action’.