The intuition between the term "light verb" is that the predicate is not at its full semantic potential.
[3] Light verbs can be accounted for in different ways in theoretical frameworks, for example as semantically empty predicate licensers[4] or a kind of auxiliary.
The light verb contributes little content to its sentence; the main meaning resides with the noun in bold.
[20] Light verbs are extremely common in modern Indo-Iranian languages, Japanese, Basque and other languages in which verb compounding is a primary mechanism for marking aspectual distinctions.
Light verbs are also equivalent to inherent complement verbs[21][22] in many Kwa languages, e.g. jo in jo foi 'run' (Ga), tu in tu fo 'advise' (Akan).
A significant proportion of Australian Aboriginal languages have verbal systems involving light verbs.
Thus, in order to express more intricate assertions, matrix verbs are combined with coverbal elements such as preverbs to form complex verbal predicates.
Although its inflecting-verb class is comparatively large with respect to some other Australian languages (~230 members), a number of these appear often as light verbs.
Likewise with goo 'hit' in the following example: garrrubnga-na-m-boo-gal1-TR-PST-hit-RECgarr nga-na-m-boo-galrub 1-TR-PST-hit-REC'I rubbed him (to stop his pain)'Typically, in languages with coverb+light-verb predicates, these words must be directly adjacent; however, in extremely rare cases in languages such as Jingulu, there can be intervening elements between the semantically-rich preverb and the inflected matrix verb.
See the following example where the subject ngaya appears between the preverb ambaya 'speak' and the inflected main verb nu 'do'.
[24] Ambayaspeakngaya1SG.NOMnga-nu1SG-do.PSTWarranganku-mbiliBeetaloo-LOCAmbaya ngaya nga-nu Warranganku-mbilispeak 1SG.NOM 1SG-do.PST Beetaloo-LOC'I spoke about Beetaloo'This rare but significant phenomenon provides evidence that, even in more heavily agglutinating languages like Jingulu wherein the main verb may not be morphologically independent from the preverb, these are in fact light verbs and not inflectional affixes.