Contextual Embedding Evidence for Main--Light Verb Distinctions in Urdu
Urdu light verbs contribute schematic event-structural meaning while remaining lexically related to corresponding main verbs. This study tests representational predictions derived from Butt's analysis using contextual embeddings from UrduBERT, DunbaaBERT, and multilingual BERT across 1,126 naturally occurring sentences containing seven Urdu verbs. Main and light uses show significant representational separation in all 21 verb--model comparisons. At the same time, same-lemma main and light centroids are consistently closer than mismatched main--light lemma pairs, supporting continued lexical relatedness. In a seven-way prediction task restricted to light uses, verb identity remains recover...
| Authors | Farah Adeeba, Miriam Butt |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.CL |
| Published | 24 August 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 24 August 2026 |
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