6. What can we learn about “take”, “have”, and “make” from COCA?
Julia Ribeiro; Johanna Tumux; Marcelle Pesenti; and Renata Zimny
Julia Ribeiro
Undergraduate student at Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul
Johanna Tumux
Undergraduate student at Montclair State University
Marcelle Pesenti
Undergraduate student at Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul
Renata Zimny
Undergraduate student at Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul
Goals: To clarify the differences between the words “take”, “have”, and “make”.
Audience: Intermediate to advanced learners of English (Secondary school students to adults)
Duration: 40-45 minutes
INTRODUCTION
The main verbs “take”, “have” and “make” are some of the most frequent verbs in English. In addition to being used as main verbs (and auxiliary in the case of “have” and perfect aspect), they are also consistently used in phrasal and prepositional verb constructions. Therefore, the goal of this chapter is to explain the differences between “have”, “make”, and “take” with an analysis of the data presented from the Cambridge Grammar of English and the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). Activities are provided at the end to help students’ practice the use of these three verbs.
STEP 1: CORPUS ANALYSIS
The teacher can use the collocate function in COCA to search for these three verbs. First, they should highlight that “take” commonly appears next to the words a (determiner), the (determiner), it (pronoun), and care (noun). This form usually occurs in spoken conversation in expressions such as “To take a nap”, “To take a minute”, “To take a second”, “To take a risk”, and “To take a moment”.
The chart function shows that “take” is most frequently used in movies and TV Shows. COCA shows that “take” has a sense very close to the form carry out, and is used to refer to the idea of taking someone to somewhere. The searches show that “take” occurs 1.76 times per million.
Figure 1 – Frequency of “take” in COCA sections/categories
Results from the Corpus of American English reveal that “make” is generally written in the base form. The collocates of “make” are can’t – modal verb -, and – preposition – and can – modal verb. Below are some examples from COCA:
“[…] to make the game’s world look bigger than it might (currently) be.”
“He can’t figure out tears, can’t make them come like she could as a girl […]”
“Biantera would stay here, and make hats.” and “We can make that happen. Done.”
Similar to “take”, “make” is commonly present in contexts associated with television programs and movies. COCA shows that “make” is often related to the meaning to engage in or to cause to be or to become something. The searches show that “make” occurs with a frequency of 2.29 times per million.
Figure 2 – Frequency of “make” in COCA sections/categories
The verb “have” collocates with I (pronoun), we (pronoun), you (pronoun), and to (preposition). Here are some examples of these uses:
“Now, if you’ll excuse me . I have work to do.”, “You have to go, if that’s what you wanna do […]”
“We have all been given a chance to start over. This is yours.”
“If I win, you are going to have a choice. You are going to have to do what you promised.”
In addition to this discussion, the charts function also shows that “have” is more frequent in spoken language in comparison to the other registers in the corpus. The thesaurus function of COCA shows that “have” is mainly associated with the idea of ownership and the notion of belonging. It is shown that “have” occurs with a frequency of 10.51 times per million.
Figure 3 – Frequency of “have” in COCA sections/categories
The table below summarizes the corpus findings in contrast to what English grammars say about these three verbs. This table could be used to inform class discussion with the teacher has no access to online corpora in the classroom.
| Source
Cambridge grammar of English |
Take
It is compared to bring and to fetch when it comes to its meaning. |
Make
It is usually accompanied by words that come from varied parts of speech. |
Have
N/A |
| Grammar in Use (by Cambridge University) | N/A | N/A | It brings an idea of possession, and it is also used to describe the occurrence of actions. |
| Corpus of American English (COCA) | It is directly compared to carry out, as they are considered synonyms. | It is commonly written in order to express the sense of doing something to happen. | It is strongly related to the sense of becoming the owner of something. |
Table 1 – COCA findings vs Grammar Books
STEP 2: PRACTICE ACTIVITIES
The following activities uses concordance lines for the main verbs discussed in the analysis above. They should be used after the teacher goes through the steps above using COCA with the students.
Activity 1 – Fill the gaps of the phrases above with one of the verbs in the parenthesis. In some cases, the verb tenses may vary depending on the context presented.
1. [A bottle of wine has just been opened; The speaker goes towards the kitchen, where the bottle currently is]
“I will _____ some cups for us.” (bring/take)
2. [The speakers are at home]
“Can you _____ to the hospital? I accidentally cut my finger while I was making dinner earlier this morning. (bring/take)
3. [The speakers are chatting on the phone]
“He ______ to the cinema last week, and gave me a ring there.” (bring/take)
4. [Both speakers are in the classroom]
“Can you ______ me that pencil that is near to you?” (bring/take)
5. [Both speakers are in the living room]
“Can you ______ me my suitcase that is near to my bed, in my bedroom?” (bring/take)
6. [Both speakers are eating in the fast food inside the mall]
“Mom, actually it won’t be necessary to ______ us a pair of napkins from the counter, since I already have two napkins in my purse for us.” (bring/take)
Activity 2 – Match the information related to the functions of make and of have from the first column, on the top, with its respective description on the last column, on the end.
(A) Have is expressing posse
(B) Have is expressing a kind of family relation
(C) Have is expressing an idea of obligation/necessity
(D) Make acts as an indirect and a direct object
(E) Make acts as an object and as an adjective complement
(F) Make acts only as an direct object
( ) “I have a lot of homework to do, and these activities will be past due on next Friday.”
( ) “I have just made a promise. I will never drink alcoholic drinks again.”
( ) “She made a vegan sandwich for me yesterday. It tastes a bit different, but it was good.”
( ) “I have three cousins that have already married in the last few years.”
( ) “Running a lot makes me feel thirsty. Do you bring your bottle of water today?”
( ) “I have a pencil case that came from Italy. I will show it to you tomorrow.”
( ) “Do you have a nephew, don’t you? I saw a pic in your profile of him. Very cute!”
( ) “He made a mistake on the test, because he didn’t pay attention as I suggested.”
( ) “She made a pie for us whose recipe she found in my old grandmother’s book.”
( ) “I had to pay eighty dollars to be able to renew my driver’s license last year.”
( ) “I think that I will take a nap now. Sleeping always makes me feel a bit better.”
( ) “My family has a bakery shop located some miles from here. Do you wanna go there?”
Activity 3 – Complete the crossword puzzle below with one of the words in the box.
Tip: the crossword uses words that collocate with have, make and take; so if you are stuck you can search for these words on COCA.
You can also access a printable version of this puzzle via the following Google Docs link:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kAG8vNz93JHbk7apOm1J_FudaIe6odw_-IoFP5zg9RE/edit?usp=sharing
Pesenti, M., Ribeiro, J., Tumux, J., & Zimny, R. (2023). What can we learn about “take”, “have”, and “make” from COCA? In L. Goulart & I. Veloso (Eds). Corpora in English Language Teaching: Classroom Activities for Teachers New to Corpus Linguistics. Open Educational Resource. Montclair State University.
