@DamkerngT. That is a very good question!

When does make not mean 'make'?

It seems trivial to come up with a circular definition for any word: make means 'make'. No matter what make means, that's what it means.

Sure, that sort of circular definition might not seem particularly useful, but can we argue against it?

I think we can!

What if make, in fact, does not mean anything in a particular example?

If it has no meaning, it can hardly be said to "mean 'make'", can it?

You could make the argument that in a light verb construction like make a mistake, the meaning is carried by mistake.

Still, this isn't what the OP meant.

The OP seems to have a more specific idea in mind for the meaning they refer to as 'make', and they haven't made it clear what that meaning is.

So to understand their question, we have to guess what meaning they meant.

That's the thing. Different LVCs pick different light verbs.

Why don't you do a bath instead of taking a bath?

It's interesting that in English you take a shower. Where do you take it to, exactly? :-)

That's very true.

In a light verb construction, it does seem like most of the meaning is carried by the NP complement.

I don't know if saying most or all would be more accurate. It's kinda fuzzy, so how can you draw a line?

@DamkerngT. In Japanese, する is the light verb par excellence, though やる is also used, among others.

@DamkerngT. Um. Work? :-)

So what meaning do you think is added by [go] and [make]?

Oh, I see.

In Japanese, 質問 (shitsumon) means 'question'. It's a noun. But you can add the light verb する (suru) 'do' to make a light verb construction meaning 'ask a question'. 質問してもいいですか (shitsumon shite mo ii desu ka?) 'May I ask you a question?'

Coming up with literal glosses for Japanese in English is a major challenge :-)

I wanted to write lit. and put a gloss underneath, but it's so hard!

lit. question do-TE.MO is.good-POLITE-QUESTION?

I gave up on ても :-)

Semi-literally: "Is it good even if [I] do question? (polite)"

It's pretty much impossible to make a gloss make sense if you substitute English words and keep them in the same order, so even when I'm trying to translate "literally", I'm usually not being super literal about it.

@DamkerngT. It translates fairly cleanly in this case. It's a grammatical marker of a main clause interrogative, so I translated it to subject-auxiliary inversion.

In a formal gloss you can just write -QUE.

> Mosi=ka si.tara, kono keizi=wa zibuɴ=no koto=o utagat.te i.ru=no=daroʜ=ka?

> if-QUE do-CON DEM detective-TOP self-GEN thing-ACC doubt-GER be-NPS-NMZ-EPI-QUE

> 'Is this detective perhaps suspicious of me?'

I can't align glosses vertically in chat, unfortunately.

That's sort of a semi-phonemic transcription, in that it indicates /Qt/ with ‹tt›. I want my small caps Q :-(

I wonder how long until there's software support.

unicode.org/L2/L2016/16004.htm#146-C4