There are two sorts of lights one can put out.
One is their "vital spark", that which differs the living from the dead. Hence in the following quotes about putting out someone's lights, it means to kill them:
But once put out thine, I know not where is that promethian heate, That can thy light returne. — Shakespeare, "Othello".
Quench thou his light, Destruction dark! — Walter Scott, "Lady of Lake"
Put his lights out, to kill — A. J. Pollock, Underworld Speaks (a lexicon of criminal slang in 1930s America).
The other is the power of sight, or by extension, in the plural, ones eyes. (The OED describes the use for eyes as "now slang"):
Lift vp thine eyes..They were not borne to loose their light so soone. — G. Wilkins Miseries Inforst Mariage
His ministers with point of piercing sword Put out my light for ever. — R. W. Dixon Mano
To punch someone's lights out, is hence to render them (perhaps permanently, but most often temporarily) unable to see by reason of being unconscious or at least greatly stunned.
But the other definition I give above, with the more violent meaning of killing someone, is worth considering too, as a likely influence.
As a slang expression, it's not necessarily one or the other in terms of literal meaning, and figuratively can be much looser again. The threat "I'm going to punch your lights out" can perhaps be interpreted as "I'm going to render a considerable amount of violence upon you, probably with my fists, which will result in a not very well-defined, but certainly considerable, degree of injury". It doesn't need to be clear as to which of the two possible literal meanings it relates to.
(It's possible that Pollock's phrase actually belongs with the second meaning of lights rather than the first, and they misinterpreted. Certainly their definition of bananas as meaning sexually perverted has little supporting evidence and it could be that they were not as fluent in underworld slang as they thought they were. Note that this was, for a time, the FBI's manual on the topic!)
The definition of lights you have found tends not to be used any more of humans. Indeed, the definition you give has it not even used much of food for humans, which seems sad to me (pluck, which is lights mixed up with heart and liver is of course the key ingredient in haggis, and absolutely delicious). The word is derived from the adjective light in the sense of not heavy, and was once more often used of people, including the pleonasm "lunges and lightes" from Spenser's Faerie Queene.
There is a colloquialism whereby one scares someone so greatly as to remove the lights, and sometimes the liver, out of them:
It most scared the livers and lights out of me. — Twain, Adventures Huckleberry Finn.
You might start by questioning Likhas, scare the lights out of him, and he might tell you. — Pound, translation of Sophocles "Women of Trachis".
From the wikipedia article you linked:
This understanding sees predicates as relations or functions over arguments. The predicate serves either to assign a property to a single argument or to relate two or more arguments to each other. Sentences consist of predicates and their arguments (and adjuncts) and are thus predicate-argument structures, whereby a given predicate is seen as linking its arguments into a greater structure.[7]
For example:
- Bob laughed. → laughed (Bob) or, laughed = ƒ(Bob)
- Sam helped you. → helped (Sam, you)
- Jim gave Jill his dog. → gave (Jim, Jill, his dog)
Now for the answer:
Remember that anything which is not an argument, viz...
Other function words - e.g. auxiliary verbs, certain prepositions, phrasal particles, etc. - are viewed as part of the predicate [Wikipedia]
Now,
- The butter is in the drawer.
This one's easy: is in(the butter, the drawer)
- You should give it up.
Perhaps your confusion arises from the fact that the words aren't together.
Remember, in certain phrasal verbs (including give up), a pronoun must split the phrase and can't follow the verb.
So, let's have:
2a. You should give up the car.
And, by predicate calculus, we have:
should give up (you, it)
2a. should give up (you, the car)
- Susan is pulling your leg
Now, pulling someone's leg is an idiom that means To make a playful attempt to fool or deceive someone. [TFD]. She isn't literally holding your leg and pulling it. So, leg can't be an argument. (It's not a typo.)
We have: is pulling leg(Susan, your)
However, if it were:
3a. Susan is pulling your hand
We'd have: is pulling(Susan, your hand)
I hope this makes it clear for you. in, up and leg were part of the predicate indeed
Best Answer
One at a time:
She handed me a pencil. [handed instead of gave]
Handed and gave are not synonymous. Handed is far more specific, when used in a literal sense (as in your example), as it suggests the action of giving is performed by way of the hand. "She handed me a pencil" elicits a vision of a woman reaching forward her hand, gripping a pencil, as I take it. If one says instead "She gave me a pencil," it could just as well elicit a setting around a Christmas tree, in which I untie a bow, rip the paper, open a box, and find a beautifully decorated Christmas... pencil!
He eyeballed me pensively. [eyeballed instead of leered or looked at]
Eyeball is also more specific than looked at, and has different connotations than leer. According to dictionry.com:
One could say "He looked closely at me," and you would get across a very similar meaning. But again, the visions elicited by the phrases are, at least for me, quite different. To me, eyeballed is much more colorful, perhaps even poetic. If that's not your style, don't use the word.
She eyed the carrots. [eyed instead of looked at]
The verb Eye is, once again, far more specific than look at. It indicates a more intensive, intentional action, than simply "looking."
He mouthed some words to me. [mouthed instead of spoke/said]
This is the most obvious case where the two words are not synonymous. In fact, they're almost antonyms! To say or speak means you make verbal communication. To mouth the words means you do not make any verbal communication!
Now, generally speaking, why do we use body parts as verbs in English? I think others have said it well in comments, but it boils down to creativity, colorful language and, because we can.