The notion of light verb (support verb) is traditionally used for verbs which have an object (direct or indirect) which is a predicative noun (Npred) denoting an eventuality. It has been extended by Melc'uk, among others, to cover cases in which a Npred is the head of a GN subject. This paper studies structures with a Npred as the head of a nominal subject It shows that two structures must be distinguished: those which involve a real notion extending that of a support verb, and the other ones which boil down to ordinary structures.