Secondary predication and aspectual structure*

Susan Rothstein

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapterpeer-review

8 Scopus citations

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of secondary predicates as aspectual modifiers and secondary predication as a summing operation which sums the denotation of the matrix verb and the secondary predicate. I argue that, as opposed to the summing operation involved in simple conjunction, secondary predication is subject to a semantic constraint involving the TPCONNECT relation, where ei is TPCONNECTed to e2 with respect to an argument y if e! and £2 have the same running time and share a grammatical argument y. In depictive predication, the constraint is simply that the event introduced by the matrix verb and the event introduced by the secondary predicate must be TPCONNECTed. Resultative predication differs from depictive predication in that the TPCONNECT constraint holds between the event which is the culmination of the event introduced by the matrix predicate ei and the event introduced by the resultative e2. Formally, while depictive predication introduces the statement TPCONNECT(ei, e2, y), resultative predication introduces the statement TPCONNECT(cul(e!), e2, y). I show that this is all that is necessary to explain the well-known properties of resultative predication.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationModifying Adjuncts
Publisherde Gruyter
Pages553-590
Number of pages38
ISBN (Electronic)9783110894646
ISBN (Print)9783110173529
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Jan 2013

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2003 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH and Co. KG, 10785 Berlin.

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