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Degree achievements, telicity and the verbal prefix meN- in Malay1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 June 2014

HOOI LING SOH  and
HIROKI NOMOTO
HOOI LING SOH*
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota
HIROKI NOMOTO*
Affiliation:
Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
*
Authors' addresses: (Soh) Institute of Linguistics, University of Minnesota, 75 E River Rd., Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA[email protected]
(Nomoto) Department of Southeast Asian Studies, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, 3-11-1 Asahi-cho, Fuchu, Tokyo 183-8534, Japan[email protected]
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Abstract

One issue in the analysis of degree achievements is whether or not what are called degree achievements are in fact achievements (Hay, Kennedy & Levin 1999, Kearns 2007, Rothstein 2008a). In this paper, we offer evidence from Malay that they are. Our evidence involves findings about the aspectual effect of the verbal prefix meN- in degree achievement sentences, which may receive a natural account under an approach where degree achievements are lexically specified as achievements, but are difficult to explain if they are not. We propose that meN- merges with a verbal projection (VP) that describes eventualities with stages, in the sense of Landman (1992, 2008). This requirement explains meN-'s apparent effect on telicity in degree achievement sentences and the absence of such an effect in non-degree achievement sentences. It also accounts for the restricted distribution of meN- in stative sentences (Soh & Nomoto 2009) and regular achievement sentences. While certain aspectual parallels exist between the verbal prefix meN- and the English progressive, we argue that meN- is not a progressive marker, and that the parallels with the English progressive are due to the subcategorization requirement of meN-, which makes event stages more prominent in sentences with meN- compared to ones without. Our analysis supports the treatment of meN- as a light verb (v) (Aldridge 2008; Nomoto 2008, 2011; Sato 2012), rather than a marker of voice (Voice) (Cole, Hermon & Yanti 2008).

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 51 , Issue 1 , March 2015 , pp. 147 - 183
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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Footnotes

[1]

The current research is supported by a Grant-in-Aid from the Graduate School, University of Minnesota (awarded to Hooi Ling Soh) and by the JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B) (#23720199 awarded to Hiroki Nomoto). An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 14th International Symposium on Malay/Indonesian Linguistics, Minneapolis, MN, USA (April–May 2010). We thank the audience at the meeting for comments. We are grateful to the three anonymous JL referees for helpful comments. All remaining errors are ours.

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