3.1. Prospective and Nonprospective Interpretations of Stehen vor NP.

A corpus study of the prospective stehen vor NP construction needs to take into account that the prospective reading is just one interpretation of the construction. Among other interpretations, stehen vor NP can have a literal interpretation as well, as shown in 9 (in section 3.2, I discuss another nonliteral interpretation of the construction). In its literal—or heavy—use, stehen is a posture verb that expresses that its subject referent is located at some spatial location in an upright posture. The verb contributes the posture information, whereas the exact spatial location of the subject referent is indicated by the verb’s PP complement, as in 9.

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In contrast, in the prospective construction, stehen is semantically reduced.Footnote ² The sentence in 10 does not make a statement either about the subject referent’s spatial location or about its posture. Rather, the main predicational content is contributed by the PP complement. The construction locates the subject referent of stehen in a temporal prephase of the event of bankruptcy. Dropping the PP forces a heavy interpretation of stehen, which affects the interpretation of the entire predication. Without the vor-PP, the sentence can only mean that the clinic building was still standing in 1996.

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The prospective interpretation of 10 results from a metaphorical interpretation of the originally spatial preposition vor ‘in front of’. In its spatial interpretation, vor designates a spatial region in front of an entity (Wunderlich & Herweg Reference Wunderlich and Herweg1991:778). The conceptual metaphor time is space (for example, Boroditsky Reference Boroditsky2000) maps spatial relations onto temporal relations. As a result, vor comes to designate a phase preceding the eventuality denoted by the PP-internal noun (Fleischhauer & Gamerschlag Reference Fleischhauer and Gamerschlag2019:147). The prospective interpretation depends on the vor-PP alone. For example, in 11, vor der Explosion lit. ‘in front of the explosion’ alone has a prospective interpretation.

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As mentioned above, Fleischhauer & Gamerschlag (Reference Fleischhauer and Gamerschlag2019) and Fleischhauer et al. (Reference Fleischhauer, Gamerschlag, Kallmeyer and Petitjean2019) analyze stehen as a light verb, and the prospective stehen vor NP construction as an LVC (German: Funktionsverbgefüge). Light verbs are semantically reduced and are frequently used for expressing aspectual notions such as stativity, inchoation or causation (for example, von Polenz 1987). As a light verb, stehen fulfills two functions in the prospective LVC. First, it licenses the vor-PP as its complement (just as the heavy verb stehen licenses the spatial PP complement). Second, it introduces a state predication (following Fleischhauer & Gamerschlag Reference Fleischhauer and Gamerschlag2019:148, in examples such as 11, this state predication is expressed by the light verb stehen). As already mentioned in the introduction, prospective aspect expresses a relation between a current state and a prospective future eventuality. The prospective future eventuality is expressed by the vor-PP, while the state is contributed by the light verb (see Fleischhauer & Gamerschlag Reference Fleischhauer and Gamerschlag2019 and Fleischhauer et al. Reference Fleischhauer, Gamerschlag, Kallmeyer and Petitjean2019 for a semantically compositional analysis of prospective stehen vor LVCs).

The discussion in this section of different interpretations of the stehen vor NP sequence as well as the brief consideration of LVCs provide the relevant background for the corpus study of the prospective construction presented in the next section. In the remainder, I use the terms prospective LVC and prospective stehen vor NP construction interchangeably.

3.2. Identifying Prospective LVCs in the Corpus.

To establish whether the prospective LVCs are indeed restricted to CoS nouns, it is necessary to identify the (semantic) range of PP-internal nouns. To achieve this aim, I searched the German Reference Corpus (Deutsches Referenzkorpus, DeReKo; Leibniz-Institut 2021), which consists of more than 50.6 billion words, using the online search tool COSMAS II (Leibniz-Institut für Deutsche Sprache 2020). The search was carried out in the written language archive (Archiv W), which contains written texts of different genres, both printed and from the internet (for example, Wikipedia, chats).

LVCs cannot be easily identified within corpora since the two components, the light verb and the PP, are not necessarily adjacent but can be separated by various elements (Fleischhauer Reference Fleischhauer2021:64). For example, in 12, the PP vor der Explosion is separated from the light verb stehen by the subject NP der Motor ‘the engine’ and the two adverbial modifiers allerdings ‘although’ and kurz ‘short’.

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The only restriction is that the light verb and the PP occur within the same sentence. Therefore, the search was carried out with the use of the string &stehen /s0 vor, which resulted in 1,241,876 hits.Footnote ³ DeReKo internally restricts the extraction of hits to 10,000 sentences. For the current study, the maximal number of sentences was extracted and manually annotated by the author and a second native speaker. Nineteen sentences were incomplete and therefore excluded from the annotation process. Once the annotation procedure was set up as described below, the annotation process was completed independently by the two annotators.Footnote ⁴ After all the sentences were annotated, the results were compared. In case of disagreement, a third annotator was consulted to reach a majority consensus for each sentence.

The annotation procedure consisted of four steps. The first three steps are outlined in this section. They were used to identify prospective LVCs within the entire pool of tokens. The fourth annotation step applied to PP-internal nouns within prospective LVCs only and is discussed in section 4.1. In the first annotation step, the grammatical status of the vor-PP was annotated. Since the vor-PP is a complement of both heavy and light stehen, it was important to distinguish adjunct PPs (such as in 11 above) from complement PPs. The relevant criterion separating adjuncts from complements is whether the PP can be left out without affecting the interpretation of the verb or the acceptability of the sentence. In 13a, the vor-PP cannot be left out without resulting in an ungrammatical sentence; the PP is therefore classified as a complement of stehen. This is different for the vor-PP in 13b, which is used as a temporal adjunct and can be left out without affecting grammaticality. Examples such as 13b are not relevant for the present analysis.

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The results of the first annotation step are summarized in table 1. The 3,870 sentences in which the vor-PP is not realized as the complement of stehen were excluded from further analysis.

Table 1. Results of the first annotation step: grammatical status of the vor-PP.

In the second step, it was established whether stehen was used as a heavy verb or as a light verb. The criterion applied in this case was whether stehen could be substituted by a verb from the same semantic class. When used as a light verb, stehen cannot be replaced by another posture verb, such as sitzen ‘sit’ or liegen ‘lie’, as shown in 14.

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The verb stehen also has a purely locational use (Kaufmann Reference Kaufmann1995:111), as shown in 13a. In this use, there is no reference to the subject referent’s upright posture. To identify such locational constructions, the verb stehen was substituted with purely locational predicates such as positioniert sein ‘be positioned’ and lokalisiert sein ‘be localized’. For example, sentence 13a allows stehen to be replaced by one of the purely locational predicates, as shown in 15a. In contrast, sentence 14 does not allow such replacement, as shown in 15b.

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The results of the second annotation step are summarized in table 2.

Table 2. Results of the second annotation step: heavy versus nonheavy use of stehen ‘stand’.

The third annotation step consisted in identifying the prospective LVCs among nonheavy uses of stehen, as not all of them have a prospective interpretation. Prospective LVCs can be paraphrased as “the subject referent is close to the eventuality denoted by N (if nothing intervenes)”. In contrast, LVCs such as vor dem Problem stehen ‘face a problem’, as in 16, cannot. This LVC is better paraphrased as “be confronted with the problem”.

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Fleischhauer & Gamerschlag (Reference Fleischhauer and Gamerschlag2019:141) term examples such as 16 “challenge LVCs”. Prospective LVCs and challenge LVCs can be differentiated on the basis of the three criteria summarized in table 3.

Table 3. Criteria to differentiate prospective LVCs from challenge LVCs.

First, only prospective LVCs license a temporal interpretation of spatial modifiers such as kurz ‘short’. In example 12 above, kurz specifies the time interval between the current state and the onset of the prospective event. Second, only prospective LVCs allow the substitution of stehen by light sein ‘be.’ As shown in 17a, stehen and sein can both be used in prospective LVCs. However, substituting stehen by sein in a challenge LVC results in an ungrammatical sentence, as shown in 17b (repeated 16).

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Third, challenge LVCs can be causativized by the light verb stellen ‘put’, as illustrated by the pair of examples in 18.

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In contrast, prospective LVCs cannot be causativized at all. Thus, there is no causative version of, for instance, vor der Explosion stehen ‘be on the verge of explosion’ meaning ‘to cause something to be on the verge of explosion.’ The sentence Sie stellten den Motor vor die Explosion lit. ‘They put the motor in front of the explosion’ can only have a literal interpretation but not a prospective one.

The combination of the three criteria allows us to identify 1,606 sentences containing a prospective LVC. The results appear in table 4.

Table 4. Results of the third annotation step prospective paraphrase.

As table 4 shows, the individual occurrences can be classified into 305 types, based on the PP-internal noun: Prospective LVCs that belong to each type share the same PP-internal noun. A complete list of the nouns occurring within prospective LVCs can be accessed online.Footnote ⁶ Thus, in addition to identifying the prospective LVCs among constructions with nonheavy stehen, the third annotation step also yielded a list of individual PP-internal nouns within these LVCs. The majority of the remaining nonheavy uses of stehen represent instances of challenge LVCs, and the rest resist a clear classification and seem to be idiomatic constructions. As the focus of the current paper is on prospective LVCs, I do not go into further details concerning the nonprospective stehen vor NP constructions.

4.1. Identifying CoS Nouns.

CoS predicates, irrespective of whether they are verbal or nominal, express a change in a property of their theme argument. As such, all CoS nouns are eventive and dynamic. However, just like CoS verbs, CoS nouns vary with respect to durativity: Some of them are durative (accomplishment predicates), while others are punctual (achievement predicates). To identify nouns that belong to each category, different tests are required, as discussed below.

For the purposes of this analysis, based on Ehrich & Rapp Reference Ehrich and Rapp2000:253, I adopt the following two criteria the authors propose for identifying durative CoS nouns. First, only durative CoS nouns license time-span adverbials such as innerhalb von drei Wochen ‘within three weeks.’ In 19, the time-span adverbial indicates that the result state—being ruined—has been achieved after a time span of three months.

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Second, only durative CoS nouns can be modified by incremental adjectives such as allmählich/schrittweise ‘gradual’ (for a similar analysis of the English adverb gradually, see Piñón 2000). In 20, the noun Ruin ‘ruin’ is modified by the incremental adjective allmählich, which results in the interpretation that the ruining of the house proceeded incrementally.

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Unlike durative CoS nouns, punctual CoS nouns can be identified on the basis of their compatibility with time-point adverbials such as in der 80. Minute ‘in the 80th minute’ or um Mitternacht ‘at midnight.’ Time-point adverbials go best with achievement nouns but are considerably worse in combination with durative CoS nouns or non-CoS nouns (such as process nouns or state nouns; Asher Reference Asher1993:23). For example, reporting on a soccer game, it is possible to say Der Ausgleich passierte in der 80 Minute ‘The tie happened in the 80th minute’, which qualifies Ausgleich ‘tie’ as an achievement noun.

In contrast, Bluten ‘bleeding’ is a process noun, and as such is incompatible with a time-point adverbial. The sentence Das Bluten der Kuh passierte/ereignete sich um Mitternacht ‘The bleeding of the cow happened at midnight’ is odd. In combination with the durative CoS noun Verbluten ‘bleeding to death’, um Mitternacht ‘at midnight’ indicates the time at which the result state was attained and thereby focusses on the punctual final culmination.

As the fourth annotation step, the above-mentioned criteria were applied to nouns occurring in the PP-internal position of the prospective LVCs. The results of the annotation are summarized in table 5. Roughly 80% of the nouns are classified as denoting a change of state, which shows a clear preference for such nouns.Footnote ⁷ These results weaken the CoS hypothesis significantly, since roughly one fifth of the nouns do not belong to this type.

Table 5. Results of the fourth annotation step CoS nouns

Among the most frequent non-CoS nouns are Spiel ‘game’ (29), Krieg ‘war’ (11), and Title ‘title’ (6); the nouns Rente ‘retirement’, Rekord ‘record’, and Unterschrift ‘signature’ appear 3 times each.Footnote ⁸ In the remainder of this section, I concentrate on the non-CoS nouns, which account for almost 20% of the sample, and suggest a semantic classification for them. The two relevant semantic features underlying the classification are i) eventiveness and ii) stativity.

4.2. Eventiveness.

As argued in section 3.1, the main predicational content of prospective LVCs is contributed by the PP-internal noun. It is reasonable to suppose that the construction selects for an eventive noun in PP-internal position.

To identify eventive nouns among non-CoS nouns two criteria were used. First, only eventive nouns can be targeted by temporal and aspectual modifiers such as gestrig ‘yesterday’s’, um fünf Uhr ‘at five o’clock’, and andauernd ‘continuous’. Second, only eventive nouns can be realized as the subject of a verb indicating a temporal duration, such as dauern ‘last’ (Fábregas et al. Reference Fábregas, Marín and McNally2012:170f.). It is possible to say that a process, such as a game, or a state, such as marriage, lasts for a certain period of time, as shown in 21a. In contrast, one cannot say that a title has a temporal duration, as shown in 21b. In fact, nouns such as Titel ‘title’ do not denote an eventuality at all; for the purposes of this study, I refer to such nouns as “noneventive nouns”.

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Punctual nouns denote events without any significant duration. Thus, they do not easily combine with dauern ‘last’ but can be realized as the subject argument of geschehen ‘happen’—which is a criterion for dynamicity—and combine with time point modifiers, as already mentioned in the section 4.1. The results are presented in table 6.

Table 6. Noneventive PP-internal nouns in prospective LVCs.

As the table shows, 15 nouns within the sample do not denote an eventuality. They are listed along with their individual token frequency (N). The remaining non-CoS nouns are eventive and are discussed further in section 4.3.

4.3. Stativity.

The second relevant semantic feature for a classification of non-CoS nouns is stativity, which distinguishes event-denoting nouns from state-denoting ones. The term process noun refers to event-denoting nouns which do not express a change of state, whereas the term state noun refers to state-denoting nouns. There exist a number of criteria for (nominal) stativity (see Fábregas & Márin 2012:38f. and Fábregas et al. Reference Fábregas, Marín and McNally2012:172ff. for a detailed discussion of the different tests), but for reasons of space, I only use one test. Process nouns can be realized as the subject of predicates such as geschehen/passieren ‘happen’, beenden ‘stop/finish’, and unterbrochen sein ‘be interrupted’, as in 22a, while state nouns cannot, as shown in 22b (Fábregas et al. Reference Fábregas, Marín and McNally2012:170, Fleischhauer Reference Fleischhauer2021:66).

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On the basis of this test, 13 nouns have been classified as state nouns and 31 nouns have been identified as process nouns. The state nouns are listed in table 7, and the process nouns are listed in table 8.

Table 7. State nouns occurring PP-internally in the LVCs of the prospective family.

Table 8. Process nouns occurring PP-internally in the LVCs of the prospective family.

To summarize, the discussion in this section has revealed that four different semantic types of nouns are attested within the prospective LVCs. The relative frequency of the different types within the sample is presented in table 9.

Table 9. Relative frequency of the different semantic noun types within the sample.

These data show that the hypothesis that the prospective LVCs are restricted to CoS nouns must be rejected, if the restriction is interpreted as applying to the semantic type of PP-internal nouns. However, it may be suggested that this is a restriction on the type of eventuality that nouns denote when they appear in the construction. This would allow for mechanisms such as coercion to affect the interpretation of non-CoS nouns. Such a view has been expressed for the English prospective be on the way construction by Van Rompay et al. (Reference Van Rompay, Davidse and Petré2015), as I already mentioned in section 2. The authors propose that non-CoS predicates are shifted toward a transitional interpretation. I discuss this issue in the next section and propose a distinction between the transitional meaning contributed by the construction and the meaning of the PP-internal noun.

6.1. Current Relevance and Perfect Aspect.

Current relevance is a central concept in the analysis of the perfect aspect. However, it is a vague notion and, as Depraetere (Reference Depraetere1998:599) states, it is usually either defined as “continuance of the result of the past event into the present” (Dahl & Hedin Reference Dahl, Hedin and Dahl2000:391) or not defined at all. I do not aim at articulating a precise definition of current relevance; instead, I discuss this notion in the context of my analysis of three types of nouns presented in the next section.

The literature on the perfect aspect offers different definitions of the perfect, for instance, “resultative perfect”, “experiential perfect”, and “hot news perfect” (see Comrie Reference Comrie1976, Ritz Reference Ritz2012, among others for a discussion of the different takes on the perfect, and especially Thieroff Reference Thieroff1992, chapter 6.5 for German data). The different views of the perfect aspect gave rise to different analyses, with the two most prominent being the current relevance approach and the “extended now” approach (see, for instance, McCoard Reference McCoard1978).Footnote ⁹ The current relevance approach, on which I focus in this study, is usually formulated with reference to the so-called resultative perfect, as shown in examples such as Peter has arrived (and he is still there). The perfect in this sentence—as opposed to the simple past—gives rise to the implicature that the result state (that is, Peter being here) still holds at the reference time (see Anderson Reference Anderson and Hopper1982:232, Thieroff Reference Thieroff1992:175). The continuance of the result state into the present is a pragmatic inference licensed by the perfect aspect.

Dahl & Hedin (Reference Dahl, Hedin and Dahl2000) propose that current relevance is both a graded notion and a pragmatic concept (see Schaden Reference Schaden2013 for a similar view). Although a continuant result is the most salient way in which a past event can be of current relevance, it is not the only one. Imagine that John is at a party and is supposed to be picked up by Peter. If someone says “Peter has arrived”, Peter’s arrival is relevant as it signals that John is about to leave the party. Thus, as far as the speaker is concerned, it is not the continuance of the result state that is relevant at the reference time (Peter is here), but the consequences of this result state (John is leaving the party). A different example is provided by Carey (Reference Carey, Stein and Wright1995). She states that the sentence John has mowed the lawn so he can come to the movies indicates “that the past event (the completion of the lawn mowing) is related to John’s present ability to go to the movies” (p. 83). In this case, the relevant inference is explicitly stated.

Yet the prototypical view of the notion current relevance is in terms of the continuance of a result, as mentioned above. This explains why there is a strong preference for telic predicates in resultative perfect constructions. However, it is obvious that current relevance may not have the same interpretation when it comes to the connection between present and future eventualities. Since a future eventuality has not been actualized yet, its prospective result cannot continue into the present moment. This means that the notion current relevance requires different approaches depending on whether it applies to a past or to a future eventuality.

6.2. Current Relevance and Prospective Aspect.

In this section, I analyze three types of nouns that occur in prospective LVCs: CoS nouns, process nouns that have antonyms (such as Krieg ‘war’), and process nouns that do not have antonyms (such as Spiel ‘game’). Based on this analysis, I propose a definition of current relevance that makes it applicable to both, perfect and prospective constructions.

The first type of noun to be discussed here denotes a change of state. This is the most frequent type of noun within the analyzed data. As discussed above, at first glance, the notion current relevance is not applicable to prospective constructions. Unlike perfect constructions, which express the continuation of the result of a past event into the present, prospective constructions describe events that have not yet happened, and so their results may not hold at the reference time. To extend the notion current relevance to prospective constructions, I propose that in this case, what is relevant for the present is not the result of a past event but the future change of state. Prospective constructions with CoS nouns describe a future event in which the subject referent undergoes a change of state. Intuitively, this change definitely has current relevance for the subject referent, as it will affect him or her directly. However, if the referent is inanimate, as in 28 (repeated 23), it seems strange to say that the prospective change has any current relevance.

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The prospective completion of the remaining smaller jobs is definitely not relevant for the jobs themselves. However, the context of the example suggests that the completion is relevant for other event participants. The sentence following the one in 28 says that it would allow one to move on to the next step in the development project. Thus, the prospective change of state is of current relevance for the project managers and the investors who participate in the development project.

Under this approach, in case of prospective LVCs, what has current relevance is the prospective change of state. This change may be perceived as relevant either for the subject referent or for other event participants who benefit in some way from the change affecting the subject referent. Note, however, that in either case, current relevance is predicated upon a prospective attainment of some result state. I use the term prospective result to capture the idea that it represents the mirror image of the continuous result expressed by perfect constructions.

Based on the data that contain prospective LVCs, the most common interpretation of current relevance is in terms of prospective result. The preponderance of this interpretation explains the clear preference of prospective LVCs for CoS nouns. As these nouns lexically specify a result, they provide a natural basis for this interpretation.

The second type of noun addressed in this study denote processes that are logically incompatible with some other eventuality. The beginning of the process denoted by such a noun entails the end of the opposite eventuality. As discussed in section 5, the noun Krieg ‘war’ has an antonym, Frieden ‘peace’. In 29, Krieg appears in a prospective LVC: Two countries—Russia and Turkey—are about to go to war with each other.

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The event denoted by the noun war has two or more participants. One can think of different ways in which a prospective war might be of current relevance to them. For example, a physical war—as opposed to, for instance, a trade war—is a violent event that causes damage and suffering.

However, the noun Krieg does not specify a result state, and it is possible for two enemies to declare war but not end up fighting at the end. Nonetheless, current relevance of the prospective result is applicable in such examples as well. I propose that in this case, the prospective result is achieved by ending the eventuality denoted by the noun’s antonym—in the case of 29, peace.

Finally, I have also analyzed process nouns that do not have antonyms, such as Spiel ‘game’. A result-based interpretation of current relevance seems less obvious for such nouns: They do not lexically specify a result state; neither do they denote a process whose beginning entails the ending of some other eventuality. Within the analyzed sample, Spiel is the most frequently occurring noun from this category. As a starting point, consider the sentence in 30.

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If this sentence is presented without any context, native speakers are unsure as to whether or not to accept it. However, as soon as one provides an appropriate context, the acceptability of the sentence increases. Such context can be provided, for instance, by common knowledge that the Brazilian team is one of the best teams in the world, and that playing against the Brazilians is either very challenging (for the team) or very exciting (for the team and/or the fans). To be able to interpret this sentence, the listener needs a context that would make this particular event of gaming relevant for its participants.

Additional evidence for the view that examples such as 30 require contextual support to gain current relevance is provided by the fact that within the analyzed sample, Spiel is always accompanied by an attributive modifier. These modifiers frequently express an evaluation of the prospective event, as shown in 31 and 32. The sentence in 31 reports on a football game, and the modifier conveys the importance of the game for the subject referent. It is clear from the context that the subject referent is a football team, which is facing the finals in the national football league for the very first time.

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In 32, the event is evaluated as challenging for the subject referent, which is conveyed by the modifier schwer ‘difficult’. From the context of this sentence, it becomes clear that the team is about to play against teams that so far have been more successful in the ongoing season.

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Unlike the evaluative interpretation in 30, which is based on context alone, the evaluative interpretation in 32 arises based on the overt modifier. However, in both examples, the prospective event is being evaluated. I propose that by evaluating the prospective event as challenging or important the speaker signals current relevance for its participants.

Besides modifiers that convey the difficulty degree or the importance of an event, the noun Spiel also occurs with enumerating modifiers such as erst- ‘first’, fünfzigst- ‘fiftieth’ or Final- ‘final’. Enumerative modifiers mark the number of occurrences of an event. This could be the first or the last occurrence of an event in a series that include a specified number of such events—for instance, the first/last game of a season. Alternatively, this can be a one-off occurrence that would count as important in a given context—for instance, an anniversary. An example is shown in 33: The next game will be the 50th game in the coach’s career, which is explicitly referred to as an anniversary.

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“Having completed 50 games as a coach” is a new property of the subject referent gained after the competition of the prospective gaming event. Although Spiel is not a CoS noun, the enumerating modifier gives rise to a prospective result interpretation of the prospective LVC.

Note that changing the modifier in 33 may affect the interpretation of the prospective result. For example, if fünfzigsten ‘fiftieth’ is replaced with letzten ‘last’, the sentence would mean that after the game the subject referent will no longer be the coach with the German Bundesliga. Furthermore, using a different modifier may cancel the prospective result interpretation all together. For example, using wichtigsten ‘most important’ rather than fünfzigsten ‘fiftieth’ would give rise to an evaluative interpretation of the prospective LVC. The interpretation would be that the prospective game is the most important one in the subject referent’s career as a Bundesliga coach. For example, it might decide whether this would be his first victory as the coach.

6.3. Ways to Convey Current Relevance.

I am now in a position to provide a tentative answer to the question of how a prospective eventuality gains current relevance. Based on the analysis of three types of nouns presented in section 6.2, I have identified two ways in which potential future eventualities may become relevant for an eventuality participant. First, a prospective eventuality is of current relevance if there is some prospective result associated with that eventuality. The result may be inferred based on the lexical semantics of the noun, the inceptive meaning of the construction (as with noneventive and state nouns) or derived from the context. If the result interpretation arises from lexical meaning, it can be based either on the lexically specified result (CoS nouns) or on the entailed change from the eventuality denoted by the noun’s antonym to the eventuality denoted by the noun (nouns such as Krieg ‘war’). This analysis provides a natural explanation for the high frequency of CoS nouns, since such nouns give rise to the prospective result interpretation due to their lexical meaning. Second, a prospective result of some eventuality is of current relevance if it is evaluated as important or challenging for the participants of that eventuality.

The discussion of the noun Spiel in the previous section is particularly revealing as it highlights the role of context in establishing current relevance. It has been demonstrated that there exist (lexical) cues that trigger the current relevance interpretation. In particular, adnominal modifiers allow inferring a prospective result or—more often—trigger an evaluative interpretation of the prospective eventuality. Such cues are more important in case of nouns such as Spiel than CoS nouns, since the latter license a prospective result interpretation by virtue of their lexical meaning. In case of nouns such as Spiel, a result inference does not arise on the basis of their lexical meaning alone. Although the discussion of process nouns has been restricted to Krieg and Spiel, they are representative of a broader category of nouns showing a similar behavior. For example, one of the nouns in the sample that are similar to Krieg is Unruhe ‘riot’, whereas nouns similar to Spiel include Partie ‘game’ and Einsatz ‘use’. What is especially remarkable is that all of the Spiel-type nouns in the sample occur with the same adnominal modifiers.

Finally, the discussion has shown that current relevance is not necessarily judged from the perspective of the subject referent of the prospective LVC. Rather, a prospective eventuality can be of current relevance to some other individual who might somehow be affected by it.

Before closing this section, I come back to the examples in 7 repeated below as 34.

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As mentioned in section 2, Verbluten ‘bleeding to death’ is attested within prospective LVCs, but the noun Bluten ‘bleeding’ is not. Verbluten denotes a change of state, and so its occurrence in the construction is not surprising, especially as it expresses the potential death of the subject referent. In contrast, the example in 34b is infelicitous, as expected. The noun Bluten denotes a process. Without an appropriate context, the future event of the victim bleeding does not necessarily have any current relevance. The noun does not entail the attainment of a result. Therefore, a prospective result interpretation is not available for 34b. Without any supporting context, bleeding is also neither particularly challenging for the subject referent. However, this does not mean that such a context might not exist but it just shows that if it exists, it is hard to find.