This article explores semantic and syntactic properties of a set of Romance deadjectival verbs sharing comparable derivational morphology. I note: (i) asymmetries between languages where the choice of verbalizer does not become a significant variable; (ii) languages where the use of the verbalizer is associated with distinct syntactic and semantic properties. In Italian, the verbalizer defines a maximal structural contrast in a nontrivial derivation. Italian and Catalan verbs pattern as statives. Yet lack of eventivity and scalarity in Italian defines an empirically relevant distinction between stative types reflected by syntax (unergative behaviour correlated with lack of affected theme/change-of-state denotation). This differentiates Italian from Spanish or Catalan forms in not showing two key properties: (i) unaccusativity/transitivity; (ii) change-along-scale entailment. A continuum from minimally to maximally different aspectual and syntactic configurations obtains. Although the focus is set on deadjectival verbs and the unusual properties of Italian -ggiare, the results are extendable to further data.

The Aspect Hypothesis (AH) claims that L2 beginners use the perfective morpheme first with telic predicates (e.g., ‘arrive’, ‘build the house’) and only later with atelic ones (e.g., ‘know’, ‘work’). In contrast, the Lexical Underspecification Hypothesis (LUH) claims that beginners cannot represent the lexical aspect of L2 predicates (hence the telic vs. atelic distinction), because this distinction is a separate component of verb meaning. To investigate whether L2 learners distinguish between telic and atelic predicates, this study compares the responses from 299 L2 Italian learners (with different L1 backgrounds) and responses from 91 native speakers (NS) to the “for/in + time span” adverbial test (Dowty 1979). The analysis shows that native speakers and L2 learners’ responses to the adverbial test diverge significantly, with learners’ proficiency and – to a lesser extent – L1 modulating their ratings. The results suggest that native speakers and beginning-intermediate L2 learners might not represent telicity alike, either because L2 aspectual competence is still developing or because beginning learners rely on the semantic representations of their L1. These findings support the predictions of the LUH and suggest caution when trying to assess learners’ aspectual representations.

This paper investigates the properties of a particle, lǝ, in Yixing Chinese that invariably denotes telic reading, obligatorily fronts definite and bare NP objects to the topic position, and imposes past event reading in most situations. It is argued that lǝ is a functional item bearing a quantity feature in the sense of Borer (2005b) and is hence responsible for telicity. Following Partee et al. (1987), Partee (1990), Filip (1997) and Borer (2005b), we propose that lǝ functions as a verbal quantifier, and more specifically, as a verbal universal quantifier, which needs to bind a variable in its quantificational domain. The fronting of definite and bare NPs is compatible with this variable-binding requirement because a trace, and hence a variable, is left as a result of the movement. It is further argued, following the analysis in Lin (2000, 2003, 2007), that lǝ bears a perfective feature. When there is no specific reference time, speech time is taken as default reference time, resulting in the past event reading. lǝ, therefore, bears both an inner aspectual feature and an outer aspectual feature. This paper exhibits how telic items can behave differently across languages and shows the possibility of bundling two temporal features (inner and outer aspectual features) on a single functional item.

This paper investigates aspectual meanings that resultative morphemes in Mandarin Chinese contribute to interpretations of the entire predicates, and in particular the culmination readings they bring out of the originally non-culminating accomplishments. Two resultative morphemes are studied: -wán and -diào. I argue that while both morphemes give rise to culmination readings, the culmination readings are derived in different ways. I propose that -wán expresses termination, which comments on the progress of an event. The culmination readings of the telicized accomplishments by -wán are obtained indirectly. By contrast, -diào expresses culmination, commenting directly on the resulting culmination state. The proposed analysis for the two morphemes is couched in the framework defined by Krifka (1989, 1992, 1998), which models the relations between events, individuals, and times as a series of homomorphic relations between mereological part structures. Following Zucchi & White (2001), I analyze -diào in terms of a maximalization over patient, which transfers mereological properties from the individual structure to the event structure, explaining the culmination reading, and -wán a maximalization over time, which transfers mereological properties from the time structure to the event structure, explaining termination, and then transfers the mereological properties to the individual structure, explaining the culmination reading.

Light verb constructions (LVCs) in English and Romance languages are somewhat unique crosslinguistically because LVCs in these languages tend to have semantically similar synthetic verb counterparts (Zarco 1999): e.g. make an appearance and appear. This runs contrary to assumptions in linguistic theories that two competing forms are rarely maintained in a language unless they serve distinct purposes (e.g. Grice 1975). Why do English LVCs exist alongside counterpart synthetic verbs, especially given that synthetic verbs are arguably the more efficient form (Zipf 1949)? It has been proposed that LVCs serve an aspectual function (Prince 1972, Live 1973, Wierzbicka 1982, Tanabe 1999, Butt & Geuder 2001), as there are telic LVC counterparts (e.g. have a thought) of atelic verbs (e.g. think).  This proposal has been difficult to evaluate without a large-scale resource providing a markup of both LVCs and counterpart verbs. Addressing this gap in resources, the present research describes the development of guidelines for LVC annotation in the English PropBank (Bonial & Palmer 2015). The focus of this article is the subsequent analysis of these annotations, aimed at uncovering corpus evidence of what contexts call for the use of an LVC over a synthetic verb. The corpus study shows that the general function of LVCs is not an aspectual one and provides distributional evidence that the ease and variety with which LVCs can be modified is the general motivating factor for the use of an LVC.

Based on a discussion of correlations between syntactic position, prosodic cues, aspect and generic vs. non-generic interpretations, this paper substantiates that Danish Bare Plural count nouns (BPs) have a wider distribution than Bare Singular count nouns (BSs). BPs, unlike BSs, can occur in subject position, function as both generic and existential arguments, and appear with all aspectual verb classes. However, BPs and BSs expressing a non-generic, modificational meaning concur in object position of activity verbs and stative verbs with a possession relation implicature. These V+BP and V+BS structures, it is suggested, form a progressive continuum of three different subtypes of pseudo-incorporation (PI), namely (i) PI of BPs (low integration as in spise æbler ‘eat apples’), (ii) PI of type 1 BSs (medium integration as in male hus ‘paint house’), and (iii) PI of type 2 BSs (maximum integration as in spille violin ‘play violin’).

Readers actively construct representational models of meaning when reading text, and they do so by drawing on a range of kinds of information, from the specific linguistic forms of the sentences to knowledge about how the world works (Ferretti, Kutas, & McRae, 2007; Madden & Zwaan, 2003). The present set of studies focused on how grammatical aspect is integrated into a situation model and how it is connected to other dimensions of model construction. In three experiments, participants were asked to complete sentences with a choice of grammatical aspect form (perfective or imperfective). The test sentences systematically varied four dimensions of the sentence that were linked to grammatical aspect in different ways: telicity and transitivity (both linked through their semantic representations), subject animacy (linked through an inference over semantic representations), and related location information (linked through an inference grounded in world knowledge). In addition, to examine the influence of discourse function (backgrounding vs. foregrounding) on aspectual choice different construction types were varied across experiments – specifically a fronted locative construction and the presence of a generic narrative opener (Once upon a time). The results found that aspectual choice depends on information linked to the semantic representation of grammatical aspect; however, in contrast to previous work (e.g., Ferreti et al., 2007) information grounded in world knowledge (location information) did not influence aspectual choice except when it was integrated in a specialized discourse construction.

This volume contains articles by Kristín M. Jóhannsdóttir, Ingebjørg Tonne, Mai Tungseth and Anne Tamm on perfectivity and telicity in some of the Nordic languages. In this introduction, we summarise the main claims and conclusions of each paper, and briefly discuss the recurring themes and differences in the analyses proposed in the articles included in this special issue of the Nordic Journal of Linguistics.

This paper discusses telicity and perfectivity in Estonian. Neither of these categories corresponds exactly to the Estonian object case alternation, which is argued to reflect predicate or clause aspectual properties and not the NP-related properties of objects. The aim of this account is to accommodate the systematic compatibility of verb classes with certain clausal aspectual object case marking patterns. The paper proposes a way of understanding the interaction between verbal and clausal aspect in terms of boundedness and formalizes it in the framework of Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG). The features of verbs and case markers determine the clausal aspect from different constituents at the syntactic level of constituent structure. The information is unified at another syntactic level, functional structure.