Aspectual interpretation of achievement and accomplishment predicates in the presence of durative phrase: A minimalist approach

Document Type : مقالات علمی پژوهشی

Authors
M. Aminifar 1
Z. Abolhasani Chimeh 2
B. Modarresi 3
1 PhD Candidate in Linguistics, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran
2 Associate Professor of Linguistics, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
3 Assistant Professor of Linguistics, Tehran Central Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran
10.29252/LRR.14.6.12
Abstract
Aspect is one of the most important structural and semantic features of the verbs. the ‘durative phrase’ and its effect on the aspectual interpretation of different verbs is amongst important issues in surveying lexical aspect too. In order to determine the effect of durative phrase on the aspectual interpretation of sentences which include achievement and accomplishment, the present research aims to analyze aspectual interpretation of telic predicates (achievement and accomplishment) in the presence of the durative phrase in Persian. The results of the analysis based on MacDonald’s (2008) approach and within the Minimalist Program framework showed that appending durative phrase to reversible achievements and cyclic achievements leads to end-time interpretation while its presence in overthrowing irreversible achievement leads to atelic single event interpretation. The analyzing of accomplishment predicates showed that, like achievement predicates, the effect of the presence of durative phrase not only depends on the quantitative and non-quantitative feature of the object but also it depends on the nature in terms of reversibility or irreversibility.



1. Introduction

In different languages of the world, aspect is one of the most important structural and semantic features of the verb which encodes in different ways. In domain studies of aspects, linguists distinguish between grammatical and lexical aspects. The lexical aspect which is the intrinsic and semantic feature of the verb refers to the time structure of the event but the grammatical aspect appears in the surface sentence and shows the viewpoint of the speaker toward the sentence time structure. According to lexical aspect, verbs are divided into four groups. State and activity predicate which are telic and achievement and accomplishment predicate which are atelic. “Durative phrase” and its effect on aspectual interpretation is one of the topics which are mentioned in surveying the verb aspectual interpretations. The main goal of the current research is surveying the aspectual interpretation of achievement and accomplishment which are telic predicates in the presence of a durative phrase and what is the effect of adding a durative phrase on the sentence which contains achievement and accomplishment predicates. Surveying this topic will be done according to Mac Donald’s approach (2008) which has been mentioned in the Minimalist Program General Framework.



1.2 Research Questions and Hypotheses

The main question that this research tries to answer is what is the effect of adding a durative phrase on the achievement and accomplishment predicates? The primary hypothesis is the durative phrase is compatible with both achievement and accomplishment telic predicates.



2. Literature Review

Non–Iranian researchers like Alsina (1999), Ramchand (2003), borer (2005), Thompson (2006) and MacDonald (2008) have presented different syntactic and semantic analyses of lexical aspects. Mainly Iranian researchers have classified verbs based on their event and aspectual structure in Persian. According to reviewed research, research about aspectual interpretation of achievement and accomplishment predicates in the presence of durative phrases hasn’t been surveyed in Persian yet.



3. Methodology

The methodology of this research is analytic-descriptive. For this purpose, in this research, we scrutinized the effect of durative phrases in Persian sentences that contain achievement and accomplishment predicates in the Minimalist Approach Framework.



4. Results

The result of this research shows that appending durative phrase to reversible achievements and cyclic achievements leads to end-time interpretation while its presence in overthrowing irreversible achievement leads to atelic single event interpretation. However, destructive irreversible achievements and some overthrowing irreversible achievements that have momentary nature aren’t compatible with durative phrases. The analysis of accomplishment predicates shows that, like achievement predicates, the effect of the presence of a durative phrase not only depends on the quantitative and non-quantitative features of the object, but also depends on the nature in terms of reversibility or irreversibility. Against Mac Donald’s overgeneralization, there are some exceptions and violation cases about the aspectual interpretation of accomplishment predicates in the Persian language. Finally, according to the impact of internal arguments and the nature of predicates, the presence of a durative phrase is effective on the aspectual interpretation of achievement and accomplishment predicates.


Keywords

Subjects

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Language Related Research
Volume 14, Issue 6 - Serial Number 78
January and February 2023
Pages 373-403