Topic: HUMAN SEMANTICS
The aspectual impact of French locative goal PPs
by Olivier Bonami
This paper presents an attempt to account for the aspectual class alternations induced by locative goal PPs in combination with motion verbs. It is noted that in French, two semantically distinct classes of prepositions (e.g. dans vs. jusqu'a ) give rise to telic eventuality descriptions in combination with basically atelic motion verbs. Moreover, the resulting sentences exhibit differing and peculiar aspectual properties. Thus the conventional analysis, which states that the PP provides a spatio-temporal boundary to the event described by the verb is at least insufficient.
The proposed analysis rests on the idea that goal PPs function as co-predicators (Gawron 1986). Sentences containing goal PPs are composite eventuality descriptions, the verb and the preposition describing different parts of a structured event. The peculiar aspectual properties of sentences containing goal PPs is related to their composite nature. A situation-theoretic formalization is proposed, which allows to view the aspectual impact of the goal PPs as a side effect of co-predication.
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Posted by Tony Marmo
at 01:01 BST
