Situation aspectual properties of creation/consumption predicates

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the situation aspectual properties of creation and consumption verbs. More specifically, it aims to explore how telic interpretations arise in this verbal domain. The analysis which is couched in a scalar semantic framework will focus on how created/consumed themes contribute telicity given the unique, verb-mediated relationship that obtains between these themes and the scales of creation/consumption verbs. Although it is Hungarian verbs that constitute the main data set of this study, examples from English and some other languages will also be discussed for crosslinguistic comparison.

The syntax of inner aspect in Hungarian

“…É. Kiss 2008a; Kardos 2012, 2019), we show that telic readings in Hungarian are also available with verbs complemented with CCOs in the absence of any other aspectual marking elements. We show that while telicity in the previous case, i.e.…”

“…A telic reading is available if the theme the table is meant to measure out the event of the verb, whereas an atelic interpretation is also possible if the verbal predicate is understood iteratively. On the other hand, examples like ate the soup/ate the sandwich in (8b) are also characterized by variable telicity, as discussed by Dowty (1979), Hay et al (1999) and Kardos (2019), among others. In the presence of a resultative predicate like clean or a verbal particle like up, however, the examples in (7b) and (8c) become clearly telic.…”

“…Kiss 2008a, b; Kardos 2012, 2016); (ii) non-subcategorized pseudo-objects (5b) (see Piñón 2001; Kiefer 2006; Csirmaz 2008b; Farkas & Kardos 2018, 2019a, b; Farkas 2019, 2020a, 2021); and (iii) subcategorized created/consumed objects (6) (see É. Kiss 2005, 2008a; Kiefer 2006; Csirmaz 2008a; Piñón 2008; Kardos 2019): As shown above, all the elements in boldface may result in telicity, but there are differences in their telicity-inducing effects. Whereas the verbal particle meg in (2b), the result predicate laposra ‘(lit.)…”

“…objects (CCOs) (É. Kiss 2004Kiss , 2005Kiss , 2008aKiefer 2006;Kardos 2012Kardos , 2016Kardos , 2019Farkas & Kardos 2018, 2019aFarkas 2019Farkas , 2020aFarkas , 2021Hegedűs 2020), there is no consensus on the right analysis regarding their syntactic behaviour. In this work, our main goal is to attribute the event aspectual interpretations associated with the different marking elements to the syntactic configuration characterizing these elements.…”

“…Although there is a sizeable literature on various aspectual markers such as verbal particles (VPrts), result predicates (RPs), pseudo-objects (POs) or created/consumed objects (CCOs) (É. Kiss 2004, 2005, 2008a, b; Kiefer 2006; Kardos 2012, 2016, 2019; Farkas & Kardos 2018, 2019a, b; Farkas 2019, 2020a, 2021; Hegedűs 2020), there is no consensus on the right analysis regarding their syntactic behaviour. In this work, our main goal is to attribute the event aspectual interpretations associated with the different marking elements to the syntactic configuration characterizing these elements.…”