El atributo de resultado en la lengua inglesa: un transpositor aspectual.

Abstract

In the vast literature concerning the ancient and controversia! issue of aspect two opposite views are clearly differentiated: in one of them, aspect is considered to be simply a lexical property of verbs ( e.g., Vendler; Kenny; Chen); and according to the other, aspect is a highly complex sentential property not only determined by the lexical meaning of its verbal component, but also by a wide range of grammatical elements such as tense, morphological markers, adverbial expressions and verbal arguments (e. g., Dowty; Mourelatos; Tenny; Pustejovsky; Verkuyl). Since our main purpose in this paper is to offer further evidence in favour of this second approach, we present an aspectual analysis of the English resultative construction, exemplified in the clause The gardener watered the tulips flat. Our analysis will demonstrate (i) that the aspectual class and properties of such a construction derive from a merging process whereby a resultative secondary predicate, flat, is attached to an already existing verbal predication, The gardener watered the tulips; (ii) and that this resultative predicate is an aspectual transposing constituent that systematically transforms the aspectual nature of the verbal predication it combines with, no matter its type, into a syntactically derived accomplishment.