The Aspectual Influence of the Noun: (A)telicity, (A)symmetry, Incrementality and Universality

Abstract

Since Verkuyl (1972), we have known that a noun phrase can affect the (a)telicity of the verbal predicate. Since then, there have been both semantic and syntactic accounts of this aspectual influence of the noun (AIN). This raises the question of whether the AIN is best accounted for in semantic or syntactic terms, that is, whether it is more appropriately treated as semantic or syntactic in nature. In this article, I outline a representative range of semantic and syntactic approaches to the AIN with an eye to which of these accounts best handles three related observations: the independence of incrementality and the AIN, an asymmetry in aspectual contribution by count and mass nouns, and the non‐universality of the AIN.

Representation and processing of mass and count nouns: a review

“…This is one of several linguistically based semantic accounts (e.g., Verkuyl, 1972 ; Krifka, 1989 ). There are also a number of linguistically based syntactic accounts (e.g., Borer, 1994 ) (see also for a review of the different semantic and syntactic accounts MacDonald, 2010 ) which would however exceed this review.…”