Skip to main content
Bare plurals and achievements: a case study of aspectual verbs

Abstract

This paper aims to analyse in what way Brazilian Portuguese bare plurals affect the aspectual structure of a sentence whose VP is headed by an achievement verb. In order to achieve this goal, we will study the interaction of these VPs composed by achievements with aspectual verbs. We will argue that: a) achievements do not have the property of S-cumulativity (Rothstein, 2004), b) aspectual verbs select as complements predicates which have the property of S-cumulativity, and c) the property of S-cumulativity is the semantic contribution given by bare plurals to the aspectual structure of the sentence. Based on these ideas, we predict that the sentences formed by the combination of an aspectual verb and a VP whose structure is [achievement verb – NP] will be grammatical only if the NP complement of the achievement verb is a bare plural. This is the way by which this constituent will satisfy the selectional constraints imposed by the aspectual verb.

How to Cite

Bertucci, R., Vinicius, M. & Santos, N., (2010) “Bare plurals and achievements: a case study of aspectual verbs”, Journal of Portuguese Linguistics 9(1), 117-137. doi: https://doi.org/10.5334/jpl.113

Downloads

Download PDF

423

Views

139

Downloads

Share

Authors

Roberlei Bertucci (Dept de Linguística, FFLCH, Universidade de S. Paulo Av. Prof. Luciano Gualberto 403 Cidade Universitária 05508-900 São Paulo, SP, Brasil)
Marcus Vinicius (Lunguinho Dept de Linguística, FFLCH, Universidade de S. Paulo Av. Prof. Luciano Gualberto 403 Cidade Universitária, 05508-900 São Paulo, SP, Brasil)
Nize da Rocha Santos (Paraguassu Dept de Linguística, FFLCH, Universidade de São Paulo Av. Prof. Luciano Gualberto 403 Cidade Universitária, 05508-900 São Paulo, SP, Brasil)

Downloads

Issue

Publication details

Licence

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0

Identifiers

Peer Review

This article has been peer reviewed.

File Checksums (MD5)

  • PDF: 837428c3e6e436ef3da3ab434cf74c5a