Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 1 of 1
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Internal Structure Of Semelfactive Predicates In English, Lynn C. Nelson
Internal Structure Of Semelfactive Predicates In English, Lynn C. Nelson
Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers
This thesis presents an analysis of the internal structure of semelfactive predicates. I propose that the lexical aspect class of semelfactives consists of three sub-categories: (i) semelfactive predicates with internal plurality, (ii) semelfactive predicates which are uni-directional and (iii) semelfactive predicates with plurality of participants. Based on these sub-categories, I further propose that the feature of instantaneity attributed to semelfactives (Smith 1997), should not be used, as semelfactives are in actuality not instantaneous events. Furthermore, I propose that an additional feature of atomicity, which distinguishes between events with plurality and those without, should be added to the binary features of …