Johnson 2004 - CDLI - UCLA

depictive and secondary predicates in English and what Yoshikawa termed Gtn-stem and
D-stem reduplications in Sumerian (based on co-occurring Akkadian verbs in bilingual
texts); and in section 2.3, the classification of BNBV inal predicates in terms of secondary
predication is investigated with largely negative results.
The fact that BNBV inal predicates do not fit into Yoshikawa’s Gtn-stem/D-stem
opposition implies, for a number of reasons, that the BNBV inal predicates are
achievements in the typology of lexical aspectual classes formulated by Vendler (1967)
and subsequently extended in a number of ways by Dowty (1979). The classification of
BNBV inal predicates as achievements (which can be characterized as a telic event in which
the change between the initial state and the final state is instantaneous) fits quite nicely
with the particular semantics of the members of the class, particularly when the class is
defined in somewhat narrower terms using the additional criteria identified at the end of
section 2.3. But a formal diagnostic of some kind is still needed if only so as to prevent
circular argumentation since there is no independent source for semantic evaluations
other than the attestations of the particular verbs in context, that is to say, there is—in a
strict sense—no independent source for semantic evaluations whatsoever. There are only
two substantial tests for diagnosing an achievement predicate: achievements do not
normally appear in the progressive aspect (Rothstein 2004, 36-58), and when they do
appear in the progressive aspect, it is because they have been converted into a derived
accomplishment (Rothstein 2004, 123-147). Although “progressive aspect” (the term
used by Rothstein) is not necessarily equivalent to the “imperfective (marû) aspect”
familiar to most Assyriologists, in the following I use the term “progressive/imperfective
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