Johnson 2004 - CDLI - UCLA

check on quality or quantity of fields, materials, staples, animals,” and I have
interpreted the second line of the proverb as an extended sense of this meaning.
(31) Eduba Regulations, HT C3 (Karahashi 2000, 127)
ßeß.gal.e u 3 ba.dab 5 dub.be 2
igi bi 2.ib 2.kar 2.kar 2
126
The big brother, after taking the tablet in
order to examine it,
Although there is little if any direct evidence for the interpretation of reduplicated
BNBV inal predicates as cause or result clauses (primarily due to the fact that there are very
few cases and the contextual meaning is unclear in almost every case). If in future
additional evidence can be educed in favor of such an analysis, it would result in a rather
elegant system of adjectival/adverbial reduplication: atelic predicates would form the
equivalent of depictive secondary predicates (Gtn-stem reduplication), accomplishments
would form the equivalent of resultative secondary predicates (D-stem reduplication),
and achievements would form cause or result clauses with respect to the main predicate,
another form of secondary predication in a certain sense (for some orientation on the
topic of causal and purpose adverbial clauses, see Larson 2004, 10-12; Sawada and
Larson 2004).
Why this might be the case can be clarified to some degree by looking at the
behavior of achievement predicates in the unmarked or “present” tense in English: due to
the fact that achievements lack duration of any kind, ambiguous forms in English are
regularly interpreted so as to refer to either past or future events.