Johnson 2004 - CDLI - UCLA

(32) a. Becky won the poker game in half an hour.
b.
% Becky wins the poker game in half a hour.
c. Becky will win the poker game in half an hour.
(33) a. Susan noticed the suitcase in 5 minutes.
b.
% Susan notices the suitcase in 5 minutes.
c. Susan will notice the suitcase in 5 minutes.
In both (32) and (33), each of the three English tenses are exemplified, but the present
tense form in each example, (32b) and (33b) respectively, is not particularly felicitous in
pragmatic terms, yielding either a curious historical present or a kind of apodictic
promise about future events. These two—otherwise quite anomalous—readings
correspond quite precisely, in my view, to the type of cause and purpose adverbial
meanings associated with reduplicated BNBV inal forms mentioned earlier in this section.
As secondary/adverbial predicates go, this makes a certain amount of sense: (a) activity
predicates which are inherently durational but lack an endpoint correspond to depictive
secondary predicates that hold throughout the duration of the main predicate, (b)
accomplishments, which have both duration and an endpoint, correspond to resultative
secondary predicates in that the durative part of the accomplishment limits the temporal
span of the secondary predicate to the same span as the main predicate, while the
endpoint further limits the duration of the secondary predicate to the final state of the
main predicate, but (c) achievement predicates lack the cumulative duration of the
127