Johnson 2004 - CDLI - UCLA

BNBV inal predicate: it is, in other words, non-agentive. This yields a zero-marked,
absolutive/nominative experiencer such as lugal.e igi “the king’s eye” in opposition to an
oblique, typically locative-terminative case-marked experienced object such as gig.e
“wheat” at the end of the event in conformity the expectation that the theme of an
achievement such lugal.e igi “the king’s eye/perception” is non-agentive.
The last point I would like to bring up in this section has to do with the relative
agentivity and affectedness of the theme or subject in a progressive achievement.
Achievements have a curious way of taking as a direct object a noun the referent of
which is not affected by the verb in any way at all: in “Mary reached the summit” (cf.
Rothstein 2004, 138), the summit is not affected by Mary’s action at all, likewise in “Paul
spotted the train,” nothing has happened to the train and it is Paul who has been affected
by the event. Rothstein starts out, in a rather involved discussion of the issue with the
following sentence (Rothstein 2004, 138, ex. 36).
(58) Mary is reaching the summit.
Rothstein points out that since progressive achievements bear a number of similarities to
accomplishments in that the progressive/imperfective aspect adds an activity predicate
meaning “she is going” to an otherwise momentary achievement “she reached the
summit.” Because of this, (58) can be thought of as either an activity or an achievement:
as an activity, Mary would be the single, non-agentive argument of an intransitive
predicate, but the agentivity or affectedness of Mary in an achievement predicate is much
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