05.08.2013 Views

Perception verb complements in Akatek, a Mayan language

Perception verb complements in Akatek, a Mayan language

Perception verb complements in Akatek, a Mayan language

SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS

Create successful ePaper yourself

Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.

68 3. PERCEPTION VERB COMPLEMENTS IN ENGLISH<br />

(49) a. his shoot<strong>in</strong>g<br />

b. the shoot<strong>in</strong>g of him<br />

c. the shoot<strong>in</strong>g of his Vendler (1968), 48<br />

3.3. Agreement. Agreement of the complement <strong>verb</strong> and its arguments<br />

can only occur <strong>in</strong> that-PVCs (50-a). A constrastive ungrammatical<br />

example of an NI-PVC with agreement is provided <strong>in</strong> (50-b).<br />

(50) a. Jim heard that she s<strong>in</strong>gs a song.<br />

b. *Jim heard her s<strong>in</strong>gs a song.<br />

3.4. Tense/aspect. Similar to what was noted for agreement mark<strong>in</strong>g,<br />

tense mark<strong>in</strong>g like the past tense su x -ed can only occur on that-<br />

PVCs. 11 A contrastive ungrammatical example is aga<strong>in</strong> provided for<br />

an NI-PVC:<br />

(51) a. Isaw that he arrived.<br />

b. *I saw him arrived.<br />

The aspectual auxiliary have is ungrammatical with NI-PVCs, <strong>in</strong>g-<br />

PVCs and PNOMs, see (52), but grammatical with all the other complement<br />

types as shown <strong>in</strong> (53).<br />

(52) a. *I saw Mary have left. Mittwoch (1990), 111<br />

b. *Peter saw Mary hav<strong>in</strong>g left.<br />

c. *[Peter saw] John's hav<strong>in</strong>g cooked of the d<strong>in</strong>ner.<br />

Vendler (1967), 130<br />

(53) a. Peter remembered John's hav<strong>in</strong>g cooked d<strong>in</strong>ner<br />

b. I see them to have arrived. Bol<strong>in</strong>ger (1974), 77<br />

c. Peter saw that they had arrived.<br />

I follow Fillmore (1963) and Felser (1999) <strong>in</strong> assum<strong>in</strong>g that <strong>in</strong>g-<br />

PVCs are the progressive counterparts of NI-PVCs. NI-PVCs and <strong>in</strong>g-<br />

PVCs di er only <strong>in</strong> their speci cation for the feature [ progressive].<br />

Example (54) supports the hypothesis that NI-PVCs and <strong>in</strong>g-PVCs<br />

di er only m<strong>in</strong>imally with respect to their aspectual speci cation because<br />

they can be conjo<strong>in</strong>ed, and `constituents that can be conjo<strong>in</strong>ed<br />

are necessarily of the same type.' Declerck (1982b), p. 3.<br />

11 Bol<strong>in</strong>ger notes that tense mark<strong>in</strong>g is acceptable <strong>in</strong> secondary predications,<br />

which were excluded from the considerations <strong>in</strong> this chapter. The sentence <strong>in</strong> (i)<br />

can either be <strong>in</strong>terpreted as him be<strong>in</strong>g <strong>in</strong> a rejected state or as him be<strong>in</strong>g actively<br />

rejected by someone.<br />

(i) Isaw him rejected. Bol<strong>in</strong>ger (1974), 69

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!