Milli mála - 01.01.2012, Side 152

152
GOING IS NOT BECOMING
felt throughout the hammering process (he felt tired and sweaty): it
is not naturally understood as describing how he became as a result
of the hammering process (he started feeling fresh and clean and
ended up feeling tired and sweaty), even though such a scenario is
perfectly pragmatically plausible. When we have a depictive, pre-
dicated of the subject, we can also order the secondary predicate at
the beginning of the clause, as in (4) (indeed this is often more
natural for subject depictives).
This difference apparently relates to another important difference
between resultatives and depictives: that depictives do not alter the
basic argument-taking and aspectual properties of the main verb
but resultatives do. In particular, resultative predicates turn atelic
activity predicates into telic result predicates. For instance, the verb
hammer is an atelic verb which does not specify any necessary end-
point or result, either with a direct object as in (5) or without one
as in (6), and so occurs naturally with the atelic measure phrase for
x time and not the telic measure phrase in x time.
(5) The blacksmith hammered the metal for hours/*in an hour
without any noticeable result.
(6) The blacksmith hammered away at the metal for hours/*in an
hour without any noticeable result.
Similarly, the adjective flat is a stative predicate, occurring naturally
with the copula in the simple present, not the progressive.
(7) The metal is flat.
(8) *The metal is being flat.
However, combined in this way (hammer … flat), the construction
describes a telic event in which an activity leads to a result. In this
case, the natural measure phrase is telic in x time, as in (9) unlike
activity hammer in (5), and the construction occurs naturally with
the progressive, as in (10) unlike stative flat in (8).
(9) The blacksmith hammered the metal flat in an hour/*for hours.
(10) The blacksmith was hammering the metal flat.
Milli_mála_4A_tbl_lagf_13.03.2013.indd 152 6/24/13 1:43 PM