KIND-LEVEL PREDICATES OF EVENTS INSIDE ANOTHER PREDICATION
Niina Ning Zhang
July 2021
 

Kind level predicates of events such as three times, the third time, and occasionally can occur as a predicate of an independent predication, or appear as an adverbial, with an event kind-denoting expression as their argument. The reduced forms of such predicates can surface inside a nominal of another predication, e.g., Four thousand ships passed through the lock last year; Susi bought a second guitar, and An occasional sailor strolled by. This paper argues that these predicates are displaced from their base-positions so that an event kind-denoting expression in the verbal category can be merged as the subject in the event-kind predication. The proposed overt movement displaces the categorial features of an expression, leaving its semantic features in situ, an operation symmetrical to a covert movement, which displaces the semantic features without categorial features.
Format: [ pdf ]
Reference: lingbuzz/006101
(please use that when you cite this article)
Published in: Accepted by Studia Linguistica
keywords: event kind, frequency, numeral, ordinal, categorial feature, semantics, syntax
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