Path-oriented Telicity and the Extended Verb Phrase Structure

Path-oriented Telicity and the Extended Verb Phrase Structure

  This paper is about the interaction in aspectuality between the main verb and its path-indicating (verbal noun) object. With a focus on the Korean verbal noun construction, I propose that the event-denoting verbal noun object serves to provide a (measurable) path argument for the heavy verb hata "do" to be reinterpreted as denoting a telic event with a definite endpoint. In doing so, I reveal that the Korean accusative case particle -(ℓ)ul on the verbal noun object plays a key role as a telicizer, imposing a terminus on the path-indicating verbal noun object. To capture this distinctive aspectual property in phrase structure, I propose an extended verb phrase structure, [vP-aspP-VP], where the feature composite, [telic/acc], of the verbal noun object gets checked against the head of small aspP, to explain the smallest movement of a verbal noun object to [Spec, small aspP].