Aspectual interpretation of achievement and accomplishment predicates in the presence of durative phrase: A minimalist approach

Aspect is one of the most important structural and semantic features of the verbs. The ‘durative phrase’ and its effect on the aspectual interpretation of different verbs is amongst important issues in surveying lexical aspect too. In order to determine the effect of durative phrase on the aspectual interpretation of sentences which include achievement and accomplishment, the present research aims to analyze aspectual interpretation of telic predicates (achievement and accomplishment) in the presence of the durative phrase in Persian. The results of the analysis based on MacDonald’s (2008) approach and within the Minimalist Program framework showed that appending durative phrase to reversible achievements and cyclic achievements leads to end-time interpretation while its presence in overthrowing irreversible achievement leads to atelic single event interpretation. The analyzing of accomplishment predicates showed that, like achievement predicates, the effect of the presence of durative phrase not only depends on the quantitative and non-quantitative feature of the object but also it depends on the nature in terms of reversibility or irreversibility.