Among the mechanisms in Japanese which express the Aspect of a sentence, verbs can combine together using the conjunctive te. A restricted range of verbals can occur as second conjunct, including verbs of being (iru, aru), of giving and receiving (ageru, morau), and of coming and going (kuru, iku). For example, the progressive form is expressed with the conjunction te iru:In some cases the addition of the second conjunct results in a change to the way in which the argument structure is projected, and in some cases it does not. Hasegawa (1992) distinguishes these as Valence Changing (V-C) and Valence Maintaining (V-M) conjunctions. Te iru exemplified in (1) is a V-M form, though te aru is notable as a V-C form. In example (2), though nokosu on its own is an Accomplishment which projects a transitive frame, when it is expressed in conjunction with te aru it takes a single nominal argument.(1) Sugiyama-san ga odotte imasu. Mr Sugiyama-NOM dance-TE be-POLITE `Mr Sugiyama is dancing.'When these conjunctions are classified according to the aspectual class of the first conjunct, a set of regular patterns emerges. For instance, te iru can be preceded by an Activity, an Achievement or an Accomplishment, though te aru, according to some native speakers, can be preceded only by an Accomplishment verb.(2) Nimotsu ga nokoshite aru. luggage-NOM leave-TE be `The luggage has been left.'In this talk I will examine some of these patterns and seek explanations for the regularities using, in particular, Pustejovsky's (1995) theory of subeventual structure.
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