De l’existence des prédicats d’achèvements

Abstract

The very existence of achievements (defined as instantaneous eventualities) is often questioned in the literature, which is why our first objective is to maintain that this aspectual class does exist, in the verbal as in the nominal domains. Thanks to a series of tests, we distinguish three subclasses of achievements : pure achievements (mere boundaries), right-boundary achievements (boundaries that are preceded by preparatory activity), and left-boundary achievements (boundaries that are followed by a stative interval). We use this aspectual classification as a basis to study aspectual inheritance from verbs to morphologically related (derived) nouns.