Abstract
The present paper addresses the well-known alternation type “spray paint on the wall/ spray the wall with paint” which has received extensive attention in the literature. The discussion is based on Germanic data (English, German and Norwegian) and data from one Slavic language (Bulgarian). In trying to amend previous proposals (e.g. Tenny 1987, 1994, Jackendoff 1996) and resolve issues left open in those works, the current analysis suggests that the semantic properties of both entities involved in a situation denoted by “spray” are relevant for the aspectual properties of the respective constructions headed by “spray”, i.e. both the substance sprayed, and the surface subjected to spraying. It is proposed that the aspectual properties of such constructions reside primarily in the semantic characterization, including the ontological properties, of the latter, coupled to their linguistic realization as distinct types of noun phrases.
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