Abstract

The primary purpose of this article is to empirically support a semantic hypothesis, the Complementarity of Intentionality and Affectedness (J. Lee, 2016), according to which a minimal accomplishment predicate (the combination of a verb and its complement(s) which is a causative accomplishment) cannot entail intention and result simultaneously. This semantic principle was initially proposed based on the interpretations of Korean accomplishment predicates and English conative alternations (J. Lee, 2016). However, some English verbs of killing (e.g., murder) are strong potential counterexamples to the hypothesis, since at first glance they appear to entail both intention and result at the same time (Dowty, 1991; Talmy, 1985; Lemmens, 1998; Kamp, 1999-2007; inter alia). In this paper, I present the data involving English verbs of killing collected from the Web, and argue that the English verbs of killing do not actually entail intention, so they are not a problem with the hypothesis, but rather they support it. (Kyung Hee University)

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