Martha McGinnis: Idioms (reply to Heidi Harley)

[Martha McGinnis]

>So the question is, how do we distinguish between
>the 'build the house' accomplishments, which don't
>allow the 'for' modification, and the progful
>achievements?

This sounds like a question for Higginbotham: wasn't he the one
claiming that they should be distinguished?  However, it looks like
there's an answer:

>"Anita Mittwoch's (1991) paper 'In defence of
>Vendler's achievements', Belgian Journal of Linguistics
>vol 6, pp. 71-85 ... talks about the 'die/win the race' type,
>and says that their progressives aren't like real
>process progressives because they can't be modified by
>continuative 'still' or be in complements to 'stop,
>start, continue, keep' and so on."

OK, so now we have SIX verb classes -- call them states, activities,
delimited activities, accomplishments, progful achievements, and
progless achievements. The claim still holds, though: idiomatic and
non-idiomatic VPs have the same range of aspectual possibilities.
Let's focus on the classes I may have confounded earlier:

Delimited activities: in an hour, for an hour, progressive, stop Ving
Non-idiomatic: climb the mountain

(1) He showed me the ropes in a couple of days.
(2) He showed me the ropes for a couple of days.
(3) He's showing me the ropes.
(4) He stopped showing me the ropes when Sue arrived.

Accomplishments: in an hour, *for an hour, progressive, stop Ving
Non-idiomatic: build the house

(5)  I went to pieces in minutes.
(6)??I went to pieces for minutes. (OK only with result-modification)
(7)  I'm going to pieces again.
(8)  I stopped going to pieces when Sue arrived.

Others like this: make the grade, fall apart, lose one's marbles

Progful achievements: in an hour, *for an hour, progressive, *stop Ving
Non-idiomatic: win the race

(9)   I found my feet in a month.
(10)??I found my feet for a month. (OK only with result-modification)
(11)  I'm still finding my feet.
(12) *I stopped finding my feet when Sue arrived.

Others like this: cross the Rubicon, bury the hatchet

I'm afraid I have no insights at all regarding Heidi's Big Question
-- i.e., whether these six should be primitive aspectual classes, or
just six of many, or six permutations of a smaller number of
primitive classes.  But at least I think it's clear that idioms
aren't aspectually 'special'.

Cheers,
Martha


mcginnis at ucalgary.ca