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Re: painting the door green

From:Eldin Raigmore <eldin_raigmore@...>
Date:Sunday, August 24, 2008, 20:29
On Sun, 24 Aug 2008 20:49:16 +0200, Lars Finsen <lars.finsen@...>
wrote:

>Den 24. aug. 2008 kl. 18.24 skreiv René Uittenbogaard: > >> I'm looking for the English grammatical term for what is known in >> Dutch as the "bepaling van gesteldheid" >> <http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bepaling_van_gesteldheid> >> http://tinyurl.com/6eaf8p >> >> It is a constituent which is, among others, found in sentences like: >> >> He is painting the door *green*. >> She bought the store *empty*. >> They applauded *the skin off their hands*. > >You must be thinking of the predicative. One of the first (of many) >things I have learnt on this list. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ >Predicative_(adjectival_or_nominal) > >LEF
That Wikipedia article has: "We painted the door white." (adjectival predicative of the object) given as an example. So clearly Wikipedia thinks that's what it is; an adjectival predicative of the object. But that doesn't mean that's the only, or even the best, term to use. --------------------- Could the term René Uittenbogaard was looking for have anything to do with "factitive"? Or "resultative"? (the result of the action is that the door's state ends up being "green".) The door is an "incremental theme" in Dowty's sense; one can tell how far along the action has progressed by how much of the door is green.

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Jim Henry <jimhenry1973@...>