Re: painting the door green

Now I'm wondering how you would diagram these predicatives, and
whether the diagram would differ between depictives and resultatives.

I still feel there's a distinction to be made within the resultatives.
 "you could see where she'd started to paint the door green" makes
sense; "started to drink the well dry" doesn't really work, as the
character of the drinking act in progress isn't necessarily affected
by the intent to drain every last drop.  The paint color is almost a
depictive, but of the action rather than either argument.



On 8/25/08, René Uittenbogaard <ruittenb@...> wrote:
> 2008/8/24 Lars Finsen <lars.finsen@...>:
>> 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
>
> Predicative seems indeed to be the English term for the "bepaling van
> gesteldheid", thanks.
> It seems to be a collective term for both "depictive" and
> "resultative", and "resultative" was the exact term I was looking for.
>
> 2008/8/24 Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>:
>> On Sun, Aug 24, 2008 at 12:24 PM, René Uittenbogaard <ruittenb@...>
>> wrote:
>>> He is painting the door *green*.
>>> She bought the store *empty*.
>>
>> I don't know the term, I'm afraid, but just FYI, the second one
>> doesn't work for me - IML, it can only mean "the store was empty
>> when she bought it", whereas I gather you intend it to mean "she
>> bought everything in the store", on analogy with "he drank it dry".
>
> Yes, I indended it as a resultative - the direct Dutch analogous
> sentence works as such for me, and I assumed that in English it would
> work the same way. Interesting to hear that it doesn't.
>
> Thanks everyone for the replies :)
>
> René
>
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Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>