Location and locatum verbs revisited: Evidence from aspect and quantification

© 2015 Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest. In this paper we claim that location and locatum verbs are grammatically different, contrary to some recent analyses (Mateu 2001; 2008; Harley 2005). While aspectual tests are known to distinguish both classes, we adduce new evidence from degree quantification tests pointing in the same direction. In particular, location verbs seem to be change-of-state verbs, and locatum verbs behave rather like degree achievements and unergative verbs of variable telicity. We claim that these differences must be accounted for in the syntactic representation of locative verbs. While location verbs involve an abstract bounded path, articulated through the combination of a Path preposition and a Place preposition, locatum verbs involve an abstract predicative preposition that allows for degree quantification of the root and contextually determined (a)telicity.