Non‐culminating accomplishments

Abstract

Abstract This paper focuses on non‐culminating accomplishments and distinguishes them from accomplishments used atelically. It delineates two different sources of event culmination denials after non‐progressive accomplishment sentences, namely, the perfective or a modal operator encoded in the VP. Furthermore, it argues that non‐culminating accomplishments also differ from non‐maximal accomplishments, which entail event culmination relative to a coarse granularity level, but allow culmination denials relative to a finer granularity level, via the non‐maximal use of the (in‐)definite description used to introduce the incremental theme argument.