Inner Aspect Crosslinguistically

This chapter explores the nature of Inner Aspect by investigating non-culminating accomplishments languages. In these languages, the unmarked way of saying ‘x killed y’ does not entail that y is dead. Intriguingly, in many of these languages, the morphology needed to encode entailment brings with it other meanings such as extra effort, nonintentionality, suddenness. First, a syntactic account of the role of this morpheme posits a morphologically realized endpoint in Inner Aspect within the predicate. Then this account is compared to an alternate view that concentrates on the semantics of the construction and the modal meaning of the morpheme. Finally, it is argued that phonological evidence must also be taken into consideration in any further study. The goal of the chapter is not to provide any solution, but to raise awareness of the relevant issues.