Aspectual mismatches in the interpretation of idioms: the view from AspP

Abstract

The present paper is an attempt to uncover some of the (syntactic) properties of idioms that present aspectual mismatches between their literal and idiomatic interpretation. The novelty value of the proposal lies in its syntactic rather than semantic or cognitive approach: whereas most accounts in the literature deal with this conundrum from a semantic and cognitive point of view, the present analysis provides a syntactic aspectual account by relying on AspP.

Keywords

• idiom
• telic
• atelic
• aspectual mismatch
• aspect phrase (AspP)