Result states and repetitive adverbs

Abstract

This paper considers some paradoxes that arise in connection with repetitive adverbials in English. We propose a simple syntactic structure of verbal predicates along the lines of Ramchand (2008) and show how the apparent paradoxes can be resolved with that structure and some straightforward assumptions. One observation is that repetitives behave differently with verbs taking affected subjects (like read) than with verbs taking non-affected subjects (like paint). Another observation is the fact that repetitives are not uniform in their behaviour with respect to resultatives. Once again, structural assumptions, specifically, distinct structural positions of the resultatives, account for this varied behaviour.