The Syntax of Achievements

Abstract

In this chapter, I investigate the structure for Achievements. I use the morphology of Malagasy and Tagalog to probe this structure, particularly the make-up of V1 and ASP, the two categories most closely tied to the nature of the predicate classes. I draw several conclusions. One is that the V1 in transitive Achievements in these languages is stative and ASP simply encodes the endpoint of a change of state. This raises the question of how the external argument of a transitive Achievement is merged into the structure. A case of morpheme deletion in Tagalog is brought to bear on this issue. I come to the conclusion that the external argument of a transitive Achievement such as find is in Spec, ASP and not Spec, V1P.