Introduction

Abstract

This is a book about phrase structure. The main claim is that there is an inflectional domain within what is traditionally known as the VP—an inflectional domain that appears sandwiched between two lexical (thematic) domains. Doing research on a basic component of phrase structure involves drawing on data from a wide variety of constructions from a wide variety of languages. The goal is to understand phrase structure, not to present a detailed analysis of any one construction or any one language. A recurring theme in the research, however, is the use of this inner inflectional domain to encode what has come to be known as Inner Aspect—the aspect that determines the endpoint of an event. For this reason, that I characterize this inner inflectional domain as Inner Aspect.