Abstract
In English, the internal constituency of an event is obligatorily expressed by means of non-progressive versus progressive aspect. It is also represented linguistically by means of lexical aspect, and thus verb semantics. The two types of distinctions are shown to lie at two different levels of schematicity in the Integrated Model of Aspect (IMA, Kokorniak 2018). Although particles constitute only an additional tool in aspectual profiling in English, they are very productive at the level of lexical aspect in profiling minor aspectual differences that main verb semantics and inflection cannot reflect. The particles that the verb think can be combined with include out, over, through and up. Monolingual learners’ dictionaries suggest that think out, think over and think through can be used interchangeably. Their definitions indicate that in all three cases the particles designate a careful and thorough mental process. The study presents an aspectual contour of think and the particles that the verb can be combined with, and displays that each particle constitutes an elaboration of the mental path in a slightly different way. Their semantic contribution to the aspectual verb profile is shown and located in the IMA continuum, while corpus examples depict their use.
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© 2021 Faculty of English, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland
Articles in the same Issue
- Introduction
- A grammatical construction in the service of interpersonal distance regulation. The case of the Polish directive infinitive construction
- Real-life pseudo-passives: The usage and discourse functions of adjunct-based passive constructions
- The network of reflexive dative constructions in South Slavic
- On motivation and incoordination in grammar – The case of two Polish exclamative constructions
- When three is company: The relation between aspect and metaphor in Russian aspectual triplets
- Between spatial domain and grammatical meaning: The semantic content of English telic particles
- An aspectual contour of phrasal verb constructions with English think
Articles in the same Issue
- Introduction
- A grammatical construction in the service of interpersonal distance regulation. The case of the Polish directive infinitive construction
- Real-life pseudo-passives: The usage and discourse functions of adjunct-based passive constructions
- The network of reflexive dative constructions in South Slavic
- On motivation and incoordination in grammar – The case of two Polish exclamative constructions
- When three is company: The relation between aspect and metaphor in Russian aspectual triplets
- Between spatial domain and grammatical meaning: The semantic content of English telic particles
- An aspectual contour of phrasal verb constructions with English think