Can you do it once or only once? An experimental study of activity and semelfactive verbs

摘要

This study investigates the aspectual similarities between activities and semelfactives in Japanese, focusing on iterativity. Croft (2012) and Latrouite & Naumann (2001) argue that activity is interpreted as a succession of transitions. Moens & Steedman (1988) point out that progressive coerces a semelfactive predicate into an activity by iterating the point interpretation. On the other hand, Shida & Nakatani (2017) argue that semelfactive predicates have a frequentive operator (Van Geenhoven, 2005) built in, so iterativity is present in their logical meaning. We experimentally examined the distinction between activities and semelfactives by utilizing a presuppositional contextual contrast between ikkai 'once' and ikkai-dake 'only once', the latter of which requires alternatives with different numbers of iteration times. We conducted a self-paced reading experiment and found that ikkai-dake 'only once' induced slower reading times for activities but not for semelfactives. We conclude that activities and semelfactives have different aspectual properties in that activities are interpreted as single whole events while semelfactives involve an iterative operator in their logical meaning.