Introduction

In this chapter, attention will be given to cases adduced as counterexamples against the Plus-principle. The most famous one is undoubtedly anachronistic. Vendler's John pushed the cart looks like a counterexample to the Plus-principle: John is [+sqa], the cart is [+sqa], and it would be playing ostrich simply to call the verb push [-add to]. Yet the sentence can be used duratively. How come? And how serious a counterexample is this against the Plus-principle, which is the real foundation of a compositional approach to terminative aspect? For an answer to this question, I will discuss a set of verbs like push and stroke which are a sort of hybrid between [+add to] and [-add to]. When generalizing over the behaviour of the verbs push and related verbs in English and duwen and related verbs in Dutch, I shall use the term ‘push-verbs’. Their properties bring their analysis into the realm of a controversy between adherents to the so-called Small Clause Analysis and the so-called Complex Predicate Analysis for (terminative) sentences like John pushed the cart away. This is explained in section 14.2 and I shall take sides in favour of the (syntactic) Complex Predicate Analysis. This makes it possible to devise a semantics for verb stems and their argument frames in section 14.3: I will distinguish between a transitive scheme, an unergative scheme and an unaccusative scheme in which verb stems are (non-compositionally) inserted to form the lowest syntactic verbal category, the verb.