Abstract
This paper analyzes the ingredients of a Romance construction, henceforth named the V ben V construction, consisting of a verb and its theme object in combination with a degree adverb ben ‘{well, really}’ followed by a verb in past participle or an adjectival form. It describes the properties and restrictions of the various constituents involved in this construction, and it presents a new analysis focusing on the properties of the main predicate, the theme object, the degree adverb ben and the degree phrase ben+VPP/A. It accounts for the potential manner and result readings of the adjunct constituent that ben introduces (i) by postulating that the ben+VPP/A modifier always predicates of the (sub)event expressed by the verb (an activity or a change of state), (ii) by associating manner with a do verbal layer, and result with a become verbal layer, and (iii) by identifying different aspectual structures in the complement position of the degree adverb.
Acknowledgement
We would like to thank Elena Castroviejo as well as two anonymous reviewers of The Linguistic Review for their comments and suggestions. This research was supported by the following grants: Spanish MINECO (FFI2014-52015-P and FFI2014-56968-C4-1-P) and Catalan Government (2014SGR1013). The first author also acknowledges an ICREA Academia award.
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