Processing non-culminating accomplishments in European Portuguese

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Zichen Zhang
Universidade do Porto
https://orcid.org/0009-0006-3810-400X
Juliana Novo Gomes
António Leal
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6198-2496

This paper investigates the processing and interpretation of non-culmination sentences and subjects’ agentivity in European Portuguese. A five-point Likert scale is employed to test the native speaker’s judgment regarding the acceptability of five types of non-culminating accomplishment sentences put forward in Guéron and Vogeleer (2021), providing evidence that speakers accept non-culminating accomplishments to a certain extent, albeit acceptance differs depending on the circumstance. Furthermore, while the subject’s agentivity does have some bearing on the acceptability rating, it does not appear to be a requirement for non-culminating accomplishments in European Portuguese. A self-paced reading experiment also shows processing differences amongst five types of non-culminating accomplishments and that subject agentivity does not affect processing time.

Keywords
non-culminating accomplishments, aspect, sentence processing, self - paced reading, Likert - scale

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How to Cite
Zhang, Zichen et al. “Processing non-culminating accomplishments in European Portuguese”. Isogloss. Open Journal of Romance Linguistics, 2025, vol.VOL 11, no. 7, pp. 1-24, doi:10.5565/rev/isogloss.572.
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Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

(c) Zichen Zhang, Juliana Novo Gomes, António Leal, 2025

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