Agent control and the acquisition of event culmination in Basque, Dutch, English, Spanish and Mandarin

In this paper we investigate if there is a connection between the acceptance of non-culmination in child language and a seemingly similar phenomenon in certain adult languages. In Mandarin, among other languages, adults accept telic-perfective clauses for non-culminating situations. The types of verbs that allow such readings are referred to as non-culminating accomplishments. Recently, novel developments in semantic theory have established that subject type plays a role in the acceptance of non-culmination in these languages. According to the Agent Control hypothesis (Demirdache & Martin... Mehr ...