One transition point hypothesis

Abstract

Transition points, the beginnings and ends of events, are linguistically significant, as they figure prominently in predicate classification. This work studies how transition points are represented in language and proposes the One Transition Point Hypothesis (OTPH), which states that each event can linguistically encode at most one transition point, thereby ruling out the cooccurrence of both transition points in the same structure. I derive this hypothesis by building on Travis’s (1991, 2002, 2005, 2010) proposal of an inner Asp head, which I argue is responsible for licensing both transition points. This analysis carries significant implications for predicate classification as well as for θ-role assignment.