Lecture | Com(parative) Syn(tax) Series
A Visual World study of culmination in Hindi perfective verbs
- Date
- Thursday 7 May 2026
- Time
- Series
- Com(parative) Syn(tax) Series
- Location
-
Lipsius
Cleveringaplaats 1
2311 BD Leiden - Room
- 1.30
Abstract
The Hindi two-way perfective contrast is known for permitting a non-culminating reading for accomplishments described with a simple (SV), but not with a complex (CV) perfective verb. I will present a Visual World eye tracking study with a sentence-picture matching task, testing offline and online preference for a completive interpretation of both types of perfectives in a neutral context (i.e., without defeating or denying the event's result state). Results suggest that, while Hindi speakers do show some offline preference for a completed event picture to match a SV predicate, that preference emerges long after the verb has been processed (in contrast to other perfectives that have been tested with this method). The culmination reading for the Hindi SV perfective therefore seems not to be a default received from its aspectual semantics, but an implicature driven by global pragmatic factors.