resultative
- adjective
- /rɪˈzʌltətɪv/
- Specialized
- In the sentence "She has finished her homework," the verb form indicates a resultative action that has been completed.
Examples
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The English present perfect—at least the resultative perfect, which reports something that has recently happened—is notorious for not allowing definite past-tense temporal adverbials:
Academic text (2006) -
"Even in a grammatical construction like resultative sentences, there are cognitive patterns."
Academic text (2004) -
The present perfect is also not readily negated, at least in its continuous and resultative readings, though it is more readily negated in its existential use.
Academic text (2006) -
The son/sun pun is resolved, upon closer analysis, as a reference to the sailor/tar and not to the ship/sloop by the following discussion of resultative constructions and sound patterns.
Academic text (2006) -
Unbounded states (35) are interpreted as the continuous perfect, something still true of the present; bounded states are interpreted as either the continuous (36) or the existential perfect (37), but neither is normally interpretable as the resultative perfect:
Academic text (2006) -
The resultative construction in the phrase "He fell asleep" shows that the action led to a specific state.
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Using a resultative adjective, we can say "The door is closed" to indicate the completed action of closing.
Surface Forms
Morphology
Etymology
The word resultative comes from the common word result, which means 'the outcome', and the ending -ative, which means 'related to' or 'showing'. So a resultative adjective is one that shows the result or final state caused by an action.
