ASPECTUAL MISMATCHES IN THE INTERPRETATION OF IDIOMS: THE VIEW FROM ASPP Imola-Ágnes Farkas * Abstract: The present paper is an attempt to uncover some of the (syntactic) properties of idioms that present aspectual mismatches between their literal and idiomatic interpretation. The novelty value of the proposal lies in its syntactic rather than semantic or cognitive approach: whereas most accounts in the literature deal with this conundrum from a semantic and cognitive point of view, the present analysis provides a syntactic aspectual account by relying on AspP. Keywords: idiom, telic, atelic, aspectual mismatch, aspect phrase (AspP) 1. Introduction It is a well-known fact that whereas some idioms are aspectually identical to their non-idiomatic counterpart, others are not. In this sense, Marantz (1997) and McGinnis (2002, 2005) argue that the aspectual class of most VPs is the same on their idiomatic and non-idiomatic interpretation, which means that the aspectual property of the idiomatic expression is derived compositionally. Some examples are: (1) a. saw logs [lit.] – atelic 1 b. saw logs [id.] (‘to sleep, to snore’) – atelic (2) a. kick the bucket [lit.] – telic b. kick the bucket [id.] (‘to die’) – telic In these cases, the VP has the same aspectual property both under the literal (a) and the idiomatic reading (b). In such and similar cases, the idiom has the same aspectual property as its non-idiomatic counterpart. But there are several idioms that are problematic for McGinnis’s claim that the aspectual interpretation on the idiomatic and non-idiomatic use of a predicate coincides. As revealed by more recent accounts such as Glasbey (2003, 2007), Mateu and Espinal (2007, 2013) and Espinal and Mateu (2010), in a number of cases the aspectual class of a VP is not the same on its idiomatic and non-idiomatic interpretation, which means that in these cases the aspectual property of the idiomatic expression is derived non-compositionally. This leads to what is generally known as the aspectual mismatch between the telic literal and the atelic non-literal interpretation of these idioms. As opposed to the previous examples, in (3) to (8) the same VP does not display the same aspectual behaviour under the two interpretations: * Babeş-Bolyai University, Faculty of Letters, email: farkas_imola_agnes@yahoo.com. 1 Throughout the paper, the abbreviation “lit.” means ‘literal’ and “id.” stands for ‘idiomatic’.