resultatives

Resultatives are a type of complex predication in which an action described by the main verb is followed by a secondary expression that denotes the resulting state of the affected object or, less commonly, the subject. The secondary expression, often an adjective, a participial phrase, or a prepositional phrase, specifies the end result brought about by the action.

In English, resultatives typically attach to the object of the verb. Examples include: “She hammered the metal flat,” where flat tags the metal with a changed state; “They painted the door red,” where red indicates the door’s new color; and “He wiped the board clean,” where clean describes the board’s state after wiping. Other patterns include “They elected him president” or “The weather made the day sunny.” The common feature is that the result phrase expresses a change of state caused or brought about by the event described by the main verb.

Semantically, resultatives encode a change of state (a telic or culminated state) rather than a mere manner of action. They are often contrasted with depictive predicates, which describe properties of the subject during the action rather than a state of the object after the action.

Cross-linguistically, languages vary in how resultatives are formed. Some use postverbal adjectives or participles, others employ dedicated resultative constructions or markers. Mandarin Chinese, for example, uses resultative complements with particular particles or verb-result sequences to express the end state, while many European languages rely on adjectival or prepositional phrases in a small-clause or complex-transitive structure.

Resultatives illuminate how syntax maps to semantic change and how languages encode end states produced by events.