Goals and sources in event structure

It has been suggested that there is an aspectual asymmetry between goals and sources (Filip 2003, Nam 2004). Whereas goal phrases such as to the shop are standardly assumed to bring about a telic interpretation of a motion event, sources are argued not to affect the telicity value of the event under this view. Relying on data from English and Dutch, I will argue instead that there is no aspectual (semantic or syntactic) asymmetry between goals and sources. Rather, particular asymmetries found in the data follow from other distinctions such as the one between locative prepositions and postpostions, and morphologically simple vs. complex Ps. Among these we find both goals and sources.1 The paper is organised as follows. Section 2 addresses a non-linguistic goal bias discussed in psychological and psycholinguistic literature. Section 3 presents Nam’s (2004) arguments in support of a semantic and syntactic goal-source asymmetry and shows that the apparent differences between goals and sources derive from other factors. Section 4 provides an account of the role of goals and sources in event structure. Further evidence pointing towards the non-linguistic nature of the goal bias is presented in Section 5. Finally, Section 6 concludes.