Imperfective paradox refers to the logical paradox resulted from the co-occurrence of accom-plishment phrases and the progressive.From the perspective of accomplishment phrases'aspectual se-mantics,this study reviews the co-occurrence of accomplishment phrases and the progressive and finds that some accomplishment phrases can co-occur with the progressive while some others cannot.We prove that the type of accomplishment phrases which can co-occur with the progressive can actually denote accomplishment situations as well as activity situations.Based on this finding,we propose that this type of accomplishment phrases denote activity situations when co-occurring with the progressive aspect.Therefore,phrases denoting accomplishment situations do not co-occur with the progressive and the imperfective aspect doesn't really exist.Accomplishment-denoting phrases in Chinese are also found not to be able to co-occur with the progressive aspect,which provides cross-linguistic support for the above proposal.
万方数据