Access to contextually-determined states in the interpretation of English stative participles

Abstract

Stative passive participles (SPPs) differ in acceptability for different verbs: cf. The boxes are flattened/\#kicked. However, examples like those with kicked can be felicitous in very specific contexts, e.g. when box-kicking is an item to be checked off of a list: what will be called a 'Job is Done' (JiD) interpretation. An unresolved question in the prior literature is whether JiD is eventive or stative. This question takes on added significance in the context of recent work on the interpretation of SPPs. We argue that JiD is indeed stative, and show that this analysis has numerous  consequences for understanding the syntax and interpretation of SPPs.