Compositional Incrementality Based on Polish Reveal-Type Verbs and Verbal Nouns

This article focuses on the realization of incrementality in Polish verbal and nominal constructions. The object of investigation is clause-embedding reveal-type concepts like ‘prove’, ‘reveal’, or ‘show’. In Slavic languages, incremental relations have traditionally been examined in direct relation to (im)perfectivity, with imperfective verbs enforcing partial affectedness of events and objects, and perfective verbs enforcing their total affectedness. In the present paper, I take a closer look at the incremental output within the reveal-type concept. I investigate whether an incremental event comes with a fixed incremental path that remains intact independently of any morphological or syntactic modifications. My research question is: Is an incremental feature specified in the lexicon as is the aspectual value ‘(im)perfective’, or does it rather arise compositionally? To answer this question, I analyze the impact of the dative argument and the nominalization on the incremental output of clause-embedding reveal-type predicates. I demonstrate that incremental meanings are affected by the properties of an entire construction. Based on that, I propose to distinguish between two types of incrementality: the non-modifiable (im)perfectivity-dependent partial and total integration requirement, and the compositional incrementality that arises as an interplay between lexical semantics, argument structure, and the morphological shape of the respective lexeme.