ABSTRACT
German and Finnish provide another piece of evidence for the claim that the incremental eventuality type represents one of the cross-linguistic (and perhaps universal) schemata that underlies the interaction of verbal predicates and noun phrases in the domain of aspect in typologically unrelated languages. The observation that various totality and partitive operations in the denotational domains of noun phrases interact with verbal predicates and as a result have the effect of functions posited for the interpretation of perfective and imperfective aspect can be seen in connection with other independently described transpositions from space to time. Perfective verbs in Slavic require the definite interpretation of mass and plurals linked to the incremental theme argument, while imperfective verbs impose no such restriction. In Finnish, the accusative case marking on a mass or plural noun in an undetermined noun phrase induces the definite interpretation of a whole noun phrase.
