TOEIC Link Grammar — Resultative Secondary Predicate and Depictive Construction Recognition Discipline: The Argument-Structure Distinction That Separates Band-22 From Band-25

The resultative-versus-depictive distinction is one of the highest-discrimination grammar contrasts on the TOEIC Link reading and listening modules. The two construction types look identical on the surface — a verb followed by a noun-phrase object followed by an adjective phrase — but encode radically different argument structures, and the candidate's ability to recover the correct structure under timed conditions is what separates band-22 from band-25 on the small but reliable set of questions that target this contrast.

This guide formalizes the diagnostic test that distinguishes a resultative ("hammered the metal flat") from a depictive ("ate the fish raw"), catalogues the four failure modes that hold candidates at band-22 on this contrast, and outlines a four-week drill routine that installs the distinction to automatic recognition under timed reading and listening conditions. For broader grammar-module preparation, see the grammar parallel structure and balanced constructions guide and the grammar gerunds and infinitives guide.

Why the resultative-depictive distinction discriminates so strongly

The surface form of a resultative and a depictive is the same: a transitive verb, a noun-phrase object, and an adjective phrase that is interpreted as predicated of the object. Hammered the metal flat and ate the fish raw look identical. But the two constructions encode different relationships between the secondary predicate and the event described by the main verb, and the difference is what generates the comprehension-question targets on the TOEIC Link reading module.

In a resultative construction, the adjective phrase describes the state of the object after the event named by the main verb, and the event is what caused the state. Hammered the metal flat means the metal was not flat before the hammering, the hammering caused the flatness, and the flatness is the result-state of the hammering event. The argument structure is: agent acts on patient, with the resulting state of the patient encoded by the secondary predicate.

In a depictive construction, the adjective phrase describes the state of the object during the event named by the main verb, and the state is not caused by the event. Ate the fish raw means the fish was raw before, during, and after the eating, the eating did not cause the rawness, and the rawness is a depictive characterization of the patient's state during the eating event. The argument structure is: agent acts on patient, with the concurrent state of the patient encoded by the secondary predicate.

The TOEIC Link grammar items that target this distinction typically embed the construction in a longer reading passage and ask a question whose correct answer depends on whether the secondary predicate is the cause-state of the event (resultative) or a concurrent characterization (depictive). A candidate who does not recover the argument-structure distinction will choose the answer that matches surface gist rather than argument structure and will produce a band-19 to band-22 outcome; a candidate who recovers the distinction will produce a band-23 to band-26 outcome on the same item.

The diagnostic test — the before-event probe

The cleanest diagnostic for distinguishing a resultative from a depictive is the before-event probe. The candidate asks: "Did the property named by the secondary predicate hold before the event began?"

If the answer is no — the property did not hold before — the construction is a resultative. Hammered the metal flat: the metal was not flat before the hammering; the hammering produced the flatness. The before-event probe returns no, so the construction is resultative.

If the answer is yes — the property held before the event — the construction is a depictive. Ate the fish raw: the fish was raw before the eating; the eating did not produce the rawness, and the rawness is a depictive characterization. The before-event probe returns yes, so the construction is depictive.

If the answer is ambiguous — the property may or may not have held before, depending on context — the candidate looks for additional diagnostics: an explicit causation marker (so that, until), a manner adverbial that suggests result (completely, thoroughly, into a flat sheet), or an aspectual cue (until they were soft indicates resultative; while they were soft indicates depictive). The combined evidence usually resolves the ambiguity.

The four failure modes that hold candidates at band-22

Failure 1 — Result-state default

The first failure mode is defaulting to the resultative interpretation regardless of the before-event probe. The candidate reads ate the fish raw and interprets the rawness as the result of the eating ("the fish became raw as a result of being eaten"), which is incoherent under the depictive analysis and produces a wrong answer on a question that targets the temporal scope of the rawness. The repair is to install the before-event probe as a default check and to flag the depictive when the probe returns yes.

Failure 2 — Depictive default

The second failure mode is defaulting to the depictive interpretation regardless of the before-event probe. The candidate reads hammered the metal flat and interprets the flatness as a concurrent characterization of the metal during the hammering ("the metal was flat while being hammered"), missing the causation that the hammering produced the flatness. The repair is symmetric: install the before-event probe and flag the resultative when the probe returns no.

Failure 3 — Causation-marker miss

The third failure mode is missing an explicit causation marker that disambiguates the construction. The reading passage may contain a phrase like hammered the metal flat until it could be folded, where the until it could be folded telegraphs that the flatness is the result-state needed for the next operation. A candidate who misses the causation marker falls back on a default interpretation and may answer the question incorrectly. The repair is to drill the causation-marker inventory (so that, until, to the point of, so as to render) and to surface them in practice annotations.

Failure 4 — Subject-oriented depictive confusion

The fourth failure mode is mistaking a subject-oriented depictive for an object-oriented one. He ate the fish raw is ambiguous in principle: the rawness can describe the fish ("the fish was raw when he ate it") or the eater ("he was raw — that is, in a raw mental state — when he ate the fish"), and the latter interpretation is implausible but grammatically possible. The TOEIC Link rarely tests this ambiguity but a candidate who has not internalized that depictives can be subject-oriented may misread an analogous construction (he served the dish hot, where the hotness describes the dish but could in principle describe the server). The repair is to drill subject-oriented and object-oriented depictives separately.

The cross-construction interaction inventory

The resultative and depictive constructions interact with other grammar items on the TOEIC Link in ways that are worth cataloguing.

Interaction 1 — With the passive

A resultative can be passivized: the metal was hammered flat retains the resultative reading. A depictive is harder to passivize without a paraphrase: the fish was eaten raw retains the depictive reading but loses the agent. The candidate who internalizes the passive-of-resultative form will recognize it under reading conditions where the passive obscures the surface structure.

Interaction 2 — With reduced relative clauses

A reduced relative clause can resemble a depictive: the man, exhausted from the meeting, signed the contract. The reduced relative exhausted from the meeting is a participial modifier of the man, not a depictive on the contract. The candidate who confuses reduced relatives with depictives will misattribute the property and produce a wrong answer. The repair is to drill the punctuation cue (depictives typically lack the comma offset that reduced relatives carry).

Interaction 3 — With small clauses

A small-clause construction can resemble a resultative: considered the proposal unacceptable has the surface shape of a resultative but is actually a small-clause complement of consider. The small-clause reading says the speaker considered that the proposal was unacceptable; it does not say the considering caused the unacceptability. The diagnostic is the lexical class of the main verb: resultatives appear with verbs of physical action (hammer, paint, wipe, shoot); small clauses appear with verbs of cognition or judgment (consider, believe, find, deem).

Interaction 4 — With manner adverbials

A manner adverbial can be confused with a depictive: ate the fish quickly has quickly as a manner adverbial on the eating, not as a depictive on the fish. The diagnostic is the syntactic category: depictives are adjective phrases (predicated of the noun); manner adverbials are adverb phrases (modifying the verb). The candidate who internalizes the AP-versus-AdvP distinction will not be confused.

The four-week drill routine

Week 1 — Diagnostic-probe drill

The candidate works through 50 sentences containing either a resultative or a depictive construction and applies the before-event probe to each, classifying the construction. The week's output is a classification log with the probe result and the construction type for each sentence.

Week 2 — Causation-marker drill

The candidate works through 50 sentences in which the construction type is ambiguous on the surface but is disambiguated by a causation marker or an aspectual cue, and annotates the disambiguating evidence. The week's output is a causation-marker inventory.

Week 3 — Cross-construction interaction drill

The candidate works through 50 sentences that contain a near-miss construction (passive resultative, reduced relative, small clause, manner adverbial) and distinguishes them from genuine resultatives and depictives, applying the diagnostics from the cross-construction inventory. The week's output is a discrimination log.

Week 4 — Reading-passage integration drill

The candidate works through 30 TOEIC-Link-style reading passages that embed a resultative or a depictive in a longer paragraph and answers comprehension questions that target the argument-structure distinction. The week's output is a hit-rate log against a band-23 baseline of 70% and a band-25 baseline of 85%.

Argument structure under reading-pace pressure

The before-event probe runs in under one second once internalized, which is fast enough to deploy during reading-pace scanning of a passage. The candidate who has not internalized the probe will either skip the construction or apply a default interpretation and produce a band-22 outcome. The candidate who has internalized the probe will recover the argument structure on contact with the construction and produce a band-25 outcome on the small but reliable set of questions that target this contrast.

The integration with the broader grammar parallel structure and balanced constructions discipline matters: parallel structure in TOEIC Link passages frequently coordinates resultatives with each other or depictives with each other, and a candidate who has miscategorized one will miscategorize the parallel and produce a cascade of wrong answers.

Closing — Argument-structure discipline as a band-25 marker

The resultative-depictive distinction is one of the cleanest illustrations of a TOEIC Link grammar principle: above band-22, surface-form recognition is necessary but not sufficient, and what differentiates band-23 through band-26 responses is argument-structure decoding under timed conditions. The before-event probe is one such decoding. Installing it over four weeks produces a robust band-25 floor on the small set of questions that target this contrast, and the broader argument-structure literacy improves performance on adjacent items (small clauses, reduced relatives, complex transitive constructions) that share the secondary-predicate shape.

For adjacent grammar-module disciplines, see the grammar focus particle even only also and association with focus recognition discipline guide and the grammar quantifier and negation scope ambiguity resolution discipline guide.