This article compares the usage of commencer à ‘to begin’+Vinf. and se mettre à ‘to start’ + Vinf. in modern French. Using a corpus sample of 2000 observations, we examined the effect of Adverbial complementation, of Event type (aspect), and of Tense. Based on a mixed-effects logistic regression analysis, we found evidence for Event type, where se mettre à is associated with activities, and Tense, where se mettre à seems to be associated with passé simple, futur proche and subjonctif present. On the other hand, commencer à is associated with plus-que-parfait and indicatif imparfait. We discuss the results in the frame-semantic model of Croft (2012). We make the case that commencer à can have the profile of an achievement or that of an accomplishment, while se mettre à manifests only one profile, that of an achievement. Our results support a one-component approach to aspect in which the result of the interaction between grammatical aspect and lexical aspect can be attributed to the same aspectual contour.
