Aspectual Composition: Surveying the Ingredients (original) (raw)

This paper discusses some of the ways in which the notion of compositionality is understood in the literature. It will argued that on a strict (Fregean) view a verb has a constant meaning to make in the aspectual composition independently from the information contributed by its arguments, that the VP (verb+ internal argument/complement) forms a substantive aspectual unit that should be recognizable as such complex aspectual information; and finally, that aspectual composition forces Discourse Representation Theory into revising the way states and events are taken.