EVENTS, PROCESSES AND STATES (original) (raw)
Related papers
Some Activity Predicates as Accomplishments
Juwon Lee. 2016. Some Activity Predicates as Accomplishments. Language and Information 20.2, 117-143. In this paper I argue that some "activity" predicates in Korean are actually a kind of accomplishment rather than activity, unlike English counterparts. As evidence for this recategorization, failed attempt interpretation, ambiguity with in-adverbial or keuy 'almost', and non-ambiguity with tasi 'again' are discussed. This type of accomplishment is called activity-accomplishment here and this accomplishment analysis is extended to other kinds of "activity" verbs in Korean, manner of speaking verbs and perception verbs. I also show that in addition to lexical activity-accomplishment, some derived activity-accomplishments involving resultative or causative constructions support the existence of activity-accomplishment in Korean. (Kyung Hee University)
Durative Achievements and Individual-Level Predicates on Events
Linguistics and Philosophy - LING PHIL, 2003
Ryle (1949, Chapter V) discusses a range of predicates which in different ways exemplify a property I shall call quasi-duality – they appear to report two actions or events in one predicate. Quasi-duality is the key property of predicates Ryle classed as achievements. Ryle's criteria for classification were not temporal or aspectual, and Vendler's subsequent adoption of the term achievement for the aktionsart of momentary events changes the term – Rylean achievements and Vendlerian achievements are in principle different classes. Nevertheless, I shall argue in this paper that certain kinds of quasi-duality do have aspectual significance.
A note on how and why ‘state + aorist = achievement’
Onomázein Revista de lingüística, filología y traducción, 2016
In syntactic and semantic studies, there is a debate about the proper definition of 'achievement'. While some authors consider them pure punctual boundaries without any extension, others treat them as short accomplishments, and propose that they have a process component that happens to be instantaneous. The goal of this article is to discuss an empirical pattern whereby some stative verbs become achievements in the aorist; it is argued that this pattern of data supports the view of achievements as pure boundaries.
In the literature on aspect at least eight criteria have been used for distinguishing between Vendlerian activities and accomplishments. This paper submits these criteria to a critical survey. Some of them are found to have exceptions and/or to need revision. It will be shown that in certain contexts two criteria, the telos, a.k.a. set end-point or culmination, and the aspectual adverbial (in an interval) are in conflict in sentences with quantized measure phrases. The paper will argue that the telos has priority; the adverbial is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for telicity, and the predicates in question do not fit neatly into either aspectual class. Additionally, it will be shown that predicates with non-specific DPs (e.g. some/many plums) are somewhat defective accomplishments.
Non-culminating accomplishments: subject, speaker and syntactic structure
L. Baranzini & L. de Saussure (eds), Aspects of Tenses, Modality, and Evidentiality, 100-135. Leiden, Brill. , 2022
This study aims to establish a relationship between the morphosyntax, the lexicon and conceptual patterns involved in the phenomenon of (non-)culmination. The study argues that although the solution of the non-culmination problem crucially involves both the syntax and the lexicon, it cannot be solved within either of these language components. It is proposed that in the case of non-culminating accomplishments, the interaction between the syntax and the lexicon at the level of the sentence structure triggers a specific conceptual configuration. The configuration represents a goal-directed trajectory initiated by an intentional (human) subject targeting the change-of-state of an object. The same configuration can also be viewed in a reverse order, going from the observation of a change of state in the world to attributing an intentional or non-intentional cause to this change. It is proposed that non-culminating accomplishments are palimpsestic structures that involve two points of view simultaneously: the prospective goal-directed perspective of the intentional subject and the retrospective perspective of the speaker-narrator oriented from the result to its (effective or presumed) cause, the former being embedded in the latter.
Two Types of Derived Accomplishments
1996
Several recent studies of the resultative construction (Hoekstra 1984; Rappaport Hovav and Levin to appear) offer a uniform analysis of the two sets of sentences below, which all exemplify accomplishments derived from activities.
Perfects and the semantics/pragmatics interface
Proceedings of TALN'2004, 2004
Le but de cet article est double : (i) expliquer certaines observations trans-linguistiques à propos de la sémantique et de la pragmatique des parfaits, notamment quant au rôle joué par la notion de résultat(ivité), par opposition à celle de transition(alité) ; (ii) défendre l'idée qu'un traitement formel approprié des parfaits dans une perspective formelle, typologique et/ou diachronique devrait impliquer une théorie détaillée de l'interface sémantique/pragmatique. The goal of this paper is twofold: (i) to clarify certain cross-linguistic observations about the semantics and pragmatics of perfects, particularly with respect to the role played by the notion of result(ativity) as opposed to that of transition(ality), and (ii) to argue that a proper treatment of perfects in a formal, comparative and/or diachronic perspective should involve a detailed theory of the semantics/pragmatics interface.
Twigs, sequences and the temporal constitution of predicates
2001
has proposed an explicit model-theoretic account of the influence of the reference types of NPs (mass nouns, count nouns, plurals, etc.) on the temporal constitution of verbal predicates (activities, accomplishments and achievements). This influence is illustrated by the fact that, while the sentences in (2) are perfectly natural, the sentences in (1) are not acceptable, unless they are understood iteratively:
1. Lexicalized meaning and the internal temporal structure of events
Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 2008
This paper addresses the question of whether the four-way Vendler classification is appropriate for verbs or VPs. It suggests that the Vendler classification is not appropriate as a classification of verbs, and offers a different classification for the elements of lexicalized meaning which determine the aspectual potential of verbs. It highlights the importance of a class of verbs with a lexically encoded scale, illustrating that a large class of scalar verbs cannot be classified once and for all either as activities, accomplishments or achievements, though the lexically encoded scale accounts for most of the aspectual behavior of these verbs. The aspectual and syntactic significance of a lexicalized scale is explored. The class of verbs lexicalizing a scale is shown not to be the same as the class of verbs selecting an incremental theme. This is justified both on semantic grounds and on syntactic grounds. There appears to be more justification for recognizing the four-way Vendler classification at the VP level, though it is demonstrated that accomplishments do not have a uniform internal temporal structure, predominantly because of the variety of sources of incremental structure.