LIN1180 Semantics Lecture 11

1. LIN1180 SemanticsLecture 11 Verbs and situation types continued

2. Part 1 Classifying verbs: lexical semantic distinctions

3. Dynamic vs. Static • Compare: • John is a lazy guy. • Stephanie is a beautiful woman. • (1) and (2) describe “situations” or “states of affairs” which are stable or unchanging • Steve is driving across Europe. • I ate a pizza last night. • (3) and (4) describe “situations” or “states of affairs” which are dynamic, changing over time

4. Dynamic vs. static • The distinction affects lexical choice. • Often, static situations are described using adjectives: • Static: the pears are ripe (adjective) • Dynamic: the pears ripened (verb) • But not always: • John is a lazy guy. • Adjectives tend to be inherently stative • Verbs differ in whether they are stative or dynamic.

5. Stative verbs • Allow the speaker to view a situation as steady and relatively unchanging. • no reference to an explicit endpoint • no reference to change • Compare: • Mary knows Greek. (stative) • Mary learned Greek. (dynamic)

6. Stative verbs • ?Mary is knowing Greek. • progressive has connotations of dynamism and change • clashes with the inherent semantics of the stative verb • Mary is learning Greek. • progressive is fine with a dynamic verb

7. Stative verbs • ?Know Greek! • imperative usually odd with statives • Learn Greek! • imperative is fine with dynamic verbs • Exceptions: • remain seems to be inherently stative • allows imperative: Remain seated! • Maltese equivalent of know (jaf): • Kun af li lbieraħ morna. (Know that we went yesterday) • but: ?Kun af il-Greek (Know Greek!) • Maybe a special usage?

8. Dynamic verb types • Further classified into sub-types: • durative vs. punctual • whether situation described by verb lasts for a period of time or not • John winked. (punctual) • John slept. (durative) • telic/resultative vs. atelic • whether verb describes a situation with a natural end-point • I built a house (telic) • I looked out over the mountains (atelic)

9. Semelfactive punctual verbs • inherently punctual • tend to describe situations which are very brief • e.g. wink, blink, flash, shoot, knock, sneeze, cough • Combination with durative adverbials like all night, results in clash between lexical aspect (non-durative) and the modifier (durative) • The light flashedfor an hour • I knockedfor 5 minutes • Clash results in an iterative interpretation

10. More on durative verbs • Resultativedurativeverbs describe situations with a natural end-point • She baked a meat pie. • Process + end-point • During the process, the meat pie doesn’t exist • Meat pie is the result of the process. • Inchoative verbs describe situations which give rise to a new state • The leaves turned brown. • Process giving rise to new state • At the start of the process, the leaves aren’t brown • the state of being brown is the outcome

11. More on the telic/atelic distinction • Though a verb can be inherently telic/atelic, the overall aspect of a sentence can change depending on grammatical environment: • Atelic:Jane was singing. • no specific endpoint • Telic: Jane was singing a song. • direct object gives rise to a telic reading • singing a song has a natural endpoint

12. More on the telic/atelic distinction • Telic/atelic also interacts with grammatical aspect • Telic: Lucien Freud painted my portrait. • implies completion: my portrait was finished • Atelic:Lucien Freud was painting my portrait. • no implication of completion: no information about whether the portrait was finished

13. More on the telic/atelic distinction • In some languages, there is a derivational process to turn atelic to telic ones. • German: • essen (eat)  aufessen (eat up/finish eating) • aufessen implies completion

14. The verb classification so far

15. Part 2 Classifying situation types

16. Some assumptions • Our task: • describe types of verbs based on lexical aspect • correlate these to types of situations • We will assume a basic distinction between static and dynamic situations • static: tends to be described by stative verbs • dynamic: tends to be described by dynamic verbs

17. Dynamic situations • Punctual/durative verb distinction correlates with the kind of situation we’re talking about. • event: speaker views the entire situation • the mine blew up • blow up is a punctual verb • process: speaker considers the internal change in the situation • she walked into the theatre • walk is a durative verb

18. Vendler’s classification • Vendler (1957): • proposed a classification of situation types • main aim was to describe real situations and correlate them with different verb types in language • main distinctions: • states • activities • accomplishments • achievements processes and events

19. Vendler’s states • Roughly, the kinds of situations that can be described by stative verbs • know, believe etc • typically, verbs describing these states don’t allow the progressive aspect in most contexts • ?I am believing the news • I believe the news

20. Activities vs. Accomplishments • Both are kinds of processes • e.g. they are described by dynamic verbs • the verbs allow the progressive aspect • Main difference is one of boundedness • roughly corresponds to the semantic telic/atelic distinction • Activities: • I am pushing a cart. • The act of pushing a cart doesn’t imply any necessary endpoint. • Accomplishment: • I am drawing a circle. • Act of drawing a circle does imply an endpoint (when the circle is done)

21. The activity/accomplishment distinction John was pushing a cart. • Test 1: • Q: For how long did John push the cart? • perfectly legitimate question, focuses on the time the activity took • Q: How long did it take to push the cart? • strange question, focuses on the end-point of the activity, which is not implied by the sentence • NB: question becomes OK if our sentence is John was pushing a cart to the village. The direct object makes it an accomplishment. • Test 2: • If John stopped pushing the cart after some time, can we say that the sentence is still true? • Yes.

22. The activity/accomplishment distinction John was running a mile. • Test 1: • Q: For how long did John run a mile? • strange question, focuses on the time the activity took • Q: How long did it take to run a mile? • legitimate question, focuses on the end-point of the activity, which is implied by the sentence • Test 2: • If John stopped running a mile after some time, can we say that the sentence is still true? • No. The sentence is only true if John finished running a mile.

23. The activity/accomplishment distinction • One of the ways this is reflected in language has to do with durative adverbials • sentences describing activities can have a durative adverbial • John pushed the cart for an hour • sentences describing accomplishments are often odd with a durative • ?John ran a mile for an hour

24. Correlation with the semantic distinction • Activities: durative, atelic • push a cart • Accomplishment: durative, telic • run a mile • Interaction with grammatical context: • John pushed a cart. (activity, atelic) • John pushed a cart to the village. (accomplishment, telic)

25. Achievements • Vendler’s achievements are not processes but events • typically described by non-durative, telic verbs • recognise, find, stop • Compare: • I recognised Bill. • ?I recognised Bill for an hour. • durative adverbial gives rise to an odd sentence • just like accomplishments • different in that the situation described is understood to take place instantaneously

26. Summary of situation types

27. Summary • Different types of situations are encoded differently, depending on: • whether they are conceived as holistic events or processes with internal structure • whether they are long-term states • whether they are know to have endpoints • Different verbs are suited to different types of situations depending on: • telicity • durativitity • stativity