Download LIN1180 Semantics Lecture 11

LIN1180 Semantics
Lecture 11
Verbs and situation types continued
Part 1
Classifying verbs: lexical semantic distinctions
Dynamic vs. Static

Compare:
1.
2.

3.
4.

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
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.
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)
2. Mary learned Greek. (dynamic)
1.
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
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?
Dynamic verb types

Further classified into sub-types:
1. durative vs. punctual
whether situation described by verb lasts for a period of time or
not
 John winked. (punctual)
 John slept. (durative)
2. 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)

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 flashed for an hour
 I knocked for 5 minutes
 Clash results in an iterative interpretation
More on durative verbs
1. Resultative durative verbs 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.
2. 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
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
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
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
The verb classification so far
Verb
stative
be, know
dynamic
durative
walk, bake X, sleep
punctual
explode, wink, cough
telic (resultative)
bake a cake
atelic
gaze at the stars
semelfactive
wink, cough, flash
Part 2
Classifying situation types
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
Dynamic situations

Punctual/durative verb distinction correlates with the kind
of situation we’re talking about.
1.
event: speaker views the entire situation


2.
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
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
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
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)
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.
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.
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
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)
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
Summary of situation types
situation
state
event
-durative
achievement
+telic
process
+durative
activity
-telic
accomplishment
+telic
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