Aspectual Classification(Vendler 1967) States Activities Accomplishments Achievements Know run paint a picture recognize Believe walk make a chair spot Have swim draw a circle find Love drive a car push a cart die

States and Activities Only non-statives occur in the progressive *John is knowing the answer Only non-stavives occur as complements of force and persuade *John forced Harry to know the answer Only non-statives co-occur with the adverbs deliberately, carefully *John deliberately know the asnwer Only non-statives appear in pseudo-cleft constructions *What John did was know the answer

Activities and Accomplishments Activities take ‘for’-durational phrases, whereas accomplishments usually occur with ‘in’-phrases: John walked for an hour/*in an hour John built a house in 5 months/*for 5 months Entailments from the progressive to the non-progressive: ‘John was walking’ entails ‘John walked’ ‘John was building a house’ does not entail ‘John built a house’ Only accomplishment verbs normally occur as the complement of ‘finish’: *John finished walking John finished painting a picture

Achievements Achievements do not take ‘for’-durational phrases: ??John noticed the painting for a few minutes Unlike accomplishments, achievements are unacceptable as complements of ‘finish’: *John finished noticing the painting Unlike both accomplishments and activities, achievements are unacceptable as complements of ‘stop’: *John stopped noticing the painting Achievements cannot occur with intentional adverbs *John carefully noticed the painting

Is this classification lexical? Verbs of motion John walked for an hour John walked to the park in an hour Lexically ambiguous verbs He read a book for/in an hour She combed her hair for/in five minutes Not just verbs but whole sentences must be taken into account to distinguish activities from accomplishments

Indefinite Plurals and Mass Nouns If a sentence with an achievement or an accomplishment verb contains a plural indefinite or mass noun, then it has the properties of a sentence with an activity verb: John ate the bag of popcorn in an hour *John ate popcorn in an hour John built that house in a month *John built houses in a month John discovered fleas on his dog for 6 weeks *John discovered the buried treasure in his back yard for six weeks

Aspect Calculus Aspectual properties of the verbs can be explained by postulating a single class of predicates – stative predicates – plus three or four aspectual operators. Aspectual operators, which include CAUSE, BECOME, and DO, are treated as logical constants, whereas stative predicates are non-logical constants John opened the door [[DO(John, P) CAUSE [BECOME[the door open]]]

BECOME BECOME(p) is true at a time interval if (1) there is an interval j containing the initial bound of i such that ¬p is true at j (2) there is an interval k containing the final bound of i such that p is true at k (3) there is no non-empty interval i’ such that i’ is part of i and (1) and (2) hold for i’ The door opened BECOME(open(door)) j i k [ [. ] [.] ] the door is not open the door is open

A Solution of the Problem of Indefinites and Mass Nouns *John discovered the buried treasure in his back yard for six weeks John discovered fleas on his dog for six weeks for(i, p)   i’[i’  t  p(i’)]  i’[i’  i  BECOME(John knows the treasure)(i’)] _______[__[]__[]__]____________ _____[__[]_[_]___]_______ ¬p p¬f(x 1 ) f(x 1 ) ¬p p¬f(x 2 ) f(x 2 )

CAUSE  p  qCAUSE (p, q)  p  q   p(t)   q(t) John opened the door (John acted) CAUSE (BECOME(the door open)) The door was not open just before John acted The door was open just after John acted The door would not have become open on that particular occasion if John had not acted and all else had remained the same

Do and Agentivity Do(p, x) iff p is true and p is “under the unmediated control of x” ‘Do’ does not connote action in the usual sense: John is being quiet John is ignoring Mary What John did was not eat anything for 3 days Or agentivity: John is being obnoxious (does not entail that he was intending to be obnoxious) John is being a fool

Aspectual classification in aspect calculus States – are primitives Activities John walked DO(walk(john)) Achievements John discovered the solution BECOME(know(the solution)) Inchoation of activities: John began to walk BECOME(DO(walk(john))

Two Types of Accomplishments All accomplishments are of the form p CAUSE q, where q is a BECOME sentence [John does something] CAUSE [BECOME¬[Bill is alive]] [John paints] CAUSE [BECOME [a picture exists]]