1. Sentence semantics

2. Classifying meaning at sentence level
Tense
Aspect
Situation type

3. Situation types Static situations Dynamic situations Adjectives
Stative verbs
Can you distinguish these two in Chinese?
Dynamic situations
Other verbs, mostly

4. Dynamic verbs Durative or punctual? Telic or atelic?
John lived a long time ago
John died a long time ago
Telic or atelic?
John baked a cake
John looked hungrily at the cake
Look at Matrix 5.47
What situation type are the above 4 sentences?

5. Warning!
Saeed’s article is vague about what applies to verbs, and what applies to situations
Vendler and Smith are talking about situations
Be and love are stative verbs
Build and gaze are telic and atelic respectively, but in
I’m building a house
My son is being naughty
…progressive aspect makes the situations atelic and dynamic

6. Tense and aspect
The tense used in a sentence tells us when the event takes place
- Johnny ate goulash.
- Johnny eats goulash.
- Johnny will eat goulash.
Aspect gives extra time information
- Johnny has eaten goulash.
- Johnny is eating goulash.

7. Tense and aspect
Tense is marked by morphology in English (except cut, put…)
(and then some people say there are zero morphs)
Aspect is not always
I’m looking for a burger
I see it now
I’m eating it
I’m lovin’ it
(Oh no I think I’m going to be sick!)
All those are “happening right now”

8. Tense: a deictic system
Deixis mean pointing (in Greek)
This and that are deictic pronouns (or determiners); his and her are not.
So, question: what does deictic mean in Linguistics?
Think about who is pointing, and in which direction

9. Aspect is not deictic
It refers to an event’s “temporal distribution or contour”
5.63: thank you, Hockett (remember him?)
So aspect can describe
Long/short duration
Completeness/ incompleteness
Repeated/ continuous
Tense is just the overall location in time of the event or activity

10. Aspect in English and other languages
Task: How is aspect shown in
- English?
- Russian?
- Chinese?
(Look at pages , and write a couple of sentences about each language. Give a couple of examples from each language)

11. Modality tasks Page 135 is pretty straightforward: read it again
What is in between You are crazy and You are not crazy?
probably, maybe, might be, must be…
So, an epistemic modal verb
You must be crazy ( I order you to be crazy!)
A deontic modal verb
You must not eat any more Big Macs
How about
I can reach down and touch my toes
Can I have a Big Mac please?

15. Rank them!