Aspect

John read a book.

John was reading a book.

Mary walked to school

Mary was walking to school
Mary walked in the park
Aspect
• not a deictic category
• informs about the size of the situation, about its
internal stages, about the quality of the situation
Aspect

• viewpoint aspect (Smith 1991) / grammatical

aspect (de Swart 1998)
• situation-type aspect / lexical aspect (Smith 1991)
Lexical Aspect
STATES John loves chocolate.
ACTIVITIES John strolled in the park.
ACCOMPLISHMENTS
John made a chocolate cake.
ACHIEVEMENTS John remembered something.
SEMELFACTIVES John coughed.
Lexical Aspect

STATIVE DURATIVE TELIC

STATES + + -
ACTIVITIES - + -
ACCOMPLISHMENTS - + +
ACHIEVEMENTS - - +
SEMELFACTIVES - - -
• viewpoint aspect: grammatical
morphemes – overt category
be-ing
have-en
• situation-type aspect: a constellation
of lexical morphemes – the verb and its
arguments – covert category (lacks
explicit morphological markers)
• aspectual meaning holds for sentences
rather than verbs:

a. John never eats chocolate.

b. John ate chocolate noisily throughout the
lesson.
c. John ate a bar of chocolate in fifteen
seconds.
• The Principle of Compositionality = The meaning of
a complex expression is fully determined by the
meaning of its constituents and by its structure:
that is the rules we used to combine the
constituents.

+ the lexical conceptual structure of the verb, that is

the verb together with its arguments
+ the functional categories on the verb
+ time adverbials
Countability

• cumulative vs. quantized

• rice + rice = rice (cumulative)
• one noun + one noun = two nouns (quantized)

• (Krifka 1989)
Countability
a. We drank wine all afternoon.
b. He drank five beers in 15 minutes.
c. I had a glass of wine.
d. The place was full of ants.

(Croft 2012)
When a swamp dragon exploded there was dragon
everywhere. The citizens should have been spending
their night shovelling dragon off the streets.
• similarity: uncountable things (mass
nouns, bare plurals) – atelic events:

some chocolate = chocolate

some water ≠ a lake

John walked. vs. John walked to school.

States
• e.g. believe in ghosts, know the answer, be tall,
own
• unbounded : do not have natural endpoint;
• abstract atemporal quality
• homogeneous
• true at all subintervals (Dowty 1979)
States
• abstract and concrete properties (be altruistic, be
tall, be intelligent, be widespread, be extinct)
• belief and other mental states (believe, know, think
(give opinion), hope, fear)
• verbs of physical perception (see, hear, taste, feel,
etc.
• emotive predicates (love, hate, like, dislike, rejoice,
despise, want, desire)
LCS: BE (in the state of)
• States = uncountable , mass properties :
*He knew Greek three times.
• nominalizations of state predicates (hatred, love,
knowledge, etc.) : uncountable (There was little
love lost between them).
Stativity tests:
Incompatible with:
• imperatives :
*Be tall!
• Ag-oriented Av: willingly, deliberately :
*He is deliberately tall.
• ‘force’ and ‘persuade’:
*He forced her to be tall.
• DO:
*What she did was be tall.
Stativity tests:
Incompatible with:
• temporal and spatial coordinates
*When and where was he tall?
• progressive:
*He was being tall.

BUT: When was he in the garden? He was being silly.

States:
uindividual-level predicates : stable properties,
permanent, inherent, absolute
ustage-level predicates : transitory properties,
boundaries
a. John is Russian.
b. John is in the garden.
c. John is scared.
(Carlson 1977 Croft 2012, Comrie 1976)
• cf. Spanish
1.Soy galesa = I am Welsh
2.Estoy caminando. = I am walking (Bybee et al 1994)
permanent states:
• inherent : The vase is porcelain.
• acquired: The vase is cracked.
• individuals:
qobject-level: Hugo, my cat, the student
qkind-level: students, tigers
vkind-referring expressions: bare plurals, definite
singular NPs, mass nouns
a. Submarines have periscopes.
b. The periscope is an optical instrument.
c. Glass breaks easily.
vRomanian?
• predicates that only occur with kind-level subjects:
die out, be widespread, be in short supply, be
common, be indigenous to, come in all sizes
a. Dinosaurs are extinct.
b. The dinosaur is extinct.
c. *A dinosaur is extinct.
A mammoth is woolly.

• basic stage level predicate recategorized as

individual level predicate
• describe property which holds for most members:
exceptions!
• generalize over properties
Progressive: stage level interpretation

• dynamism, temporary quality:

I was being a nuisance. The cake is looking done.
• gradual change:
These examples are seeming less and less unacceptable.

• some basic-level states: incompatible with progressive:

*He is owning a car. *He is knowing the answer. *He is
being tall.
States incompatible with the progressive

• be, have: *She was being well-dressed. *She is

having blue eyes.
• verbs expressing inert perception and cognition, no
Agent subject: *I am understanding that the offer
has been accepted.
• relational verbs: *We are owning a house.
I’m not seeing anything.
Are you hearing me?

cf. I can’t see anything.

Can you hear me?
• He’s holding the baby. She’s sleeping. The flowers
are blooming.
• ’stative progressives’ (Dowty 1979), ‘dynamic
states’ (Bach 1986), ‘homogeneous activities’
(Michaelis 2004), ‘inactive actions’ (Croft 2012)
• point states (Mittwoch 1988)

a. It’s 5 o’clock.
b. The train is on time.
Verbs of position and location (sit, crouch, lie,
perch, sprawl)
• interval statives: their truth condition requires an
interval longer than a moment

The picture hangs on the wall.

The picture is hanging on the wall. -> resultative,
temporary

The socks are lying / ?lie under the bed.

New Orleans lies / *is lying on the Mississippi.
-> volitional control, moveable object
Derived statives
Ønot stative at the basic level of classification
• generics: Tigers eat meat.
• habituals: My cat eats a mouse every day.
Øhold of classes, kinds, patterns of events
Øascribe a property to the class
Derived Statives
• temporal schema = single undifferentiated period;
a pattern that holds over and interval
• Su can be Ag; = dynamic
• Mary deliberately refuses dessert every Friday.
a. Hugo was shocked. = state
b. Hugo was shocked when Agatha slapped him. =
inchoative: achievement + state
c. Suddenly, Agatha knew the truth.
Multiple classification
• perception verbs: states + events

I have tasted the fish and it tastes funny.

I have measured the fish and it measures 1m.
I have weighed the fish and it weighs 1kg.
I have smelled the fish and it smells bad.