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 hourJohn 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 motionJohn walked for an hourJohn walked to the park in an hour

• Lexically ambiguous verbsHe read a book for/in an hourShe 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(x1) f(x1)

¬p p ¬f(x2) f(x2)

CAUSE

pqCAUSE (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 actedThe door was open just after John actedThe 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 quietJohn is ignoring MaryWhat 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 walkBECOME(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]]