75 research outputs found
Eventualities and different things : a reply
âComments are very welcome!â This basic attitude and the many ways of implementing it contribute immensely to the fascination of engaging in scientific research. I am grateful to Theoretical Linguistics for providing a public platform for this kind of scholarly exchange and I thank all commentators for their thoughtful, stimulating, and often challenging contributions to my target article. My response will address two main issues that are raised by the commentaries. The first issue is shaped by a cluster of questions relating to ontology. The second issue concerns questions of methodology pertaining in particular to the problem of judging data
Against a Davidsonian analysis of copula sentences
Semantic research over the past three decades has provided impressive confirmation of Donald Davidsons famous claim that âthere is a lot of language we can make systematic sense of if we suppose events existâ (Davidson 1980:137). Nowadays, Davidsonian event arguments are no longer reserved only for action verbs (as Davidson originally proposed) or even only for the category of verbs, but instead are widely assumed to be associated with any kind of predicate (e.g. Higginbotham 2000, Parsons 2000).1 The following quotation from Higginbotham and Ramchand (1997) illustrates the reasoning that motivates this move: "Once we assume that predicates (or their verbal, etc. heads) have a position for events, taking the many consequences that stem therefrom, as outlined in publications originating with Donald Davidson (1967), and further applied in Higginbotham (1985, 1989), and Terence Parsons (1990), we are not in a position to deny an event-position to any predicate; for the evidence for, and applications of, the assumption are the same for all predicates. (Higginbotham and Ramchand 1997:54)" In fact, since Davidsonâs original proposal the burden of proof for postulating event arguments seems to have shifted completely, leading Raposo and Uriagereka (1995), for example, to the following verdict: "it is unclear what it means for a predicate not to have a Davidsonian argument (Raposo and Uriagereka 1995:182)" That is, Davidsonian eventuality arguments apparently have become something like a trademark for predicates in general. The goal of the present paper is to subject this view of the relationship between predicates and events to real scrutiny. By taking a closer look at the simplest independent predicational structure â viz. copula sentences â I will argue that current Davidsonian approaches tend to stretch the notion of events too far, thereby giving up much of its linguistic and ontological usefulness. More specifically, the paper will tackle the following three questions: 1. Do copula sentences support the current view of the inherent event-relatedness of predicates? 2. If not, what is a possible alternative to an event-based analysis of copula sentences? 3. What does this tell us about Davidsonian events? The paper is organized as follows: Section 2 first reviews current event-based analyses of copula sentences and then gives a brief summary of the Davidsonian notion of events. Section 3 examines the behavior of copula sentences with respect to some standard (as well as some new) eventuality diagnostics. Copula expressions will turn out to fail all eventuality tests. They differ sharply from state verbs like stand, sit, sleep in this respect. (The latter pass all eventuality tests and therefore qualify as true âDavidsonian stateâ expressions.) On the basis of these observations, section 4 provides an alternative account of copula sentences that combines Kimâs (1969, 1976) notion of property exemplifications with Ashers (1993, 2000) conception of abstract objects. Specifically, I will argue that the copula introduces a referential argument for a temporally bound property exemplification (= âKimian stateâ). The proposal is implemented within a DRT framework. Finally, section 5 offers some concluding remarks and suggests that supplementing Davidsonian eventualities by Kimian states not only yields a more adequate analysis for copula expressions and the like but may also improve our treatment of events
On the limits of the Davidsonian approach : the case of copula sentences
Since Donald Davidsonâs seminal work âThe Logical Form of Action Sentencesâ (1967) event arguments have become an integral component of virtually every semantic theory. Over the past years DavidsonÂŽs proposal has been continuously extended such that nowadays event(uality) arguments are generally associated not only with action verbs but with predicates of all sorts. The reasons for such an extension are seldom explicitly justified. Most problematical in this respect is the case of stative expressions. By taking a closer look at copula sentences the present study assesses the legitimacy of stretching the Davidsonian notion of events and discusses its consequences. A careful application of some standard eventuality diagnostics (perception reports, combination with locative modifiers and manner adverbials) as well as some new diagnostics (behavior of certain degree adverbials) reveals that copular expressions do not behave as expected under a Davidsonian perspective: they fail all eventuality tests, regardless of whether they represent stage-level or individual-level predicates. In this respect, copular expressions pattern with stative verbs like know, hate, and resemble, which in turn differ sharply from state verbs like stand, sit, and sleep. The latter pass all of the eventuality tests and therefore qualify as true âDavidsonian stateâ expressions. On the basis of these empirical observations and taking up ideas of Kim (1969, 1976) and Asher (1993, 2000), an alternative account of copular expressions (and stative verbs) is provided, according to which the copula introduces a referential argument for a temporally bound property exemplification (= âKimian stateâ). Considerations on some logical properties, viz. closure conditions and the latent infinite regress of eventualities, suggest that supplementing Davidsonian eventualities with Kimian states may yield not only a more adequate analysis of copula sentences but also a better understanding of eventualities in general
Review of Regina Pustet : Copulas: universals in the categorization of the lexicon: (Oxford University Press 2003; 262pp)
The renowned Grimm Dictionary (1854-1961) makes the statement that the German copula sein (to be) is âthe most general and colourless of all verbal conceptsâ (der allgemeinste und farbloseste aller verbalbegriffe). A more concise summary of the linguistic issues surrounding the copula is hardly possible. These two properties (and the latent tension between them!) make copulas a particularly interesting and vexing subject of linguistic research. Copulas appear to be almost colourless, i.e., devoid of any concrete meaning, thus leading to the question of why such expressions exist at all, not only in German but in the majority of the worldâs languages. And at the same time copulas presumably provide the best window into the core of verbal concepts thereby telling us what it actually means to be a verb â at least in a language like German or English. While there is a rather rich body of research on copulas in philosophical and formal semantics including several in-depth studies on the copular systems of individual languages, copulas have received comparably little attention from a typological perspective. The monograph of Regina Pustet sets out to fill this gap. She presents an extensive cross-linguistic study of copula usage based on a sample of 154 languages drawn from the language families of the world. The analysis is embedded in the theoretical framework of functional typology. The study aims at uncovering universal principles that govern the distribution of copulas in nominal, adjectival, and verbal predications. Its major objective is the development of a âsemantically-based model of copula distributionâ (p.62) by means of which the presence vs. absence of copulas can be motivated through the inherent meaning of the lexical items they potentially combine with. Drawing mainly on the work by GivĂłn (1979, 1984) and Croft (1991, 2001), who provide a functional foundation of the traditional parts of speech, Pustet identifies four semantic parameters which, if taken together, are claimed to support substantial generalisations on copula distribution â within a given language as well as crosslinguistically. These parameters are DYNAMICITY, TRANSIENCE, TRANSITIVITY, and DEPENDENCY. Pustet goes on to argue â and this is in fact the driving force behind the overall monograph â that the distributional behaviour of copulas, in turn, yields a useful methodology for developing a general approach to lexical categorization. Thus, in the long run Pustet aims at contributing to a better understanding of the traditional parts of speech, noun, adjective, and verb by defining them in terms of âsemantic feature bundles, which can be arranged in [a] coherent semantic similarity spaceâ (p.193)
A discourse-based account of Spanish ser/estar
The study offers a discourse-based account of the Spanish copula forms ser and estar, which are generally considered to be lexical exponents of the stage-level/individual-level contrast. It argues against the popular view that the distinction between SLPs and ILPs rests on a fundamental cognitive division of the world that is reflected in the grammar. As it happens, conceptual oppositions like âtemporary vs. permanentâ or âarbitrary vs. essentialâ provide only a preference for the interpretation of estar and ser. In addition, the evidence for an SLP/ILP impact on the grammar turns out to be far less conclusive than is currently assumed. The study argues against event-based accounts of the ser/estar contrast in particular, showing that ser and estar pattern alike in failing all of the standard eventuality tests. The discourse-based account proposed instead assumes that ser and estar both display the same lexical semantics (which is identical to the semantics of English be, German sein, etc.); estar differs from ser only in presupposing a relation to a specific discourse situation. By using estar a speaker restricts his or her claim to a specific discourse situation, whereas by using ser, the speaker makes no such restriction. The preference for interpreting estar predications as denoting temporary properties and ser predications as denoting permanent properties follows from economy principles driving the pragmatic legitimation of estars discourse dependence. The analysis proposed in this paper can also account for the observation that ser predications do not give rise to thetic judgements. The proposal is couched in terms of the framework of DRT
A pragmatic explanation of the stage level/individual level contrast in combination with locatives
One important difference between stage level predicates (SLPs) and individual level predicates (ILPs) is their behavior with respect to locative modifiers. It is commonly assumed that SLPs but not ILPs combine with locatives. The present study argues against a semantic account for this behavior (as advanced by e.g. Kratzer 1995, Chierchia 1995) and proposes a genuinely pragmatic explanation of the observed stage level/individual level contrast instead. The proposal is spelled out using Blutners (1998, 2000) optimality theoretic version of the Gricean maxims. Building on the observation that the respective locatives are not event-related but frame-setting modifiers, the preference for main predicates that express temporary properties is explained as a side-effect of âsynchronizingâ the main predicate with the locative frame in the course of finding an optimal interpretation. By emphasizing the division of labor between grammar and pragmatics, the proposed solution takes a considerable load off of semantics
Event-internal modifiers : semantic underspecification and conceptual interpretation
The article offers evidence that there are two variants of adverbial modification that differ with respect to the way in which a modifier is linked to the verbs eventuality argument. So-called event-external modifiers relate to the full eventuality, whereas event-internal modifiers relate to some integral part of it. The choice between external and internal modification is shown to be dependent on the modifiers syntactic base position. Event-external modifiers are base-generated at the VP periphery, whereas event-internal modifiers are base-generated at the V periphery. These observations are accounted for by a refined version of the standard Davidsonian approach to adverbial modification according to which modification is mediated by a free variable. In the case of external modification, the grammar takes responsibility for identifying the free variable with the verbs eventuality argument, whereas in the case of internal modification, a value for the free variable is determined by the conceptual system on the basis of contextually salient world knowledge. For the intriguing problem that certain locative modifiers occasionally seem to have nonlocative (instrumental, positional, or manner) readings, the advocated approach can provide a rather simple solution
On Davidsonian and kimian states
Davidsonian event semantics has an impressive track record as a framework for natural language analysis. In recent years it has become popular to assume that not only action verbs but predicates of all sorts have an additional event argument. Yet, this hypothesis is not without controversy in particular wrt the particularly challenging case of statives. Maienborn (2003a, 2004) argues that there is a need for distinguishing two kinds of states. While verbs such as sit, stand, sleep refer to eventualities in the sense of Davidson (= Davidsonian states), the states denoted by such stative verbs like know, weigh,and own, as well as any combination of copula plus predicate are of a different ontological type (= Kimian states). Against this background, the present study assesses the two main arguments that have been raised in favour of a Davidsonian approach for statives. These are the combination with certain manner adverbials and Parsons (2000) so-called time travel argument. It will be argued that the manner data which, at first sight, seem to provide evidence for a Davidsonian approach to statives are better analysed as non-compositional reinterpretations triggered by the lack of a regular Davidsonian event argument. As for ParsonsÂŽs time travel argument, it turns out that the original version does not supply the kind of support for the Davidsonian approach that Parsons supposed. However, properly adapted, the time travel argument may provide additional evidence for the need of reifying the denotatum of statives, as suggested by the assumption of Kimian states
Das Zustandspassiv : grammatische Einordnung â BildungsbeschrĂ€nkungen â Interpretationsspielraum
Modification and underspecification : a free variable account of locative modifiers
The present paper offers evidence that there are two variants of adverbial modification that differ with respect to the way in which a modifier is linked to the verb's eventuality argument. So-called external modifiers relate to the full eventuality, whereas internal modifiers relate to some integral part of it. The choice between external and internal modification is shown to be dependent on the modifier's syntactic base position. External modifiers are base-generated at the VP periphery, whereas internal modifiers are base generated at the V periphery. These observations are accounted for by a refined version of the standard Davidsonian approach to adverbial modification according to which modification is mediated by a free variable. In the case of external modification, the grammar takes responsibility for identifying the free variable with the verb's eventuality argument, whereas in the case of internal modification, a value for the free variable is determined by the conceptual system on the basis of contextually salient world knowledge
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