Journal

VERBS AND ADJECTIVES

Chapter 15

Three distinct areas of grammatical meaning typically associated with verbs:

Tense

Aspect

modality

Tense and modality operate is the proposition, rather than the verb or verb phrase.

GRAMMATICAL MEANING

Serves primarily to locate the event referred to in the sentence with reference to the time at which the utterance was produced.

Primary (or absolute) tenses: encode event time directly relative to the time of speaking

Secondary (or relative) tenses: encode event time relative to a secondary reference time

Vectorial:

tense systems of most languages

grammatical terms indicate merely the direction along the timeline from speaking time to event time

TENSE

Past-event occurs before time of speaking

Present-event occurs concurrently with speaking time or includes it

Future- event is projected to occur after the time of speaking

THREE BASIC PRIMARY TENSES

Grammatically encodes degrees of remoteness as well as direction along the time line

Hodiernal: most frequent metrical system

distinguishes "today" and "not today"

METRICAL SYSTEM

Normally regarded as a property or characteristic of events and states

Says nothing about when an event occurred (except by implication

Either encodes a particular way of conceptualizing an event

Conveys information about the way the event unrolls through time

A lexical verb may encode aspectual information as part of lexical meaning

ASPECT

Change: A state of affairs can be construed as changing or as remaining constant.

Homogeneous: if it is construed as unchanging

Heterogeneous: if it is construed as changing

ASPECTUAL FEATURE: CHANGE

Some events are construed as having one or more inherent boundaries.

A boundary may be at the beginning or the end of an event

The final boundary is generally regarded as the most significant.

Telic: An event with a final boundary

Atelic: a event with no final boundary is described as atelic

ASPECTUAL FEATURE: BOUNDEDNESS

Duration: the time it takes for an event to unfold

Punctual: an event thought of as instantaneous

Durative: an event that is spread over time

ASPECTUAL FEATURE: DURATION

Homogeneous-no change is involved

Unbounded-no inherent beginning or end

Durative-persistence through time is of the essence.

May be expressed in English by adjectival expressions, prepositional phrases, or stative verbs

STATES

Differ in respect of the non-aspectual feature of agentivity

Resemble states in being unbounded and durative but they are heterogeneous

Something is `going on', but this is not construed as a movement towards an inherent point of completion

ACTIVITIES AND PROCESSES

Share the feature of durativity and heterogeneity with activities and processes

Distinguished by being telic

inherently completable

The inference of incompleteness is a generalized conversational implicature

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Events in which there is a transition from one state to another

Transition construed as being instantaneous

Heterogeneous, naturally bounded (by the point of transition), and punctual

ACHIEVEMENTS

Cannot be neatly distinguished from the other aspectual classes in terms of features

Have the same features of heterogeneity, boundedness, and punctuality as achievements.

They do not involve a transition between two states

SEMELFACTIVES

One of the most widespread aspectual distinctions

In many languages there is a formal distinction of some sort whose prototypical semantic function is to signal the perfective/imperfective contrast

There is no regular way of indicating the distinction in English

IMPERFECTIVE AND PERFECTIVE

Iterative: a series of events with a relatively short time interval between them

Habitual: also a repetition, but over a longer period, and with (potentially) longer intervals between occurrences

ITERATIVE/HABITUAL

Signal a particular attitude or opinion on the part of the speaker to the proposition expressed or the situation described

Can also indicate the degree of desirability (or otherwise) of a proposition becoming true

In English this involves the modal verbs such as- may, might, should, ought, can, and so on

MODAL EXPRESSIONS

Three main conceptual domains:

Epistemic

concerned with the degree to which a speaker is willing to commit him/herself to the truth of a proposition being expressed

Deontic

covers notions of obligation and permission

Dynamic

is concerned with ability and inability

TYPES OF MODALITY

Principal function of adjectives

The combination of Adj. + Noun prototypically restricts the domain designated by the noun alone to a subpart, and designates a subset of the entities denoted by the noun alone

There are two main positions for adjectives in English:

Attributive

Predicative

MODIFICATION