On the Compositional Nature of States

Author
E. Matthew Husband | University of South Carolina
HardboundAvailable
ISBN 9789027255716 | EUR 99.00 | USD 149.00
 
e-Book
ISBN 9789027274168 | EUR 99.00 | USD 149.00
 
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This monograph pursues a structural analogy between the availability of an existential interpretation in states and the telicity of events. Focusing on evidence from both verbal and adjectival predicates, it argues that quantization forms the basis of a unified theory of aktionsart and provides a theory in which the availability of an existential interpretation in states is, like the telicity of events, determined compositionally by the predicate and the quantization of its internal argument. Quantization is further argued to reflect the internal temporal constitution of the stages of an individual which is tied to the generation of an existential interpretation. This monograph will be of interest to syntacticians and semanticists who are specifically concerned with compositional approaches to eventualities, and to those who have a more general interest in the role linguistic theory can play in determining core properties of the mind.
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 188] 2012.  xv, 170 pp.
Publishing status: Available
Table of Contents
“I have always treated statives as belonging to the aspectual ‘garbage can’ alongside other forms of aspectual durativity by considering them as primitives. Husband belies this claim showing convincingly that there is real gold in that can: statives turn out to be as compositional as terminative constructions. By doing this he opens a beautiful domain of research. The best way for me to express this is perhaps by exclaiming: “Why the hell didn't I see that myself, stupid?” It is really fascinating and joyful to see what Husband has digged up.”
“In the past few decades, meticulous semantic and syntactic research has greatly contributed to our understanding of event structure. However, more often not, the focus of that research has been the properties of eventive rather than stative eventualities. Matthew Husband's book is an important contribution to the closing of this gap. Taking as its starting point, on the one hand, the distinction between individual level predicates and stage level predicates, and on the other hand, the results of research into the syntax and semantics of eventive eventualities and in particular the quantization approach to telicity, Husband's model integrates into an intriguing whole notions such as telicity and quantization, scalarity, and voice, to give rise to an insightful and thought provoking work that is sure to become a cornerstone in our understanding of event structure in general, and the eventive/stative dividing line in particular. A must-read for any scholar who is interested in the impact which the syntax-semantic interface has had on the study of events and their properties.”
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Knittel, Marie Laurence
2023. Deverbal adjectives with episodic value in French: evidence for mixed categories. Probus 35:2  pp. 277 ff. DOI logo
Rozwadowska, Bożena
2020. Chapter 2. Polish psych verbs as non-achievements. In Beyond Emotions in Language [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 263],  pp. 23 ff. DOI logo
Silvagni, Federico
2022. Whenestaris not there: A cross-linguistic analysis of individual/stage-level copular sentences in Romance. Open Linguistics 8:1  pp. 108 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]

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Subjects

Main BIC Subject

CFG: Semantics, Pragmatics, Discourse Analysis

Main BISAC Subject

LAN009000: LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General
ONIX Metadata
ONIX 2.1
ONIX 3.0
U.S. Library of Congress Control Number:  2012007723 | Marc record