Verbs and Situations PDF

Not all noun phrases are referring expressions (for instance, in Blinko was a famous clown, the noun phrase a famous clown puts Blinko into a category, rather than being used to refer to some clown) 4 A clause usually has a verb of its own and can carry...

Not all noun phrases are referring expressions (for instance, in Blinko was a famous clown, the noun phrase a famous clown puts Blinko into a category, rather than being used to refer to some clown) 4 A clause usually has a verb of its own and can carry a proposition as in Spring has come early carries a proposition about the start of a season. 7 The term argument is used to cover all kinds of obligatory, potentially referential constituents that verbs require, whether they are noun phrases like This evidence in This evidence confirms my hunch, or embedded clauses like that spring has come early or preposition phrases. 8 Aspect is the general term for the encoding in language of the time profiles of events, for example whether things build up to a climax or just continue unchanged. 9 The meaning expressed by a causative sentence is: a situation is brought about – caused – by whatever the subject noun phrase refers to, and the caused situation is described by the embedded clause. 10 Causative verbs are verbs that show the reason that something happened. They do not indicate something the subject did for themselves, but something the subject got Loading… someone or something else to do for them. The causative verbs are: let (allow, permit), make (force, require), have, get, and help. Let's take a closer look at the causative verbs. 11 So the meaning expressed by a causative sentence is: a situation is brought about – caused – by whatever the subject noun phrase refers to. 32 FOUR TYPES of SITUATION The historical starting point for this section is an article by Zeno Vendler (1967) called ‘Verbs and times’. Much of his discussion concerned verb phrases, rather than verbs in isolation. He classified verb phrases into four kinds, differing according to how the denoted states or actions are distributed in time: 33 The four sentences below illustrate Vendler’s four kinds of situation. His labels are given in parentheses. Though achievement and accomplishment have positive connotations in ordinary usage, they are evaluatively neutral when we are talking about situation types. a. She got her ankle sprained. (achievement) b. She had a sprained ankle. (state) c. She had physiotherapy. (activity) d. She got better. (accomplishment) 35 4.2.1 Accomplishments contain activities and achievements, which in turn contain states When an unwell person gets better (an accomplishment), there is a phase of healing or taking medicine or whatever (an activity) which culminates in a transition from ill to well (an achievement), and immediately after that the person is in good health (a state). accomplishment = activity (achievement (state)) 37 Achievements and accomplishments are directed towards goals – end-points after which the event is over: for instance the event encoded in Axel received a pair of jeans has been achieved the moment Axel has those jeans; the action of the meadow flooding has been accomplished when the meadow reaches a flooded state. 38