The grammar of the english verb phrase part 14 pps

For example a speaker may view a situation as just beginning, focusing on the initial part of it ingressive or inchoative aspectual meaning or he may view the situation as a hypersituati

a special suffix and/or auxiliary) of an aspectual meaning that has to do with the way the speaker views the internal temporal structure of a situation For example a speaker may view a situation as just beginning, focusing on the

initial part of it (ingressive or inchoative aspectual meaning) or he may view the situation as a hypersituation which consists of repeated subsituations, as

inShe tapped a few times on the elephant’s head This is iterative or repetitive

aspectual meaning (In this work we will refer to the repetition of what is seen

as the same situation as iterative or repetitive aspectual meaning even when the repetitions are seen as taking place on different occasions and do not form

a hypersituation, as in I’ve only been in this town three times) Grammatical

aspect is the pairing of these meanings with specific forms of the verb Different

aspectual meanings are grammaticalized in different languages In English, al-though many sorts of aspectual meaning can be expressed by, for example, aspectual verbs (as in It began to rain), only two sorts of aspectual meaning

are grammaticalized The first is progressivity Progressive aspect combines the

progressive form, be ⫹ V-ing (e g It is raining), with the meaning ‘focus on

the middle part of the situation’ The second sort of aspectual meaning that is

grammaticalized is habituality (e g. When I was a child, my mother would buy chocolate for us every Friday), though the expression of grammaticalized

habituality is restricted to verb forms involving one of the auxiliaries will, would or used to.

1.51.3 The third system of the verb phrase introduced in part III is modality.

Modality is a semantic category which covers two main areas of meaning The first has to do with the speaker’s assessment of the likelihood of actualization

(in the past, present or future) of a situation This is called epistemic modality,

since it is concerned with the truth of propositions or utterances The second has to do with factors affecting the likelihood of actualization of situations

(such as obligation, willingness, permission, ability, etc.) This is called nonepi-stemic or root modality In English, modality is most often expressed by a

modal auxiliary verb such as must, will, may, can, etc.

1.52 Part IV

In part IV, we discussed the question of what units of language refer to situa-tions, and conversely, what it is that verbs, clauses etc refer to Verbs, verb

phrases and other, more complex, predicate constituents, we saw, denote rather abstract entities which we call ‘situation-templates’ Clauses, which involve

subjects as well as predicate constituents, denote fully-fledged situations

The referents of the linguistic expressions denoting situation-templates are abstract types of situations (or ‘situation types’) The referent of a (finite) clause

is a/the actualization of a situation.

However, most of the time we do not really have to make a strict distinction

between denotation and reference, nor between situation-templates and

situa-tions or between abstract situation types and concrete actualizing situasitua-tions

This means that we can, and will, often talk of clauses and even verb phrases

as ‘referring to situations’

1.53 Part V

1.53.1 In part V we saw how ontological aspect (or Aktionsart, or lexical

aspect) distinguishes different situation-templates according to the semantic

features that are automatically conferred on the template by the choice of

lexi-cal verb and its complements (Because it is the lexilexi-cal verb that counts,

pro-gressive or nonpropro-gressive meaning does not play a part in lexical aspect.)

While grammatical aspect is clearly concerned with the internal temporal

struc-ture of a situation, lexical aspect is much more loosely concerned with this

For example, an important feature is that of (non)agentivity (i e agentivity or

nonagentivity, which we can write as [( agentive]) A situation-template is

agentive if it entails an agent that (virtually always intentionally) causes the

situation to actualize (Compare: Sylvia shouted and Sylvia breaks windows,

which are both agentive, withSylvia looks determined and The window broke,

which are nonagentive) Agentivity is only indirectly to do with how the

situa-tion is seen as unfolding in time, in that it may affect the possibility of using

the progressive, and of using verb phrases in certain ways (Compare:Sylvia’s

breaking windows with her fellow protesters tomorrow (agentive) with

*Syl-via’s looking determined tomorrow (nonagentive)).

1.53.2 The other features⫺ all binary, like (non)agentivity ⫺ that play a role

in lexical aspect are briefly repeated here A situation-template may be static

or it may be nonstatic (dynamic) A static situation-template is one which refers

to a situation type that involves no change and requires no energy in order to

continue actualizing Such situations include habits (as implied by the template

walk to work every day) Conversely, a type of situation referred to by a

dy-namic situation-template involves change and requires an input of energy in

order to actualize or to continue actualizing The term ‘static’ is extended to

situations and to clauses which contain a static verb phrase (The same,

natu-rally, applies to the term ‘dynamic’) Verbs which only denote static situations

are called static situation verbs or state verbs, and verbs which only denote

dynamic situations are called dynamic situation verbs.

1.53.3 The feature [( homogeneous] also belongs to the realm of lexical

aspect but only in a limited way The meaning of homogeneity is most easily

explained by considering types of situations Homogeneous situation types are

ones in which every portion of the situation can be described in the same way as the whole situation (for example drink beer) Nonhomogeneous, or

heterogeneous, types of situations are made up of parts which are each different

from the whole (for example drink a glass of beer, in which no single part of

the situation constitutes a full instance of drinking a glass of beer)

Some of the information which determines the (non)homogeneity of a con-crete actualization of a situation is lexical information found in the situation-template, and in some cases the (non)homogeneity of a clause can even be fully determined by the situation-template However, apart from the fact that the nature of the subject NP may affect the interpretation of the actualization of a situation as homogeneous or not, it is often not possible to decide on the homogeneity of a situation unless we know whether or not the clause referring

to it receives a progressive interpretation This in turn, of course, is often de-pendent on grammatical aspect Thus, if we take the telic situation-template represented by drink a glass of beer, it may be involved in the representation

of (the actualization of) a situation as nonhomogeneous as well as one which

is homogeneous:Sylvia drank a glass of beer represents its situation as

nonho-mogeneous, Sylvia was drinking a glass of beer focuses purely on the activity

in progress and represents the actualization of the situation referred to as homogeneous (In addition, a habitual interpretation may also alter the homo-geneity value of a situation, since a habit is a kind of state, and habituality may be indicated by elements outside the predicate constituent, as inElephants are intelligent, where the repetitive-habitual aspect of meaning is induced by

the generic plural subject NP.) In sum, (non)homogeneity is ultimately a feature

of clauses referring to actualizing situations, but it can be determined by the nature of the situation type, or/and by the (non)progressive or (non)habitual aspectual interpretation that is assigned to the clause

1.53.4 An important distinction made at the level of situation-templates ⫺ but, like most of the distinctions discussed here, a distinction which is often applied by extension to clauses and to situations ⫺ is that between punctual and durative situation-templates Punctual situation-templates imply a

situa-tion which is conceived of as taking up no measurable time, or lasting just a moment, while durative situation-templates imply a situation conceived of as extending over an appreciable interval Verbs that are typically used to refer to punctual situations are called ‘punctual situation verbs’, but even such verbs may sometimes be involved in the reference to durative situations This hap-pens most notably when a punctual situation verb is used in a clause that is interpreted as referring to the repetition of a punctual situation, so that the

repetitions constitute a durative hypersituation For example,Sylvia smashed a window is interpreted as referring to a punctual situation, but Sylvia smashed twenty windows is normally interpreted as referring to a durative situation

composed of multiple instances of window-smashing rather than as a single

punctual situation of smashing twenty windows simultaneously

1.53.5 A situation-template (and hence, informally, a situation) may be

transi-tional or nontransitransi-tional A transition consists of a (punctual) change from one

state to another Inopen the window the situation-template involves the

win-dow undergoing a transition from the state of being closed to the state of being

open (as a result of some sort of agency) InMeg opened the window the entire

transition is referred to; inMeg was opening the window only the preparatory

phase leading up to the actual transition.

1.53.6 A situation-template is telic if it denotes a type of situation which is

represented as tending towards an inherent terminal point, without which the

situation is not complete and at which it naturally comes to an end An

exam-ple isSylvia {drank / was drinking} a glass of beer Otherwise, it is atelic, for

example Sylvia {drank / was drinking} beer.

1.53.7 Finally, a situation-template may be evolving or nonevolving A

situa-tion that is [⫹ evolving] is one involving a gradual process of change that is

not represented as caused by an agent, for exampleThe beer was fermenting.

1.53.8 Of course, in any given situation-template we will be able to discern

one value or the other (i e a plus or a minus) for most if not all of the features

discussed above Thus a situation-template likebreak a window can be

charac-terized as [⫹ agentive], [⫹ dynamic], [⫹ telic], [⫹ transitional] and [⫺

dura-tive]) (Since the template is punctual, the features [( evolving] and [(

homo-geneous] do not apply)

1.54 Part VI

In part VI we explained how we can use different combinations of lexical

aspect values, in combination with information from subject NPs, to divide

into broad types the situations denoted by whole clauses The two most

fre-quently used categorizations of situation types are those described by Lyons

(1977) and Vendler (1967), or variations on these Because we have some

reser-vations about Vendler’s categorization, we are adopting (our own version of)

Lyons’ taxonomy This divides situations into four types: states, actions, events

and processes These can all be distinguished from one another by reference to

just three parameters (i e three features of lexical aspect): [( static], [(

evolv-ing] and [( agentive] As shown in the chart in section 1.42.5, states are static,

nonevolving and nonagentive; actions are nonstatic, nonevolving but agentive;

processes are nonstatic, evolving and nonagentive; and events are nonstatic,

nonevolving and nonagentive

1.55 Part VII

1.55.1 In part VII we introduced ‘actualization aspect’, i e the distinction between boundedness and nonboundedness An actualizing situation may or

may not be represented as coming to an end, i e as reaching a (natural or arbitrary) terminal point It will be clear that boundedness is essentially

con-cerned with the right temporal boundary of the actualizing situation, and it

turns out that many elements may provide this boundary For example, the object NP determines, respectively, the boundedness and nonboundedness of the (actualizations of the) situations represented bySylvia broke a window last night and Sylvia broke windows last night (In the latter example, although we

can assume that in the extra-linguistic world Sylvia stopped breaking windows, there is no linguistic specification of a terminal point.) In some cases, bounded-ness is merely an implicature arising from the Gricean Maxims of conversation

or from our knowledge of the world In that case we speak of W-boundedness,

in contrast with linguistically indicated L-boundedness.

1.55.2 We should distinguish on the one hand between (non)boundedness and (non)homogeneity and on the other hand between (non)boundedness and (a)telicity While [⫹ bounded] and [⫺ homogeneous] pick out identical sets of situations, and [⫺ bounded] and [⫹ homogeneous] do likewise (so that it is not, for example, possible to have a situation which is [⫹ bounded] and [⫹ homogeneous]), the two features nevertheless refer to different aspects of those situations (Non)boundedness refers to whether or not the actualization of the situation reaches a terminal point, while (non)homogeneity refers to whether

or not the internal consistency of the situation is uniform, i e whether any (relevant) part of the actualizing situation is representative of the whole situa-tion The same symmetry does not exist when it comes to (non)boundedness and (a)telicity It is possible for a telic situation-template (e g.climb over the wall) to be used in a clause which represents the actualization of a situation

as bounded (e g She climbed over the wall) and in one which represents the

situation as nonbounded (e g.She was climbing over the wall) This is because

telicity deals with whether or not a type of situation is represented ashaving

an inherent terminal point (which is a point of completion) whilst boundedness deals with whether or not an actualizing situation is represented as actually

reaching a terminal point (which, depending on whether the situation is telic

or atelic, may or may not be a point of completion)

1.56 Part VIII

Finally, in part VIII, we saw that the three different types of aspect (viz onto-logical aspect, grammatical aspect and actualization aspect) interact so as to determine the aspectual meaning of a given sentence For example, progressive

meaning, whether grammatically expressed or not, always produces

nonbound-edness, irrespective of whether the situation-template is telic (as in I’m going

to write a book) or atelic (as in This time next year I’ll be writing poetry).