Its a Process and an Event ILLC Dissertation Series DS-2007-03 For further information about ILLC-publications, please contact Institute for Logic, Language and Computation Universiteit van Amsterdam Plantage Muidergracht 24 1018 TV Amsterdam phone: +31-20-525 6051 fax: +31-20-525 5206 e-mail: [email protected] homepage: http://www.illc.uva.nl/ Its a Process and an Event Perspectives in event semantics Academisch Proefschrift ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam op gezag van de Rector Magnificus prof.dr. J.W. Zwemmer ten overstaan van een door het college voor promoties ingestelde commissie, in het openbaar te verdedigen in de Aula der Universiteit op woensdag 28 februari 2007, te 14.00 uur door Darrin Louis Hindsill geboren te Los Angeles, Verenigde Staten van Amerika. Promotiecommissie Promotor: Prof. dr. Michiel van Lambalgen Overige leden: prof. dr. A.E. Baker dr. M. van Staden prof. dr. M.J.B. Stokhof prof. dr. F.J.M.M. Veltman prof. dr. A. Verhagen Faculteit der Geesteswetenschappen Copyright c 2007 by Darrin L. Hindsill Cover design by Joes Koppers. Cover picture: “Children’s Games” (detail) by Pieter Brueghel, the Elder. Printed and bound by PrintPartners Ipskamp, Enschede. Contents Acknowledgments vii 1 Preamble 1 1.1Whatdowereally‘know’?...................... 1 1.2ThePlan................................ 5 2 Lexical Aspect 9 2.1EventTypology............................ 9 2.2EventStructureandCoercion.................... 33 3 The Psycholinguistic Turn 45 3.1Introduction.............................. 45 3.2 Preliminaries: Analogy between objects and events . 49 3.3IntentionsandGoals......................... 53 3.4 Event Segmentation and the Hierarchical Bias Hypothesis . 55 3.5 Acquisition of Tense, Aspect and Aktionsart . 63 3.6PreliminaryConclusion........................ 86 3.7EventandObjectIndividuation................... 91 3.8Conclusion............................... 97 Interlude 103 3.9 Language and ontology of the Event Calculus . 104 3.10AktionsartenandScenarios..................... 107 3.11 An informal sketch of the computational machinery . 114 4 Perception Verbs 119 4.1Introduction.............................. 119 4.2 Logical and psychological properties of perception verbs . 120 4.3Perceptionreportsofeventualities.................. 133 4.4Preformalmatters...........................150 v 4.5 Formalisation of see and watch ................... 157 4.6 Coda – Prepositions vs. ing ..................... 170 5 Causatives 175 5.1Introduction.............................. 175 5.2Causatives............................... 178 5.3 Coda: Diachronic development of causal level . 219 5.4Resultatives.............................. 221 6 Nominalization 231 6.1TheStandardStory.......................... 231 6.2Origins(andpresent-dayconsequences)............... 244 6.3 A second look: The semantics and mappings of verbal Ing forms . 266 6.4Formalisation............................. 275 7 Endnote 281 7.1Conclusionsofar........................... 281 7.2Foundinthestars...........................284 Appendix 293 Bibliography 299 References.................................. 299 Samenvatting 307 vi Acknowledgments The process of finishing a PhD thesis was expected to be difficult, but through a variety a factors, it has been not only that, but multiplied by ten. Indeed, at certain points I never thought that I would be writing these lines. That they are written owes a great deal of gratitude to my supervisor, Michiel van Lambalgen, who convinced me in the midst of illness that I did have it in me to complete the work. Of course, he also deserves the more ordinary thanks (in his ordinary role as supervisor), for guiding me through the procedure, slowly forming what became a manuscript before my scarcely believing eyes. I am also grateful to the ILLC administration for making my (extended) stay possible, again, without which I wouldn’t have been able to reach this moment. Though I have been unable to show my face much in the last two years, I would also I like to thank everybody on the second floor of the Philosophy department. Even if I could not be a regular attendant, the talks I attended and discussions I had with my colleagues were certainly fruitful. It is also most appreciated that fellow AIO’s would keep me informed as to happenings, even if I was notable by my absence. Special thanks is owed to Fabrice Nauze for Samenvatting assistance. A similar gratitude is owed to my friends and flat-mates for support and help any time I needed it. So this is also for Karin, Cecilia, Maarten, and Sanne. The same applies to Joes as well, not only for the former, but also for descending from the airy realm of virtual design to the corporeal world of print. Finally, I would also like to thank my family and friends in Los Angeles, especially my parents, who never wavered in their confidence, even if I did. It is likely that I have left one or more people out. If so, and you are reading this, please accept that this is only my ignorance and faulty memory. vii Chapter 1 Preamble 1.1 What do we really ‘know’? It is perhaps best to begin with a simple, but surprising, example that serves to illustrate a main theme of this thesis. It is generally held that certain types of statives resist the English progressive. The most typical of theses statives is know. A browse through the literature and a query of a the class of native English speakers involved in semantics or linguistics would certainly hold the following: (1) *I am knowing the answer. The * should be read here as not merely semantically anomalous, but down- right ungrammatical. But why should this be so? Certainly, the progressive construction is morpho-syntactically grammatical, so the deciding factor here is that something like knowledge in the philosophical sense cannot be seen as an activity,1 but rather the state of an individual. Moreover, in the above example,2 the object of knowledge is most likely a universal truth, and there is no context given, other than an ‘out of the blue’ statement of a piece of someone’s knowledge. This view in the semantics literature goes back at least to (Vendler, 1967) in his classification of English verbs into four discrete aspectual classes. Since that time, while many so-called stative verbs have been shown to appear quite commonly in the progressive (such as sit, live, resemble, etc.), the view that know cannot appear in the progressive has held fast. Nevertheless, there are some attested uses extant in the literature. (Huddleston, 2002b) states that progressive know “is just about restricted to waxing/waning case (He claims that fewer and fewer students are knowing how to write English when they come up to university.)” (p. 170). (Baker, 1995) has a waxing version: 1For now the reader can rely on their intuition for the meaning of states and activities. They will be defined in the next chapter. 2Which should certainly be said to be infelicitous or very anomalous to say the least. 1 2 Chapter 1. Preamble (2) Dana is knowing more and more of the answers as the course progresses. This is about as far the acknowledgement of exceptions goes, but in neither example is it a progressive where someone knows a particular fact. In the first case it is a description of a series of students capacities, and the second the growth of knowledge about a specific subject. Keeping matters intuitive, both of the examples present something dynamic and activity-like, making them a prime candidate for the progressive. But (1) is knowledge of a single fact, and while one can, unfortunately, forget what one knows,3 the knowledge of a fact during a particular moment in time hardly seems dynamic. Perhaps, then, this restriction on progressive know is correct after all. But what if in discourse, the notion of knowledge plays a slightly different role? That is, aside from quizzes and nerdish braggadocio, people very rarely list the facts they know. Rather, if they make a point of knowledge of a particular fact, it is usually for a reason relevant to the current situation. This last point is the beginning of an insight that can then make predictions about more contingent variants of sentences such as (1). (Goldsmith & Woisetschlaeger, 1982) modifies the notion of state as something that can be viewed in either a structural or phenomenal way. Some states can be seen as an inherent part of what they are predicated of, while some happen to be merely temporary states that are subject to change. Their famous example is that of the verb stand, and how the speaker construes it. Imagine that the statue’s placement in both sentences has the same spatio-temporal duration. (3) a. The statue of Tom Paine is standing at the corner of Kirkland and College (but everybody expects the new Administration to move it). b. The statue of Tom Paine stands at the corner of Kirkland and College (and nobody thinks the deadlocked City Council will ever find a proper place for it.) In the first case the statue’s position is seen as temporary and the use of the progressive is allowed. In (3-b), the statue is, apparently, never going to move again, and its position is construed as more permanent, making the use of the simple form of stand much more felicitous.4 Back to the matter at hand, could we not then predict that when the import of the knowledge is relevant to a specific situation that is temporary, the progressive of know could be used? The answer, contrary to many native English speakers of a certain social class and background5 is a resounding ‘Yes’. Conventional biases aside, this isn’t exactly the case. The following is taken from an interview with 3Again bringing a ‘dynamics’ of knowledge up. 4(Comrie, 1976a) contrasts The Sphinx stands by the Nile with Mr. Smith is standing by the Nile. Presumably a tourist on a package holiday, here it is quite obligatory to use the progressive form of stand (aside from a narrative context). 5Including my own. 1.1. What do we really ‘know’? 3 a comic book writer who wants to turn his creation into a screenplay and also direct the movie.