The English Verb System – Contrastive Approach 1 November 2, 2018 Lesson 5
Lexical Aspect & VENDLER’S CLASSIFICATION of Verb Situations
The basic situation types 1. States: desire, want, love, hate, know, believe 2. Activities (unbounded processes) run, walk, swim, push a cart, drive a car 3. Accomplishments (bounded processes) run a mile, walk home, draw a triangle, paint a portrait, grow up, deliver a speech, recover from an illness 4. Achievements (point events; instantaneous change of state with an outcome of a new state.) recognize a person, reach the top, win the race, spot someone, the end or start of something Tests: For X time & In X time
Activities a) *How long did it take to play the piano? (no goal) b) *He played the piano in two hours. (no goal) He played the piano for two hours. c) If he stops playing the piano, he did play the piano. (all segments are equal)
States Tests: a) *How long did it take to love chocolate? b) *He loved chocolate in ten years. He loved chocolate for ten years. c) If he stops loving chocolate, he did love it. d) *He loved chocolate quickly.
Accomplishments Tests: a) How long did it take to write an article? (goal) b) She wrote an article in an hour. (goal) c) If she stops writing an article, she did not write an article. (segments are not all equal)
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Achievements Tests: a) How long did it take to spot a tiger? (The meaning is different from accomplishments: how much time passed before the moment of spotting a tiger) b) He spotted a tiger in two minutes. (how much time passed before the moment of realization) c) As soon as one spots a tiger, one has spotted a tiger. (This test is problematic because the specific verb form like perfect is needed).
There are also instantaneous activities, called semelfactives, like knock or cough, which are instantaneous, atelic, and dynamic. Semelfactives were added later, and constitute a separate class in contemporary semantics; this class usually includes achievements as well.
Feature list The characteristics of the four situation types can be summed up into the following feature matrices: Situations Stativity State [+] Example: “She despised her teacher” Activity [-] Example: “I swam in the pool this morning” Accomplishment [-] Example: “I built a house last summer.”
Duration [+]
Goal [-]
[+]
[-]
[+]
[+]
Achievement [-] [-] [+] Example: “I recognized the movie star even though she wore sunglasses.” Semelfactive [-] [-] [-] Example: “I had to blink when I looked up at the sun.”
Telicity A situation is TELIC if it has a defined completion or an endpoint. Otherwise, it is ATELIC. e.g. Carrie was running. (atelic) Carrie ran to the station. (telic)
Telic-atelic nature of a situation in English depends on the type of NP acting as a verb complement:
1. a) Penny was drinking coffee all night. b) Penny drank two strong black coffees last night. 2
2. a) Leslie drank cocktails all night. b) Leslie drank a cocktail last night. c) Leslie drank six cocktails last night. 3. a) Leonard makes furniture. b) Leonard made a piece of furniture for Penny. 4. a) Amy ate chips. b) Amy ate a bag of chips.
Certain post-verbal particles express telicity and add the concept of goal or an endpoint to durative situations, which otherwise have no necessary terminus:
5. a) Penny wore her favourite shoes to the party. b) Penny wore out her favourite shoes. 6. a) Howard’s café was burning, but the firemen came on time and saved the rest of it. b) Howard’s café burnt down because firemen didn’t come on time. 7. a) Amy used her food supplies to make a fabulous dinner for her friends. b) Amy used up all her food supplies (so she had to go to the market).
PP can denote a goal, especially with the verbs of motion:
8. a) The plane flew to London. b) The plane flew. 9. a) Amy walked all morning. b) Amy proudly walked into Sheldon’s office. c) Amy and Leonard walked by the Hudson River. d) Leonard walked from home to his office.
Prefixes can change the feature [–goal] into [+goal]:
10. a) Sheldon had a stomachache because he ate too much. b) Sheldon had a stomachache because he overate. 11. a) Leonard reads fashion magazines. b) Leonard reread that fashion magazine.
Certain structures with copulas present telic situations.
12. a) The weather became warmer. b) She soon got bored with the film.
There are certain verbs that incorporate the telic property within their own meaning (incremental verbs):
13. a) It started to get warmer so the snow melted. b) The trees were cut and left to rot. c) Most of the water had evaporated.
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I
Classify the verbs and VPs in the following sentences into Vendler’s types: 1) Peru shares a border with Chile. 2) The children watched the squirrels on the grass. 3) Peter found an interesting cookbook at the bookstore. 4) Charles knows the way to Harvard Yard. 5) My roommate learned Italian. 6) The woman shouted at the angry dog. 7) The guy painted the tasteless furniture. 8) His father stopped smoking last month. 9) Leonard is growing up very fast. 10) Amy organized a fabulous party. 11) Sheldon walked around the block. 12) Penny lay on the sofa all night. 13) Upravo sam sleteo. 14) Oprala je veš još juče. 15) Šapnuo mi je odgovor. 16) Religija je oduvek proganjala nauku. 17) Od početka istorije, postojao je duboki jaz između nauke i religije. 18) Već vekovima, naša zemlja stoji po strani. 19) Služio sam joj verno dvanaest godina. 20) Vreme je da konačno pronađe mir koji zaslužuje. 21) Lekar je na svakih petnaest minuta istrčavao iz ordinacije. 22) Ipak me je nagovorio da odem kod zubara.
II
Compare the situation types in the following pairs of sentences:
1. a) Pevala im je čitavo veče. b) Otpevala je pesmu najbolje što je mogla. 2. a) Jela je supu s uživanjem. b) Pojela je celo parče svadbene torte. 3. a) Svakog leta plivam u gradskom bazenu. b) Preplivao je bazen bezbroj puta do sada. 4. a) Verovala sam mu u potpunosti. b) Poverovala je u svaku njegovu laž. . a) Kaznila ih je ukorom. b) Otac ih je stalno kažnjavao zbog loših ocena. 6. a) Kucao je tiho i nežno. b) Kucnuo je na vrata i ušao. 7. a) Potrebno je još malo doraditi nacrt. b) Dorađivao je skicu čitavu noć.
The use of prefixes and suffixes in Serbian can bring about the change of the situation type.
prefix + ACT = ACC: plivati - preplivati prati - oprati
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prefix + ACT = ACH: govoriti - nagovoriti prefix + ST = ACH: verovati - poverovati boleti - preboleti ACC/ACH + suffix (-av) = ACT: kazniti – kažnjavati sukobiti se – sukobljavati se opkoliti – opkoljavati ACT + suffix (-nu) = ACH: šaptati – šapnuti treptati – trepnuti kucati – kucnuti ACC/ACH (with a prefix) + suffix = ACT (repetition): dokopati – dokopavati doraditi – dorađivati istrčati – istrčavati pronaći – pronalaziti
Telicity: English - grammaticalized (syntactic tools for expressing telicity) Serbian - lexicalized (derivational morphology)
References: Novakov, P. (2005). Glagolski vid i tip glagolske situacije u engleskom i srpskom jeziku. Novi Sad: Futura. Piper, P. et al. (2005). Sintaksa savremenoga srpskog jezika, prosta rečenica. Beograd: Institut za srpski jezik SANU/Beogradska knjiga, Novi Sad: Matica srpska. Vendler, Z. (1967). “Verbs and Times”. Linguistics in Philosophy. Ithaca: Cornell.
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