Ling 442

1
Lecture 13

• Ling 442

2
Exercises (part 1)

• (1) p. 173 Classify the predicates into four
  different types.
• The door creaked open.
• Sam got the joke about 3 minutes later.
• James read some of his strange poems.
• A soft light shone on the hills.
• Elsa chewed her way through half a goat.
• Jerry is a great talker.

3
Exercises (part 2)

• Suppose that ?PROG S?t true iff there is a
  time t? surrounding t such that ?S?t? true.
  (Assume that PROG S is the progressive form of S
  and that ?S?t? reads the denotation of S at t?.)
  This analysis cannot account for (1) or (2). Why?
• Sue is/was reaching the summit.
• Mary is/was building a house.

4
semelfactive

• Rap, blink, cough, flash, knock (on the door)
• In-adverbials are generally not felicitous.
• For-adverbials/progressives are fine with
  repetitive interpretations.
• I think they are repeatable accomplishments that
  are short in duration. (Controversial)

5
Nominal and verbal aspect

• When the verb is such that it works on the object
  in an incremental fashion, there is a predictable
  relationship between the types of DPs and the
  Aktionsart-related properties of the VP (or S).
• To build a house accomplishment
• To build houses activity (for .. ok)
• To find a rabbit achievement
• To find rabbits activity (for .. ok)

6
Tense and Aspect

• Syntax Chomsky (1957)
• The structure of English auxiliary
• tense (M) (have en) (be ing) (be en) V
• perfect progressive
  passive
• Affix hopping an affix is attached to the
  following stem, not to the stem it is
  semantically associated with.

7
Tense in English

• The simple present (V(-s))
• She knows where we are. (current state)
• Bill smokes. (habitual)
• Dogs are faithful animals (generic)
• The sun sets tomorrow at 603. (future event)
• Jones passes the ball to King. King shoots.
• (sports announcer type -- reportive present)

8
Present progressive

• In most cases (cases other than stative verbs),
  if you wish to describe what is going on, you
  must use the present progressive.
• This is not true in all languages. German lacks
  an overt verbal form that indicates on-going
  actions. So John smokes can mean two things
  John smokes (like in English) and John is smoking.

9
Semantics of the Progressive

• Suppose that ?PROG S?t true iff there is a time
  t? surrounding t such that ?S?t? true.
• Sue is/was reaching the summit.
• Mary is/was building a house.
• Even when they are intuitively true, there is no
  guarantee that the event that is on-going is
  completed at a future time. Perhaps we may need
  to invoke a modal concept here. If you are
  interested, you are referred to David Dowtys
  work.

10
The present perfect

• When do you use the simple past and when do you
  use the present perfect?
• I lost my wallet.
• I have lost my wallet.
• I went to the Grand Canyon.
• I have been to the Grand Canyon.