Abstract
It has been amply demonstrated that a comprehensive description of aspectualizers requires an analysis of the complement structures with which they occur. A determination of the aspectual nature of these complement sentences and verbs constitutes an important part of such an analysis. Viewing events as consisting of various temporal parts, as well as being distinguishable into several different types, provides us with a means by which we may classify event-naming verbal expressions into different aspectual types. That is, different classes of verbs can be distinguished according to the type of event named by the members of that particular class.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
I agree with Dowty’s (1972, p. 35) comments about these terms. He says: “Achievement is an unfortunate choice of mnemonic term, since achieve turns out to be an accomplishment, not an achievement verb. That they both begin with the sequence ac doesn’t help much either. Nevertheless, these terms have been retained since linguists are likely to be familiar with them from Vendler’s book.”
Actually, Dowty (1977, p. 49) revises his earlier (1972) view of achievements and notes that some achievements do occur in the progressive. However, he still considers this occurrence to be rare.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1979 D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Freed, A.F. (1979). Events and Aspectual Verb-Types: Activities, Accomplishments, Achievements, States, and Series. In: The Semantics of English Aspectual Complementation. Synthese Language Library, vol 8. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9475-1_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9475-1_3
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-277-1011-6
Online ISBN: 978-94-009-9475-1
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive