The paper proposes a formal account of Aristotle's trichotomy of verbs, in terms of properties of their continuous tensings, into S(state)-verbs, K(kinesis)-verbs, and E-(energeia)-verbs. Within a Fregean tense framework in which predicates are relativized to times, an account of the continuous tenses is presented and a preliminary account of the trichotomy devised, which permits an illuminating analogy to be drawn between the temporal properties of E- and K-verbs and the spatial properties of stuffs and substances. This analogy is drawn upon (...) in constructing a sophisticated version of the preliminary theory accommodating more of the linguistic data. (shrink)

The familiar Vendler-Kenny scheme of verb-types, viz., performances (further differentiated by Vedler into accomplishments and achievements), activities, and states, is too narrow in two important respects. First, it is narrow linguistically. It fails to take into account the phenomenon of verb aspect. The trichotomy is not one of verbs as lexical types but of predications. Second, the trichotomy is narrow ontologically. It is a specification in the context of human agency of the more fundamental, topic-neutral trichotomy, event-process-state.The central component in (...) this ontological trichotomy, event, can be sharply differentiated from its two flanking components by adapting a suggestion by Geoffrey N. Leech and others that the contrast between perfective and imperfective aspect in verbs corresponds to the count/mass distinction in the domain of nouns. With the help of two distinctions, of cardinal count adverbials versus frequency adverbials, and of occurrence versus associated occasion, two interrelated criteria for event predication are developed. Accordingly, Mary capsized the boat is an event predication because (a) it is equivalent to There was at least one capsizing of the boat by Mary, or (b) because it admits cardinal count adverbials, e.g., at least once, twice, three times. Ontologically speaking, events are defined as those occurrences that are inherently countable. (shrink)

This extended investigation of the semantics of event (and state) sentences in their various forms is a major contribution to the semantics of natural language, simultaneously encompassing important issues in linguistics, philosophy, and logic. It develops the view that the logical forms of simple English sentences typically contain quantification over events or states and shows how this view can account for a wide variety of semantic phenomena. Focusing on the structure of meaning in English sentences at a &"subatomic&" level&-that is, (...) a level below the one most theories accept as basic or &"atomic&"&-Parsons asserts that the semantics of simple English sentences require logical forms somewhat more complex than is normally assumed in natural language semantics. His articulation of underlying event theory explains a wide variety of apparently diverse semantic characteristics of natural language, and his development of the theory shows the importance of seeing the distinction between events and states. Parsons demonstrates that verbs, also, indicate kinds of actions rather than specific, individual actions. Verb phrases, too, he argues, depend on modifiers to make their function and meaning in a sentence specific. An appendix gives many of the details needed to formalize the theory discussed in the body of the text and provides a series of templates that permit the generation of atomic formulas of English. (shrink)

In 1936, Benjamin Lee Whorf wrote a justly famous paper entitled "An American Indian Model of the Universe" (Carroll, 1956). In that paper, Whorf criticized the easy assumption that people in different cultures, speaking radically different languages, share common presuppositions about what the world is like. He contrasted the Hopi view of space and time with what he called elsewhere the Standard Average European view. For the Hopi, space and time are inherently relativistic; for the speaker of Western European languages, (...) like English, the universe is basically Newtonian, time and space are absolute, "containers" of things and events. (shrink)

Event semantics takes eventualities, understood as events, processes, and states, to be basic objects in reality, not set-theoretic constructions from something else . I defend this view and argue that events, processes, and states form pairwise disjoint sorts, having the ontological status of atoms, aggregates, and mass objects, respectively. Aggregates are composed of atoms, whereas mass objects are not. Two intermediate groupings of eventualities are important in this mereological characterization: occurrences, comprising events and processes, and eventuality chunks, comprising processes and (...) states. Processes are the sort of eventualities belonging to both categories. ;Focusing on the ontology of occurrences, I argue that processes constitute events, although events are not identical to the processes that constitute them. Events and the processes that constitute them are spatio-temporally superposed, meaning that they have the same spatio-temporal parts; but spatio-temporal superposition is not tantamount to identity, because events and the processes that constitute them are modally distinct. Constitution cannot be characterized in extensional terms, for it appeals to an asymmetry in persistence conditions between the constituent parts and what they constitute . I argue that if a process constitutes an event, then there are worlds in which the process exists but the event does not. In this sense, a process can survive the destruction of the event that it constitutes. ;Eventualities are ontologically dependent particulars: necessarily they exist only if their participants exist, and their identity depends on their participants. I claim that events differ from the processes that constitute them in that they are ontologically dependent upon consequent states as well. An event is necessarily such that it cannot exist unless its consequent state exists, and its identity depends on the identity of its consequent state; an event differs in this respect from the process constituting it, which is not ontologically dependent upon a consequent state. (shrink)