Sentence semantics 1: Situations

Sentence semantics 1: Situations

1. Verbs and situation types

   • Stative verbs
   • Dynamic verbs
   • distinction is between
     • durative
     • punctual
     • Telic
     • Atelic

2. Past events as presente tense

   • Sometimes called as Historical present.
   • It gives immediacy to a description.
   • Perfectives
   • Imperfectives

3. Three important dimensions to class a situation

   • Tense
     • Allow a speaker to locate a situation in time relative to the “now” of the act of speaking or writing.
   • Type
     • Is a label for the typology of situations encoded in the semantics of a language
   • Aspect
     • The speaker may choose how to describe the internal temporal nature of the situation.

4. A system of situation types

   • Speakers use their knowledge of these semantic distinctions to draw distinctions of situation type.
   • The task for semanticist is to show how the inherent semantic distinctions carried by verbs, and verb phrases.
   • Tense and aspect
     • Systems both allow speakers to relate situations to time, but they offer different slants on time

5. Modality

   • Is a cover term for devices which allow speakers to express varying degrees of commitment to , or belief in , a proposition.
   • Epistemic Modality
     • So called because the speaker is signalling degrees of knoledge.
   • Deonic Modality
     • Where the verbs mark the speaker attitude to social factors.