Verbs and Situations

Verbs and Situations

1. Argument

   • used to cover al kinds of obligatory, potentially, referenctial constituents that verbs require.

2. Causatives

   • Causatives
     • The thought made her gleeful
       • Causative verb, Subject.
         • a causative sentence is: a situation is brought about, caused by whatever the subject noun phrase refers to
   • Entailments
     • She was gleeful

3. Situation types

   • Zeno Vendler (1967)
     • verb phrases into four kinds, differing according to how the denoted states or actions are distributed in time:
       • almost instantaneous switches between states
       • simple existence of a state
       • ongoing actions
       • goal-directed actions that culminate
       • Progressive aspect marking (BE + Verb-ing) highlights the durative phase of an event} and ignores its termination

4. This chapter has been about action words in the encoding of circumstances, concentrating on how what is discussed is bundled in time, part of the investigation of viewpoint. States and exercises are the least difficult kind. The language regards them as existing without change for timeframes, fairly like the homogeneous "stuff " that mass things indicate.