Agatárquides

Within the literature on aspect, two types of aspect have been identified; lexical aspect and grammatical aspect. Lexical aspect is also known as Situation Aspect and Atkionsart and is generally assumed to refer to the inherent meaning of a verb or verb phrase (VP). Grammatical aspect is also known as Viewpoint Aspect and will be the subject of Chapter 4. Both types of aspect are used to convey the duration of an activity or an event over an interval of time. With respect to lexical aspect, a number of attempts have been made to classify the inherent meaning of the verbs or VPs and the “events” that they are describing. The starting point for most of these classifications is the work of Vendler (1967), who in turn built on the work of

Aristotle. Vendler proposed a four-way classification of aspect based on the

temporal properties of verbs.

3.3.1 Aspectual classification - Vendler (1967)

Vendler’s classification is based on three semantic features:

1. stativity - which distinguishes ongoing states like love, want, know from

2. durativity - which refers to how long an event lasts in time and distinguishes between those events that are extended in time like time drink, write and

climb a mountain from those that have no lasting duration such as punctual

events like hiccup, tap, reach the top.

3. telicity- which refers to whether or not the event has a natural end-point and therefore differentiates events with a natural end-point like win a race and

make a sandwich from those which do not have a natural end-point and can

carry on for some time such as run and sing.

Using these semantic features, Vendler identified four aspectual categories:

1. States - like love, want, know, desire which encode events involving

homogeneous6 states which have no inherent endpoint. They have no

apparent starting point or endpoint and endure indefinitely unless some

external force changes them. For example, Juliette loves Romeo describes a

state which can hold for a certain amount of time. It does not make sense to ask how long a state took (though one can ask how long it lasted), nor does it make sense to ask whether it has finished. In the same way adjectival predicates such as The dress is pink, Juliette is happy are also stative.

2. Activities - like run, walk, swim, drive a car. These encode events that

consist of successive phases over time with no inherent endpoint, they have dynamic duration and are again homogenous in their structure.

3. Accomplishments - like paint a picture, make a chair also characterise

situations as consisting of successive phases, but differ from activities in that they also encode a single inherent endpoint (e.g. painting a picture has a terminal point and a result i.e. the completed painting). Accomplishments have a point at which a change of state occurs and which signals a natural end-point.

4. Achievements — like fall, die, win, reach. These encode events as punctual

and instantaneous e.g. recognise a friend, won a race.

Examples of the Vendlerian categories are shown in Table 8 below:

Table 8: Vendlerian event categories (from Dowty, 1979:54)

states activities accomplishments achievements

know run paint a picture recognise

believe walk make a chair spot

have swim deliver a sermon find

desire push a cart draw a circle lose

love drive a car push a cart reach

recover from an illness die

Because the semantic feature of telicity is very important in identifying these classes, a more general distinction is made between telic and atelic events. Thus, on the basis of whether the verb or VP encodes a natural end-point, linguists also define states and activities as “atelic” (no end-point) whilst accomplishments and achievements are termed “telic” (with end-point).

The property underlying the difference in telicity is known as Vendler’s “homogeneity” distinction (Vendler, 1967). This states that atelic predicates, like

mass nouns, denote homogenous objects which have subparts. Thus (36) can be

broken down into parts (i.e. the individual running strides she takes as Juliette runs by the lake, the playground etc) which can also be described as running.

(36) Juliette ran in the park

However, telic predicates, just like count nouns, are not homogeneous, thus the event in (37) can only be used to describe the event of Juliette having run a mile, it cannot be used when she has run only half a mile.

(37) Juliette ran a mile

To check whether a predicate is homogeneous or not Borik’s (2002) homogeneity

test can be used. This test shows:

“that if a predicate holds for a given temporal interval, then it also holds at a

denotation of a predicate can also be referred to by the same predicate (cf. (38)). If this is not the case, a predicate is not homogenous ((39))” (Borik, 2002:15-16).

Thus, using Borik’s examples to illustrate this, (38a) is homogeneous as it entails (38b) whilst (39a) does not entail (39b)

Another way of distinguishing atelic from telic events is on the basis of their ability to be naturally counted. Bach (1986) argues that because telic predicates have inherent end-points then they can be naturally counted in terms of how many end­ points were achieved, for example the telic event in (40) can be contrasted with the

atelic event described in (41) which because it lacks an inherent end-point, is more difficult to count:

(40) Jamie ran a mile 3 times

(41) Jamie ran 3 times

To summarise, the semantic features for each of Vendler’s four aspectual event categories for VPs are tabulated in Table 9 below:

(38) a. Peter drove the car from 5 p.m. till 8 p.m. —►

b. Peter drove the car from 6 p.m. till 8 p.m.

(39) a. Peter ran a mile from 5 p.m. till 8 p.m. - 1—►

b. Peter ran a mile from 6 p.m. till 8 p.m.

Table 9: Feature analysis of Vendler’s event categories

Atelic Telic

states activities accomplishments achievements

Stativity Durativity Telicity + + + + +

The semantic features of stativity, durativity and telicity are ways of describing the aspectual properties that a verb or VP has by virtue of what it means. For example make a sandwich is a durative, dynamic, telic event (an accomplishment)

precisely because it describes an event that involves a process that takes a certain amount of time and ends in a natural completion point (when the sandwich is made). Alternatively, Juliette loves Romeo is a stative, durative, atelic event because it

describes an event that endures over time.

3.3.2 Aspectual classification - Smith (1991)

Further refinements have been made to Vendler’s categorisation by a number of researchers for example: Moens & Steedman (1988) and Smith (1991) who both added a fifth aspectual property. Moens and Steedman call it “point”, Smith calls it “semelfactive”. It is a punctual, instantaneous category that implies no duration, for

example Jamie jumped. However, if we see Jamie climbing up a wall and then

jumping off it and said Jamie jum ped off the wall then this would refer to an

achievement. Other verbs that fall into this point/semelfactive class are hiccup,

knock, tap, wink and cough. The addition of the fifth aspectual property results in the

following refinement to Vendler’s four-way classification of verb classes shown in Table 10:

Table 10: Feature analysis of Smith’s five verb classes (adapted from Smith (1991:30)

Atelic Telic

states activities semelfactives accomplishments achievements

Stativity +

Durativity + + +

Telicity - + +