MANUAL SISTEMA INTEGRADO DE GESTION PARA EL PROCESO EN ALTURAS DE LAS NORMA

Stump (1981) observes that certain frequency adverbs introduce several sources of variation relating to temporal distribution. Stump distinguishes between fixed frequency adverbs likedaily, weeklyand variant frequency adverbs likefrequently, occasionally.18 First, he observes that the average period length associated with a variant frequency adverb likeoccasionallyis partly dependent on the length of the interval of the entire sentence, as shown by his examples (11) and (12). I refer to this as therelative length observation_.

(11) During the commercial, the fly occasionally landed on my foot.

(12) During their westward migration, the Celts occasionally encountered hos-

tages.

Second, Stump notes that “even under an interpretation at a given interval, the average period length associated with a variant frequency adverb is not fixed. For example, [(11)] is vague as to the exact number of times the fly landed on my foot.” I refer to this as thevagueness observation.

Stump illustrates his third observation with the following sentence: (13) An occasional sailor strolled by.

He observes that “even under an interpretation at a given intervali, the individ- ual periods into which a variant frequency adverb ’segments’imay vary in length; for example, if, during the interval from 1:00 to 2:00, a sailor strolled by at 1:07, 1:20, 1:29, and 1:51, [(13)] might be true, even though there is no fixed frequency with whichA sailor strolls byis true from 1:00 to 2:00.” I refer to this as thevarying

frequency observation.

As noted in van Geenhoven (2004), the varying frequency observation needs to be qualified for certain adverbs likeregularly. For example,Last year, John jogged in the park regularlycannot describe a situation in which John jogged many times from January to April and for the rest of the year jogged only once or twice every other month. So frequency may vary but only to a limited degree. I refer to this as

theregularity observation.

With respect to his observations, Stump concludes that these “sorts of variabil- ity must be built into the truthconditions for variant frequency operators, however

18_{Stump actually uses the wordadjectivesrather thanadverbsbecause his main point is to}

establish the connection between sentences likeAn occasional sailor strolled byandOccasionally, a sailor strolled by. This point is not of concern here.

these are to be stated.”19 Even though Stump does not explicitly mention it, van Geenhoven’s regularity observation can be included in this conclusion.

Although for-adverbials were not in the scope of Stump’s work, all of these observations also apply to them. First, take the relative length observation. The

following examples show that for-adverbials are compatible with frequencies

ranging from a few fractions of nanoseconds to one generation.

(14) The Chinese people have created abundant folk arts, such as paper-cuttings, acrobatics, etc., passed on from generation to generation for thousands of

years. = (1)

(15) Ded’leg says: How i stop a macro for 1sec? Cog says: By creating a script that will loop for 3600 milliseconds . . . depending on how long you think it will take for both your computer, the server and internet lag to affect the macro.20

The length interval that counts as very small for the purpose of thefor-adverbial varies relative to the length of the interval in the denotation of the Key. In (14), repeated from (1), that interval is thousands of years long, and a generation already counts as a very small interval. In (15), the interval in the denotation of the Key is only 3600 milliseconds long, and the very small intervals are even shorter.

By themselves, these examples do not show that for-adverbials presuppose

varying frequencies, just that they are compatible with varying frequencies. That the varying frequencies are indeed part of the presupposition offor-adverbials is suggested by the combined evidence from these examples and the contrast in (8), repeated here:

(16) Context:_{John can draw two pictures per hour.}

a. ?For one hour John drew pictures.

b. For ten hours John drew pictures.

The contrast in (16) shows a correlation between acceptability and the ratio of the durations of the individual events (half an hour) to the length of the global interval (one hour or ten hours). Specifically, this ratio is high (1:2) in (16a) and low (1:20) in (16b). Since the absolute duration of the individual events is the same (half an hour) in both cases, the pair suggests that thefor-adverbial are sensitive to a low relative length rather than a low absolute length. Examples (14) and (15) support 19_{In his footnote 5, Stump (1981) proposes a solution in terms of delineation coordinates in the}

sense of Lewis (1972). This solution, like mine, involves adding contextual parameters. I leave open whether it could be extended to other distributive constructions.

this reasoning because they show thatfor-adverbials are in principle compatible with both high and low absolute lengths of the individual events (a generation vs. a few milliseconds), while the relative length is low in both cases (given that scripts typically take at most a few milliseconds to perform one loop). This is analogous to Stump’s relative length observation visible in (11) and (12).

Stump’s vagueness observation also has a correlate infor-adverbials. Just as (11) is vague as to the exact number of times the fly landed on my foot, (14) and (15) are vague as to the exact number of generations and script loops involved.

As for a correlate of Stump’s varying length observation, sentence (14) does not require there to be a fixed frequency with which one generation passes on the knowledge to the next generation. At the same time, the regularity observation also holds infor-adverbials, though perhaps to a lesser degree than with the word regularly. A habitual sentence like (17) is an odd way to describe a situation in which John jogged many times from January to April and then waited until December to jog again.

(17) John jogged in the park for a year.

The next subsection presents stratified reference again and demonstrates that it formally captures the pattern empirically described by Stump’s and van Geen- hoven’s observations.