@inproceedings{Engelberg1999, author = {Stefan Engelberg}, title = {The magic of the moment - what it means to be a punctual verb}, series = {Proceedings of the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, February 12-15, 1999. Berkeley : Berkeley Linguistics Society}, editor = {Josef Ruppenhofer and Lily Liaw and Steve S. Chang}, publisher = {Berkeley Linguistics Society}, address = {Berkeley}, url = {https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:bsz:mh39-10762}, pages = {109 -- 121}, year = {1999}, abstract = {Lexical-semantic theories often suffer from the imprecision of the concepts they employ in their representations. This leads to a considerable decrease in empirical strength by inviting circular argumentation. A demonstration of how to go about overcoming such shortcomings will be carried out, using the lexical semantic concept of \"punctuality\" as an example. Firstly, I will argue that the distinction between punctuality and durativity plays a crucial role for the explanation of a wide range of syntactic and semantic phenomena. Secondly, I will discuss methodological issues involved in arriving at a more precise definition of punctuality and, finally, the notion of \"punctuality\" will be given an interpretation on the basis of extensive consultation of research on cognitive time concepts.}, language = {en} }