“Punctuality” and verb semantics
- Whether verbs have to be marked as punctual vs. durative has been a controversial issue from the very beginnings of research on aktionsarten in the last century right on up to modern theories of aspectual classes and aspect composition. Debates about the linguistic necessity of this distinction have often been accompanied by the question of what it means for a verb to be temporally punctual. In this paper I will, firstly, sketch the history of research on the punctual-durative distinction and present several linguistic arguments in its favor. Secondly, I will show how this distinction is captured in an eventstructure- based approach to lexical semantics. Thirdly, I will discuss the extent to which a precise definition of the notions used in lexical representations helps avoid circular argumentation in lexical semantics. Finally, I will demonstrate how this can be done for the notion of ‘punctuality’ by clarifying the logical type of this predicate and relating it to central cognitive time concepts.
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| Author: | Stefan EngelbergORCiDGND |
|---|---|
| URN: | urn:nbn:de:bsz:mh39-10774 |
| Parent Title (English): | Proceedings of the 23rd Annual Penn Linguistics Colloquium : University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics |
| Publisher: | Penn Linguistics Club |
| Place of publication: | Philadelphia |
| Editor: | Michelle Minnick Fox, Na-Rae Han, Jim Alexander |
| Document Type: | Conference Proceeding |
| Language: | English |
| Year of first Publication: | 1999 |
| Tag: | Verbsemantik; punctual verb |
| GND Keyword: | Deutsch; Englisch; Verb |
| Volume: | 6.1 |
| Page Number: | 14 |
| First Page: | 127 |
| Last Page: | 140 |
| DDC classes: | 400 Sprache / 420 Englisch |
| DDC classes: | 400 Sprache / 430 Deutsch |
| Open Access?: | ja |
| BDSL-Classification: | Sprache im 20. Jahrhundert. Gegenwartssprache |
| Leibniz-Classification: | Sprache, Linguistik |
| Linguistics-Classification: | Semantik |
| Licence (German): |  Creative Commons - Namensnennung-Nicht kommerziell-Keine Bearbeitung 3.0 Deutschland |