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Mellon Foundation Graduate Research Workshop Program Stanford Semantics and Pragmatics Workshop: THE CONSTRUCTION OF MEANING
Much current work on event structure in general and telicity in particular is founded on the observation, originally due to Verkuyl (1972 and subsequent work), according to which telic interpretation can only emerge in the context of a direct argument with some quantity properties. The most frequently assumed account, following intuitions put forth in Tenny (1986 and subsequent literature), assigns to the quantity argument the role of measuring out the event, leading to an eventual co-termination of both object and event. Viewed from a syntactic perspective, we note that the property quantity, however refined, is often assumed to be represented within the nominal domain as a specific syntactic node, (e.g., Number Phrase). If that is indeed the case, then a principled approach to the syntax-semantics interface would require that quantity within the domain of events should tally with the properties of NumP. However, the statement of the quantity property of the direct argument in question in terms of NumP is less than straightforward. For instance, it is typically assumed that plural inflection heads NumP, but bare plurals are not quantity arguments and do not trigger a telic interpretation. Further problems emerge with respect to the semantic interpretation of quantity both within the domain of nominals and within the domain of events. Thus the notion of quantization, as proposed by Krifka (1989, 1992 and subsequent work) which is often utilized to characterize the semantics of the relevant arguments and events has come under considerable criticism, stemming from examples such as those in (1)-(3) (see, in particular, Zucci and White, 2001; Schein, 2002): 1. a. Pat built more than three houses (in two months) 2. a. her face reddened 3. a. Kim ran to the store In this presentation, I will attempt to redefine the notion of quantity, both for nominals and for events, so as to solve these problems and so as to correlate the notion of NumP (or more accurately, Quantity Phrase) with quantity within the domain of events. The picture that will emerge will require the adoption of several conclusions that deviate from common wisdom. Among them are: A. So-called plural inflection in languages such as English is in actuality classifier morphology and not plural morphology. Specifically, it marks the division of mass, and not a set of singulars. B. a telos is not required for the emergence of telicity. Rather, it suffices that the event has quantifiable divisions for the syntactic and semantic properties of telicity to emerge. C. In the absence of a telos, or a result state, for telicity, the need for event decomposition of the type usually assumed for telic events is no longer warranted. |