Kennedy & Levin (2008) argue that the aspectual properties of so-called degree achievement (DA) verbs (e.g. darken) can largely be predicted from the scale structure of the adjectives to which they are derivationally related (e.g. dark). Specifically, when the adjective is evaluated on a scale that is upper closed and the standard for the adjective to truthfully apply is the upper endpoint on that scale (i.e., when the adjective is absolute; see e.g. Kennedy & McNally 2005), the corresponding DA can be either telic or atelic. In contrast, when the adjective’s scale is open and the standard is context-dependent (i.e., when the adjective is relative), the corresponding DA is atelic. In this paper, I defend, following Kearns (2007), the position that telic interpretations of DAs are not directly a function of the standards for the adjectives from which the verbs are derived. Rather, the telic interpretation simply depends on it being possible to characterize the amount of change undergone in terms of the part structure of the event described, without reference to a specific comparison class. This conclusion will emerge from reflection on how the notions of relative and absolute standards can be recast in terms of similarity- vs. rule-based classification (as proposed in McNally 2011), extended from the adjectival to the verbal domain.
2008Compositionality and statistics in adjective acquisition. Child Development 79(3): 594–608.
Bartsch, Renate & Vennemann, Theo
1972The grammar of relative adjectives and comparison. Linguistische Berichte 20(1): 19–32.
Bartsch, Renate & Vennemann, Theo
1973Semantic Structures: A Study in the Relation Between Syntax and Semantics. Frankfurt: Athenäum Verlag.
Beavers, John
2012Lexical aspect and multiple incremental themes. In Telicity, Change, and State: A Cross-Categorial View of Event Structure, Violeta Demonte & Louise McNally (eds), 23–59. Oxford: OUP.
Bierwisch, Manfred
1989The semantics of gradation. In Dimensional Adjectives, Manfred Bierwisch & Ewald Lang (eds), 71–261. Berlin: Springer.
Borik, Olga
2006Aspect and Reference Time. Oxford: OUP.
Davies, Mark
2008The Corpus of Contemporary American English: 450 million words, 1990-present. [URL]
Demonte, Violeta & McNally, Louise
(eds)2012Telicity, Change, and State: A Cross-Categorial View of Event Structure. Oxford: OUP.
Dowty, David
1979Word Meaning and Montague Grammar. Dordrecht: Reidel.
Filip, Hana
2003Prefixes and the delimitation of events. Journal of Slavic Linguistics 11(1): 55–101.
Fleischhauer, Jens
2013Interaction of telicity and degree graduation of change of state verbs. In Studies in Composition and Decomposition of Event Predicates, Boban Arsenijević, Berit Gehrke & Rafael Marín (eds), 125–152. Dordrecht: Springer.
Foppolo, Francesca & Panzeri, Francesca
2013Do children know when their room counts as clean?NELS 40: Proceedings of the 40th Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society, Vol. 1, Seda Kan, Claire Moore-Cantwell & Robert Staubs (eds), 205–218. Amherst MA: GLSA.
Gärdenfors, Peter
2000Conceptual Spaces: The Geometry of Thought. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.
Gehrke, Berit
2008Ps in Motion: On the Semantics and Syntax of P Elements and Motion Events. PhD dissertation, Utrecht University. LOT Dissertation Series 184.
Hahn, Ulrike & Chater, Nick
1998Similarity and rules: Distinct? Exhaustive? Empirically distinguishable?Cognition 65(2): 197–230.
Hay, Jen, Kennedy, Christopher & Levin, Beth
1999Scale structure underlies telicity in degree achievements. In Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory IX, Tanya Matthews & Devon Strolovitch (eds), 127–144. Ithaca NY: CLC Publications.
Kearns, Kate
2003Durative achievements and individual-level predicates on events. Linguistics and Philosophy 26(5): 595–635.
Kearns, Kate
2007Telic senses of deadjectival verbs. Lingua 117(1): 26–66.
Kennedy, Christopher
1997Projecting the Adjective: The Syntax and Semantics of Gradability and Comparison. PhD dissertation, University of California, Santa Cruz. Published 1999 by Garland Press, New York.
Kennedy, Christopher
2007Vagueness and grammar: The semantics of relative and absolute gradable adjectives. Linguistics and Philosophy 30(1): 1–45.
Kennedy, Christopher & Levin, Beth
2008Measure of change: The adjectival core of degree achievements. In Adjectives and Adverbs: Syntax, Semantics, and Discourse, Louise McNally & Christopher Kennedy (eds), 156–182. Oxford: OUP.
Kennedy, Christopher & McNally, Louise
2005Scale structure, degree modification, and the semantics of gradable predicates. Language 81(2): 345–381.
Klein, Ewan
1980A semantics for positive and comparative adjectives. Linguistics and Philosophy 4(1): 1–45.
Krifka, Manfred
1989Nominal reference, temporal constitution and quantification in event semantics. In Semantics and Contextual Expression, Renate Bartsch, Johan van Benthem & Peter van Emde-Boas (eds), 75–115. Dordrecht: Foris.
Krifka, Manfred
1998The origins of telicity. In Events and Grammar, Susan Rothstein (ed.), 197–235. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Lakoff, George
1987Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press.
Landman, Fred & Rothstein, Susan
2010Incremental homogeneity and the semantics of aspectual for phrases. In Syntax, Lexical Semantics, and Event Structure, Malka Rappaport Hovav, Ivy Sichel & Edit Doron (eds), 229–251. Oxford: OUP.
1964A set of criteria for the establishing of derivational relationship between words unmarked by derivational morphemes. Indogermanische Forschungen 69: 10–19.
Marín, Rafael & McNally, Louise
2011Inchoativity, change of state, and telicity: Evidence from Spanish reflexive psychological verbs. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 29: 467–502.
McNally, Louise
2011The relative role of property type and scale structure in explaining the behavior of gradable adjectives. In Vagueness in Communication. International Workshop, ViC 2009, held as part of ESSLLI 2009, Bordeaux, France, July 20–24, 2009. Revised Selected Papers, Rick Nouwen, Robert van Rooij, Uli Sauerland & Hans-Christian Schmitz (eds), 151–168. Berlin: Springer.
2005Directional locatives in event structure: Asymmetry between goal and source. Eoneohag (‘Linguistics’) 43: 85–117.
Parsons, Terence
1990Events in the Semantics of English. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.
Piñón, Christopher
2008Aspectual composition with degrees. In Adjectives and Adverbs: Syntax, Semantics, and Discourse, Louise McNally & Christopher Kennedy (eds), 183–219. Oxford: OUP.
Piñón, Christopher
1997Achievements in an event semantics. In Proceedings of Semantic and Linguistic Theory 7, Aaron Lawson & Eun Cho (eds), 273–296. Ithaca NY: CLC Publications.
Pustejovsky, James
1995The Generative Lexicon. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.
Rothstein, Susan
2008Telicity and atomicity. In Theoretical and Crosslinguistic Approaches to the Semantics of Aspect [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 110], Susan Rothstein (ed.), 43–78. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Sassoon, Galit W
2013Between-noun comparisons. In The Dynamic, Inquisitive, and Visionary Life of ϕ, ?ϕ, and ◊ϕ: A Festschrift for Jeroen Groenendijk, Martin Stokhof, and Frank Veltman, Maria Aloni, Michael Franke & Floris Roelofsen (eds), 286–299. [URL] (1 November 2015).
Solt, Stephanie & Gotzner, Nicole
2012Who here is tall? Comparison classes, standards and scales. Paper presented at
Linguistic Evidence 2012
. Universität Tübingen, Tübingen: February 9–11, 2012.
Vendler, Zeno
1957Verbs and times. Philosophical Review 56(2): 143–160.
Cited by
Cited by 5 other publications
Martin, Fabienne & Hamida Demirdache
2020. Partitive accomplishments across languages. Linguistics 58:5 ► pp. 1195 ff.
Martin, Fabienne, Hamida Demirdache, Isabel García del Real, Angeliek van Hout & Nina Kazanina
2020. Children’s non-adultlike interpretations of telic predicates across languages. Linguistics 58:5 ► pp. 1447 ff.
Santos, Maria
2022. Variação no uso do verbo auxiliar estar com valor progressivo – Uma curiosidade sintática na primeira novela contemporânea portuguesa. Estudos de Lingüística Galega
Wellwood, Alexis
2020. Interpreting Degree Semantics. Frontiers in Psychology 10
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 12 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.