In the literature on aspect at least eight criteria have been used for distinguishing between Ven... more In the literature on aspect at least eight criteria have been used for distinguishing between Vendlerian activities and accomplishments. This paper submits these criteria to a critical survey. Some of them are found to have exceptions and/or to need revision. It will be shown that in certain contexts two criteria, the telos, a.k.a. set end-point or culmination, and the aspectual adverbial (in an interval) are in conflict in sentences with quantized measure phrases. The paper will argue that the telos has priority; the adverbial is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for telicity, and the predicates in question do not fit neatly into either aspectual class. Additionally, it will be shown that predicates with non-specific DPs (e.g. some/many plums) are somewhat defective accomplishments.
Introduction This paper is mainly concerned with restrictions on numeral modifiers (e.g more than... more Introduction This paper is mainly concerned with restrictions on numeral modifiers (e.g more than/less than, at least/ at most) inside in-adverbials, as in Jane ran a mile in 5 minutes. But before discussing these, the paper begins, in section 2, by drawing attention to restrictions on these modifiers elsewhere, in contexts where a speaker assumes that the value of the numeral is low or high relative to a contextually shared norm. I shall term such assumptions 'evaluative'. The restrictions, it will be argued, are due to rhetorical considerations; the effect of inappropriate modifiers would go against the grain of the evaluative assumption. Section 3 will then proceed to in adverbials. These appear to measure the temporal length of extended telic eventualities, but their entailments and scalar implicatures go in the opposite direction from those of normal measure phrases. For reasons that will become clear in the discussion, such adverbials will be called 'container adverbials'. In Section 4 it will be shown that container adverbials are subject to a subset of the constraints discussed in Section 2. Section 5 will deal with some surprising data concerning the modifier at least, and Section 6 will extend the discussion to the use of in-adverbials in sentences like The train will arrive in ten minutes.
A sentence in the Resultative perfect licenses two inferences: (a) the occurrence of an event (b)... more A sentence in the Resultative perfect licenses two inferences: (a) the occurrence of an event (b) the state caused by this event obtains at evaluation time. In this paper I show that this use of the perfect is subject to a large number of distributional restrictions that all serve to highlight the result inference at the expense of the event inference. Nevertheless, only the event inference determines the truth conditions of this use of the perfect, the result inference being a unique type of conventional implicature. I argue furthermore that, since the result state is singular, the event that causes it must also be singular, whereas the Experiential perfect is purely quantificational. But in out-of-the-blue contexts the past tense is also normally interpreted as singular. This leads to a certain amount of competition between the Resultative perfect and the past tense, and it is this competition, I suggest, that maintains the conventional (non-truth conditional) result state inference.
The neo-Davidsonian extension of the event-argument to states is not universally acceted by schol... more The neo-Davidsonian extension of the event-argument to states is not universally acceted by scholars who subsribe to Davidson's original theory. This paper examines empirical arguments that have been adduced against this extension and concludes that most of them--in particular those involving the essential core of the theory--do not stand up to closer scrutiny.
In the literature on aspect at least eight criteria have been used for distinguishing between Ven... more In the literature on aspect at least eight criteria have been used for distinguishing between Vendlerian activities and accomplishments. This paper submits these criteria to a critical survey. Some of them are found to have exceptions and/or to need revision. It will be shown that in certain contexts two criteria, the telos, a.k.a. set end-point or culmination, and the aspectual adverbial (in an interval) are in conflict in sentences with quantized measure phrases. The paper will argue that the telos has priority; the adverbial is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for telicity, and the predicates in question do not fit neatly into either aspectual class. Additionally, it will be shown that predicates with non-specific DPs (e.g. some/many plums) are somewhat defective accomplishments.
Introduction This paper is mainly concerned with restrictions on numeral modifiers (e.g more than... more Introduction This paper is mainly concerned with restrictions on numeral modifiers (e.g more than/less than, at least/ at most) inside in-adverbials, as in Jane ran a mile in 5 minutes. But before discussing these, the paper begins, in section 2, by drawing attention to restrictions on these modifiers elsewhere, in contexts where a speaker assumes that the value of the numeral is low or high relative to a contextually shared norm. I shall term such assumptions 'evaluative'. The restrictions, it will be argued, are due to rhetorical considerations; the effect of inappropriate modifiers would go against the grain of the evaluative assumption. Section 3 will then proceed to in adverbials. These appear to measure the temporal length of extended telic eventualities, but their entailments and scalar implicatures go in the opposite direction from those of normal measure phrases. For reasons that will become clear in the discussion, such adverbials will be called 'container adverbials'. In Section 4 it will be shown that container adverbials are subject to a subset of the constraints discussed in Section 2. Section 5 will deal with some surprising data concerning the modifier at least, and Section 6 will extend the discussion to the use of in-adverbials in sentences like The train will arrive in ten minutes.
A sentence in the Resultative perfect licenses two inferences: (a) the occurrence of an event (b)... more A sentence in the Resultative perfect licenses two inferences: (a) the occurrence of an event (b) the state caused by this event obtains at evaluation time. In this paper I show that this use of the perfect is subject to a large number of distributional restrictions that all serve to highlight the result inference at the expense of the event inference. Nevertheless, only the event inference determines the truth conditions of this use of the perfect, the result inference being a unique type of conventional implicature. I argue furthermore that, since the result state is singular, the event that causes it must also be singular, whereas the Experiential perfect is purely quantificational. But in out-of-the-blue contexts the past tense is also normally interpreted as singular. This leads to a certain amount of competition between the Resultative perfect and the past tense, and it is this competition, I suggest, that maintains the conventional (non-truth conditional) result state inference.
The neo-Davidsonian extension of the event-argument to states is not universally acceted by schol... more The neo-Davidsonian extension of the event-argument to states is not universally acceted by scholars who subsribe to Davidson's original theory. This paper examines empirical arguments that have been adduced against this extension and concludes that most of them--in particular those involving the essential core of the theory--do not stand up to closer scrutiny.
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Papers by Anita Mittwoch