The Semantics of Aspectual Classes of Verbs in English

Abstract

In this chapter I will present a set of lexical decomposition analyses of classes of verbs in English. Their place in the present work is to provide a “case study” from a natural language with which to illustrate the theoretical issues presented at the end of the last chapter. These analyses are based in part on my own previous work in this area (Dowty, 1972), but aside from my own familiarity with this area, there are good reasons for choosing this topic here. The problems connected with these verb classes touch on the best-known kinds of analyses of word meaning in generative semantics (with the possible exception of those in Postal’s ‘Remind’ (Postal, 1970)) and the strongest independent syntactic arguments for this kind of analysis. Whether or not the problems that arise here are really typical of those that would arise with many other kinds of word meanings, they are in any case central as far as existing research goes. Also, this case study provides a good example of how the analysis of “logical words” (here tenses and time adverbials) can depend on the semantic analysis of “non-logical” words. Finally, these classes of verbs have a tradition of study in philosophy that goes back to Aristotle.