Events, arguments, and aspects : topics in the semantics of verbs / edited by Klaus Robering, University of Southern Denmark.

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Includes bibliographical references and index.

The aspectual interpretation of sentences is constrained by the truth conditions predicates impose on points of times or time intervals. Using data from English, Vendler (1967) established a classification of four verb types on these grounds, that has been widely accepted in linguistic theory. Various researchers, among them Dowty (1979) for English and Ehrich (1992) for German, have proposed finer grained classifications. This paper is very much in the spirit of these proposals. Our aim is a detailed model of the compositional lexical semantics of predicates that models the contrasts of verba.

Events, Arguments, and Aspects; Editorial page; Title page; LCC data; Table of contents; Preface; Introduction: Events, arguments, and aspects; 1. Two issues in the semantics of verbs ; 2. Arguments ; 2.1 Theories of argument structure ; 2.2 Introductory comments on the articles ; 3. Time, eventities, and aspect ; 3.1 Time ; 3.2 Eventities ; 3.3 Aspect ; 3.4 Introductory comments on the articles ; 4. Brief note on notation ; Bibliography ; part i Verb meaning and argument structure; 1. Ergativity and the object-oriented representation of verb meaning; 1. Introduction.

2. The object-oriented paradigm 3. Polysemy and argument roles; 4. Ergativity ; 5. Correlates of the ergative/absolutive distinction ; 5.1 Bondedness to the verb ; 5.2 Control phenomena ; 6. Conclusion ; Bibliography ; 2. Grammatical metaphors and there-insertion in Danish; 1. Introduction ; 2. Grammatical metaphors ; 3. Unaccusativity ; 4. The position of the logical subject ; 5. Aktionsart and event structure ; 6. The there-insertion constraint ; 7. Danish transitive verbs in there-constructions(; 8. Formal analysis of transitive verbs ; 9. Arguments and topology(; 10. Passives.

11. Conclusion Bibliography ; 3. Abstract objects of verbs; 1. Introduction ; 1.1 Verbs and their arguments ; 1.2 Classifying linguistic signs ; 2. Explaining the theory ; 2.1 The traditional analysis ; 2.2 Types and polymorphism(; 2.3 Representation by abstract objects ; 2.4 Identifying objects(; 3. Types and representation ; 3.1 Types as data types ; 3.2 Uniqueness and elimination ; 4. Comprehension ; 4.1 Problems with functions ; 4.2 More problems ; 4.3 A way out ; 5. Historical remarks ; 6. Appendix: Ackermann's original system ; 6.1 Axioms of propositional logic.

6.2 Axioms of predicate logic 6.3 Axioms for identity ; 6.4 Axioms of class theory ; 6.5 Rules ; Bibliography ; 4. Object-orientation and the semantics of verbs; 1. Introduction ; 2. Object-orientation and its relevance to semantics ; 3. Modeling object-oriented: Unified Modeling Language (UML) ; 4. Verbal meaning ; 5. Object-oriented representation of verbal meaning: The basics ; 6. Multi-layered architecture ; 7. Eventity classes ; Bibliography ; Part II. Aspect and aktionsart; 5. Aspectual coercion and eventuality structure; 1. Introduction ; 2. A survey of eventuality structure.

2.1 Aspectuality and eventuality structure 2.2 Sortal structure of eventualities ; 2.3 Intersortal structure of eventualities ; 3. A system of aspectual coercion ; 3.1 Coercion by durative adverbials ; 3.2 Coercion by time-span adverbials ; 3.3 Coercion by time-point adverbials ; 3.4 Coercion by the progressive ; 3.5 A two-stage approach: Aspectual coercion as pragmatic enrichment ; 4. Conclusion ; Bibliography ; 6. Phases in verbal semantics; 1. Introduction ; 1.1 Phasal verb research and the phasal verb interface complex.

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