Sentence semantics

Classifying meaning at sentence level

• Tense

• Aspect

• Situation type

Situation types

• Static situations– Adjectives– Stative verbs – Can you distinguish these two in Chinese?

• Dynamic situations– Other verbs, mostly

Dynamic verbs

• Durative or punctual?– John lived a long time ago– John died a long time ago

• Telic or atelic?– John baked a cake– John looked hungrily at the cake

• Look at Matrix 5.47– What situation type are the above 4 sentences?

Warning!

• Saeed’s article is vague about what applies to verbs, and what applies to situations

• Vendler and Smith are talking about situations• Be and love are stative verbs• Build and gaze are telic and atelic respectively,

but in– I’m building a house – My son is being naughty

• …progressive aspect makes the situations atelic and dynamic

Tense and aspect

• The tense used in a sentence tells us when the event takes place

- Johnny ate goulash.

- Johnny eats goulash.

- Johnny will eat goulash.

• Aspect gives extra time information

- Johnny has eaten goulash.

- Johnny is eating goulash.

Tense and aspect

• Tense is marked by morphology in English (except cut, put…)– (and then some people say there are zero morphs)

• Aspect is not always I’m looking for a burger I see it now I’m eating it I’m lovin’ it (Oh no I think I’m going to be sick!)• All those are “happening right now”

Tense: a deictic system

• Deixis mean pointing (in Greek)

• This and that are deictic pronouns (or determiners); his and her are not.

• So, question: what does deictic mean in Linguistics?– Think about who is pointing, and in which

direction

Aspect is not deictic

• It refers to an event’s “temporal distribution or contour”– 5.63: thank you, Hockett (remember him?)– So aspect can describe

• Long/short duration• Completeness/ incompleteness• Repeated/ continuous

• Tense is just the overall location in time of the event or activity

Aspect in English and other languages

• Task: How is aspect shown in

- English? - Russian? - Chinese?

(Look at pages 130-133, and write a couple of sentences about each language. Give a couple of examples from each language)

Modality tasks

• Page 135 is pretty straightforward: read it again– What is in between You are crazy and You are not

crazy?– probably, maybe, might be, must be…

• So, an epistemic modal verb– You must be crazy ( I order you to be crazy!)

• A deontic modal verb– You must not eat any more Big Macs

• How about – I can reach down and touch my toes– Can I have a Big Mac please?

Rank them!