Telicity, Change, and State A Cross-Categorial View of Event Structure

This volume presents new work by leading researchers on central themes in the study of event structure: the nature and representation of telicity, change, and the notion of state. The book advances our understanding of these aspects of event structure by combining foundational semantic research with a series of case studies from a variety of languages. The book begins with an overview of the theoretical issues central to the volume, along with a brief presentation of the remaining chapters and the points of contact between them. The chapters, developed within several different theoretical perspectives, promote cross-theory as well as cross-linguistic comparison. The work will interest scholars and advanced students of morphology, syntax, semantics, and their interfaces. It will also appeal to researchers in philosophy, psycholinguistics, and language acquisition who are interested in the notions of telicity, change, and stativity.

1 - Introduction
2 - Lexical Aspect and Multiple Incremental Themes
3 - Another Look at Accomplishments and Incrementality
4 - The Composition of Incremental Change
5 - Telicity Expression in the Visual Modality
6 - The Monotonicity Hypothesis
7 - From Psych Verbs to Nouns
8 - Passive States
9 - The Syntax and Semantics of Inchoatives as Directed Motion: the case of Korean
10 - Conflation and Incorporation Processes in Resultative Constructions
11 - Parameter Theory and Motion Predicates
12 - Building Involuntary States in Slavic

Violeta Demonte is Research Professor of Linguistics at the Spanish National Research Council. Her research has mostly concentrated on the areas of syntax and lexical semantics. Among her research topics are complement clauses, the syntax and semantics of adjectives, NP structure, aspect in secondary predication, and syntactic variation. She was the Director (with I. Bosque) of the Gramática descriptiva de la lengua española (RAE-Espasa Calpe, 5.500 p.) ; Louise McNally is Professor of Linguistics at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona. Her research focuses on various aspects of nominal, verbal, and adjectival semantics, the semantics of modification, and more generally on the syntax/semantics and semantics/pragmatics interfaces. Her most recent book, co-edited with Christopher Kennedy, is Adjectives and Adverbs: Syntax, Semantics, and Discourse (Oxford, 2008).