Events and ?logical form?

Davidsonian event semantics is often taken to form an unhappy marriage with compositional semantics. For example, it has been claimed to be problematic for semantic accounts of quantification (Beaver & Condoravdi, 2007), for classical accounts of negation (Krifka, 1989), and for intersective accounts of verbal coordination (Lasersohn, 1995). This paper shows that none of this is the case, once we abandon the idea that the event variable is bound at sentence level, and assume instead that verbs denote existential quantifiers over events. Quantificational arguments can then be given a semantic account, negation can be treated classically, and coordination can be modeled as intersection. The framework presented here is a natural choice for researchers and fieldworkers who wish to sketch a semantic analysis of a language without being forced to make commitments about the hierarchical order of arguments, the argument-adjunct distinction, the default scope of quantifiers, or the nature of negation and coordination.

1996

To appear In Robert Truswell (ed.) Handbook of Event Structure. Oxford, Oxford University Press.

A recurrent idea in linguistic theory is that predicates have complex syntactic representations that reflect their semantics. In the past twenty years or so linguistic theory has witnessed the return of lexical, or rather syntactic, decomposition approaches, which compose event structure from its meaning ingredients instantiated as distinct syntactic heads. These are essentially modernized versions of the proposals of Generative Semantics (McCawley 1968, Lakoff 1965), which answer many of the empirical objections to decomposition. This paper examines the decompositional project, concentrating on the various arguments presented in modern literature for a decompositional treatment of the relationship between pairs of verbs that differ roughly in that one of them has one more argument than the other. The paper shows that such pairs or alternations split into several types, only one of which deserves a decompositional analysis. Our litmus test for decomposition can be defined as follows: A meaning ingredient is a syntactic head, iff it is detectable by syntactic diagnostics.

2004

Studies in Language, 1981

ABSTRACT The proposed here approach presents the language as an information system with two connected levels of representation – one which concerns basic semantic primitives and operators and one which concerns the grammatical level of the natural language. We assume that there is a common general underlying semantic scheme for all languages and that any grammatical rule can be represented as consisting of some semantic primitives /internal representations, which are mind-operable. The Language Faculty is a highly non-redundant system. What is the extent of the inter-set mapping that the system permits? Can, for example, statives be characterized by the aspectual (change-of-state) property of dynamic domains? The claim advanced in this paper is that this kind of attribution constitutes a violation of the rule that preserves domain specific properties. A change-of-state characteristic is preserved for the semantic interpretation of the dynamic functions of verbs. In the first part of this paper, it is shown that in Russian, the Instrumental case marking on the secondary predicate implies a choice-of-state operation. It is explained why a change-of-state cannot be attributed to stative domains of adjectives and nouns, and the conditions are established for the interpretation of a choice-of-state function. It is supposed that the semantic representation of events must be treated separately from the analysis of objects’ states and characteristics. The proposed approach to Language as Information System is developed in the second part of the paper. Secondary predication in Russian is modeled by means of a ‘connected to the semantic level database’ (SDB), and the links between basic semantic units and grammar are analyzed. The results obtained from the SDB reports confirm that the semantic representation of events must be treated separately from the analysis of objects’ states and characteristics. They also show that the Instrumental case marking implies a choice-of-state mind operator independently of a function on events. KEYWORDS Language Information System, Semantic Level

J. Bahoh and M. Cassina et al. (eds): 21st-Century Philosophy of Events: Beyond the Analytic / Continental Divide, 2025

This paper (first version!) has two aims. First, it will give an overview of the role of events in semantics against the background of Davidsonian semantics and its Neo-Davidsonian variant. Second, it will discuss some serious issues for standard views of events in contemporary semantics and present novel proposals of how to address them. These are [1] the semantic role of abstract (or Kimean) states, [2] wide scope adverbials, and [3] the status of verbs as event predicates with respect to the mass-count distinction. The paper will show that abstract states as the entities described by (most) stative verbs are incompatible with Neo-Davidsonian event semantics and proposes a decompositional analysis of stative verbs that may be able to overcome the difficulty. The paper will argue that in addition to Davidsonian events, the semantics of adverbials requires events as truthmakers as well as actions as more complex entities sharply distinguished from events. The paper will also argue that the verbal domain of events sides with mass nouns rather than dividing into mass and count, unlike event nouns.

Husserl Studies, 2017

2020

Generally speaking, there are two categories of semantics theory: model-theoretic approach and proof-theoretic approach. In the first part of this paper, I will briefly analyze some inadequacies related to these two approaches, and promote an alternative relational approach, which bases semantic notions on relations between expressions. A brief discussion in general for this alternative will be provided. In the second part, I will provide a solid mathematical framework to the study of logical meanings, and show its connection with the other two approaches.

Theoretical Linguistics, 2012