[SESSION 5]

Unit 4:
Sentence Semantics 1:
Situations.

Semántica Inglesa.
Grado de Estudios Ingleses. Tercer curso.

Manuel Casas Guijarro. 2019/2020. UNED. Centro Asociado de Sevilla.

0. Where are we?
Semantics, John I. Saeed. Chapter 5.
Sections and units Book chapters
SECTION I: Introducing semantics. Basic notions
1. Semantics in linguistics. Meaning, concepts and reality. 1, 2
SECTION II: Semantic description
2. Word meaning. 3
3. Sentence meaning: sentence relations and truth. 4
4. Sentence semantics 1: situation types. 5
5. Sentence semantics 2: participants. 6
6. Context and inference: deixis, context, information structure. 7
7. Functions of language: speech acts. 8
SECTION III: Theoretical approaches to semantic analysis
8. Meaning components and lexical relations 9
9. Formal semantics 10
Manuel Casas Guijarro. Curso 2019/2020. UNED Sevilla.
10 Cognitive semantics 11 2
0. Where are we?
Semantics, John I. Saeed. Chapter 5.

Last sessions we saw:

Chapter 1: Semantics in Linguistics.

Chapter 2: Meaning, thought and reality.
Chapter 3: Word meaning.
Chapter 4: Sentence meaning. Sentence relations and truth.

This session:
Chapter 5: Sentence semantics 1: situation types.

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5.1 Introduction.
This chapter deals with some aspects of meaning that belong to the level of
the sentence, such as aspect, tense and modality.

There is a number of semantic categories which, like tense, belong at the

sentence level and which can be seen as ways that languages allow speakers
to construct different views of situations.

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5.2 Classifying situations
5.2.1 Introduction
In order to classify different situations, there are three important dimensions:
situation type, tense, and aspect.
• Situation type is a label for the typology of situations encoded in the
semantics of a language.
• Tense is a grammatical system which allows a speaker to relate a situation to
the time of speaking.
• Aspect is a grammatical system which allows a speaker to view an event as
being complete or incomplete, short, repeated, or stretched over a period of
time.

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5.2 Classifying situations
5.2.2 Verbs and Situation types
Situation type refers to the typology of situations encoded in semantics.
There are two primary types of situation:
I. Static Situation
II. Dynamic Situation

I. Static situations
• A static situation gives information about the state without talking about
its duration, internal structure, process, end or start, or change.
– Eg, Robert loves to drive cars.

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5.2 Classifying situations
• Static Situations are represented in English by:
– Adjectives portray static situations as part of their lexis.
Ex.: The theatre is full.
– Stative verbs such as: remain, be, have, know, and love.

• Stative verbs are classified into a number of categories based on this

semantic distinction:
– Event: the speaker views the situation as a whole as in: the mine blew up.
– Process: the speaker views the internal structure of the verb as in: he
walked to the shop.

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5.2 Classifying situations
II. Dynamic situations:
• A dynamic situation implies that the action has subparts, process, and an
end.
Eg, Mary learned to drive cars.
• Stative vs Dynamic verbs. Some grammatical differences:
--states cannot be used in progressive forms or imperative
- I am learning Spanish (dynamic) / Learn Spanish!
* I am knowing Spanish (stative) / *Know Spanish!
• Dynamic verbs are classified into a number of categories based on this
semantic distinction:
II.1 Durative vs punctual // II.2 Tellic vs atellic
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5.2 Classifying situations
II.1 Durative vs punctual
- Durative verb: describes a process which lasts for a period of time, as in:
Ex. John slept.
- Punctual verbs: describe actions that happen very quickly as if they take no
time as in:
Ex. John coughed.
Examples of punctual verbs are: blink, shoot, knock, flash, and sneeze.

Curiosity: in English, a punctual verb can happen with a durative adverbial

(when the event is repeated for the given period of time)
Eg, John coughed all night.
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5.2 Classifying situations
II.2 Tellic vs atelic
- Telic: processes which have a natural completion. If the action is interrupted the
description would not be true.
Eg, Ali built a house.
- Atelic: verbs that can continue indefinitely and if the process is interrupted, the
description of a situation would be true.
Eg, Ali gazed at the see.
Aspect plays a role in determining whether the verb is telic or atelic.
The combination of a telic verb with a progressive will not produce an implication of
completion as in:
Eg, Mary was painting my portrait.
• Examples of telic verbs are: paint, draw, and build.
• Examples of atelic verbs are: talk, walk, and sing.
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5.2 Classifying situations
5.2.3 A system of situation types
Influential semanticist: Vendler (1967) who identified four situation types:

1. States: desire, want, love, hate, know, believe

2. Activities (unbounded process): run, walk, swim, push a cart, derive a car
3. Accomplishments (bounded process): run a mile, draw a circle, walk to
school, paint a picture, grow up, deliver a sermon, recover from illness.
4. Achievements (point events): recognize, find, stop, start, reach the top,
win the race, and spot someone.

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5.2 Classifying situations
- Another Semanticist: S.C. Smith (1991) added “semelfactive” to situation
types. She distinguishes it from achievements as follows:

• Semelfactives are: instantaneous atelic events, e.g. knock and cough

• Achievements are: instantaneous changes of states with an outcome of a
new state.
Eg, Reach the top, and win a race.

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5.2 Classifying situations
- Examples of the five situation types identified by Smith are as follows:

1. State: She hated ice cream

2. Activity: Your cat watched those birds
3. Accomplishment: Her boss learned Japanese
4. Semelfactive: The gate banged
5. Achievement: The cease-fire began at noon yesterday

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5.2 Classifying situations
5.2.4 Tests for situation types
We find certain tests to help to decide which situation type a clause belongs
to.
I. Test for statives
a. Progressive forms: not allowed in statives. * I am knowing Spanish
b. Imperative forms: not allowed. *Know Spanish.
c. If a situation happens in the frame “What happened was…” it is non-
stative:
What happened was that Alice left school
?What happened was that Alice was intelligent

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5.2 Classifying situations
II. Test for duratives

There are several adverbial expressions as tests for

activity / accomplishment / achievement
a. “in”: works with achievement. They reached school in an hour.
b. “for”: works with activity. They played cards for an hour.
c. “finish”: works with accomplishments: John finished fixing the car.

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5.2 Classifying situations
5.2.5 Tense
- Tense allows the speaker to relate the situation to the time of speaking.
This could be accomplished by an adverb as in:
Ex Yesterday they cut the grass
Ex Tomorrow they cut the grass
Here adverbs specify the time as the form of the verb does not change.

- In English, verb endings and auxiliary verbs usually specify tense as in:
Ex. She spoke/ will speak/ is speaking to me.

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5.2 Classifying situations
- Tense is a deictic system (the way in which speakers relate reference to
space and time) since the reference point is the time of speaking (before,
during or after the act of speaking).

In English there are three main tenses: past, present, and future.

- Some complexities: complex future tenses.

By 2050 we will have experienced WWIII

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5.2 Classifying situations
5.2.6 Aspect
- Aspect allows the speaker to view an event in various ways: as a single block of
time, continuous flow of time, or repetitive occurrence.
Actions as: complete, incomplete, short, repeated, stretched over a predictable
period, or involving no time.
Tense: location of an event in time
Aspect: temporal distribution of an event
Exs.: Both are in the past but one of them is finished.
- Harry was building a house last week
- Harry built a house last week (completed action)

Pages 126-129: usage of simple verb forms. Simple past, simple present, etc.
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5.2 Classifying situations
5.2.7 Comparing Aspect across languages

- Although aspect is a sentential feature, it could, especially in Indo-

European languages, be marked on verbs.

- Many languages, eg, Slavic languages, have inflectional affixes that give
aspectual information.

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5.2 Classifying situations
5.2.8 Combining situation type and aspect
• Sometimes situation type and aspect interact: for example, certain verb
forms such as progressives are used with some situation types but not with
others.

• Inherent features of a verb's meaning fit in with the meaning of certain

tense and aspect forms, but not with others.

• Speakers know the valid combinations and the semanticist's task is to

describe this knowledge.

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5.2 Classifying situations
- The combination of situation type and aspect is language specific. For
example, the English progressive has features of the cross-linguistic aspect
‘imperfective’. However, it has also connotations of activity, dynamism, and
volition

Ex.: She was blinking her eyes

This sentence has vividness and a connotation of willfulness because the

progressive focuses on internal successive phases.

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5.3 Modality and Evidentiality
5.3.1 Modality
Modality: semantic category that operates at semantic level. It allows
speakers to express a degree of commitment to a proposition. Divide into:

- Deontic: concerned with freedom to act including obligation, permission

and prohibition.

Eg, She can go (ability), You may go (permission), You should go

(obligation), and You must go (strong obligation).

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5.3 Modality and Evidentiality
- Epistemic: related to judgements implicating possibility or necessity

Eg, He might be there (low probability, substantial doubt), He may be there

(possibility), He should be there by now (high probability), and He must be
there by now (very high probability, little doubt).

Modality and conditionals page 137.

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5.3 Modality and Evidentiality
5.3.2 Mood

When modality distinctions are marked by verb endings, these distinctions

are called moods.
Thus in English, there are two moods: subjunctive mood and indicative
mood.
Mood: grammatical system marked on verbs, describing their function.

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5.3 Modality and Evidentiality
5.3.3 Evidentiality
- Evidentiality allows the speaker to communicate his or her attitude toward
the source of information. They will determine whether a statement relies
on personal or acquired knowledge.

- This is possible in English by using a separate clause or parenthetic

adverbials:
Ex I saw/read/was told/ she is rich.
- Languages differ in whether these evidential markers are obligatory or
optional in ordinary speech.

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- CHAPTER SUMMARY.

We have seen aspects of sentence meaning that allow the speaker to classify
situations:

- Situation types: static/dynamic, durative/punctual, telic/atelic.

- Tense and aspect.
- Modality and evidentiality.

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- CHAPTER SUMMARY.

“Important items”
(from curso virtual)

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- CHAPTER SUMMARY.

“Important items”
(from curso virtual)

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Next session we will:
✓ Doubts from exercises in chapter 5.
✓ Summarise chapter 6.

thanks!
[email protected]

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