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RulesHunter Posted 15 years ago
Linguistics Studies
Lexical Aspect of "to meet" and "to go"
Dear all,
When I decided to write a research paper about lexical aspect (according to Vendler), I thought classifying verbs would be much easier than it actually is :/.
Does anyone have any thoughts about which category "to meet" would fall under? Accomplishment, achievement or activity? I suppose it depends on the context:
"I finally met your husband today" seems to be an achievement to me, since it's basically a punctual event, but what about:
"I met with her yesterday." I suppose this is an activity verb, right?
As for "to go", I think if you have a destination in mind, such as "to go to the store", this is an accomplishment verb, since it has duration but also an clear endpoint (arrival at the store). I'm still a bit uneasy about this, though.
Does anyone have a resource which provides a long list of verbs and their lexical aspects? Every source I have seems only to list the most common verbs (or the verbs that display this aspect the best), but that isn't of much help to me right now.
Thanks for your help!
RH
When I decided to write a research paper about lexical aspect (according to Vendler), I thought classifying verbs would be much easier than it actually is :/.
Does anyone have any thoughts about which category "to meet" would fall under? Accomplishment, achievement or activity? I suppose it depends on the context:
"I finally met your husband today" seems to be an achievement to me, since it's basically a punctual event, but what about:
"I met with her yesterday." I suppose this is an activity verb, right?
As for "to go", I think if you have a destination in mind, such as "to go to the store", this is an accomplishment verb, since it has duration but also an clear endpoint (arrival at the store). I'm still a bit uneasy about this, though.
Does anyone have a resource which provides a long list of verbs and their lexical aspects? Every source I have seems only to list the most common verbs (or the verbs that display this aspect the best), but that isn't of much help to me right now.
Thanks for your help!
RH
Top answer
RulesHunter I thought classifying verbs would be much easier than it actually is Join the club! There is a school of thought that says it's the whole predicate, not just the verb, which should be placed in a Vendler class. The verb alone isn't always quite enough.
- RulesHunter I thought classifying verbs would be much easier than it actually is Join the club!
- There is a school of thought that says it's the whole predicate, not just the verb, which should be placed in a Vendler class.
- The verb alone isn't always quite enough.
- I'm not that familiar with the linguists' arguments pro- and con- on the issue, but I have read that there is somewhat of a division among the Vendler theorists on this point.
- " I suppose this is an activity verb, right?
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2 Answers
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RulesHunterI thought classifying verbs would be much easier than it actually isJoin the club! There is a school of thought that says it's the whole predicate, not just the verb, which should be placed in a Vendler class. The verb alone isn't always quite enough. I'm not that familiar with the linguists' arguments pro- and con- on the issue, but I have read
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Sorry for the late reply, and thank you very much for your input! I definitely think that the entire predicate needs to be analyzed in order to make any sense of the concept of lexical aspect.
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