piñón: adverbs of completion in an event semantics
abstract
Adverbs of completion such as completely, partly, and
half assert to what extent a given situation type is realized,
where the situation type at issue may be either a state type (in the
case of adjectives, e.g., completely empty) or an event type (in
the case of many verbs, e.g., completely eat the cereal). After
introducing the basic data and critically reviewing two previous
analyses, I propose a new approach to adverbs of completion. The
hallmark of the new approach is to provide as uniform a semantics as
possible for adverbs of completion in both of their uses, taking
seriously the intuition that their meanings make reference to events and
degrees. The analyses are cast in an event semantics supplemented by a
degree semantics familiar from treatments of gradable adjectives.
reference
- Piñón, Christopher. 2005. Adverbs of completion in an
event semantics. Perspectives on aspect, ed. Henk J. Verkuyl,
Henriëtte de Swart, and Angeliek van Hout, 149–166. Springer.
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piñón: adverbs of completion in an event semantics
last updated on 13 march 2006
christopher piñón (pinon@sdf-eu.org)
http://pinon.sdf-eu.org/covers/aces.html