These are the types of Events that are delimited but have a short duration. The main difference between both is that, according to Smith (1991), Rosen (1999) and Sanz (2000), achievements are instantaneous culminating Events, but semelfactives are instantaneous non-culminating Events. Notice the differences in the examples below:
(58) Ha aparecido una nueva estrella en el cielo.
[Achievement: instantaneous and culminative][The star appeared and that is all]
A new star appeared in the sky”
(59) Pablo tosió
[Semelfactive: instantaneous and non-culminative][He coughed once and probably would cough more]
“Pablo coughed”
Also, achievements and semelfactives are different in that semelfactive Events, due to their properties as non-culminative, instantaneous Events, cannot result in a State after the Event happened. See the examples below:
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(60) El agua hirvió. [Achievement][Resulting State: it is boiling18] “The water boiled”
[After it boils up, it culminates in: “El agua está hervida”]
(61) Juan tosió. [Semelfactive][There is not a clear resulting State]
“Juan coughed”
[It never culminates in: * “Juan está tosido”]
The lexical aspect of verbs that can focus on different phases of an Event (as stated in De Miguel, 1999), such as ingressive, progressive and terminative/resultative falls beyond the main scope of this analysis of the main properties of Aktionsart and Events, but it is important to remember that such lexical properties have an influence on the distinction between achievements and semelfactive Events. In the literature, semelfactive Events have been considered a sub-category of achievements before being defined as their own category by Smith (1991), as there are many similitudes between them. However, that argument does not bear any relevance to my research at this time. Therefore, I decide to classify semelfactives as their own type of Event, as in Smith (1991) Rosen (1999) and Sanz (2000), although they share several properties with achievements.
I mentioned above that achievements and semelfactives are Events that have a limit and are short in duration. That is their main point in common. Both differ from Accomplishments in that they do not have duration, as, in effect, most of them are instantaneous verbs that can express a change of State or a resulting State (in the case of achievements). They are, therefore, dynamic but not continuous.
Kamata (1996) points to the existence of an additional category of Aktionsart, the non-processes. This category exists in Japanese and will be defined and
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18 It can be argued that “hervir” is an Activity instead of a State, as it seems to fulfill the eventivity test of admitting the progressive form. In any case, the bottomline is that an achievement results in a different event type. The same thing happens with verbs such as “vivir” (to live in a place), that can be thought of as States, but in a way they share many of the eventive features of an Activity while still not showing any action themselves.
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explained in section 3 below. In section 2.5 , I will review the parameterized features of the different Aktionsart categories, according to existing literature.
2.5.- Classifications.of.Event.types.according.to.their.features.
The various types of Events have been classified in several ways. The aforementioned classification as applied to Spanish is mainly based on De Miguel (1999). Other classic classifications present in the literature, taken from Rosen (1999), are shown in (62) though (66) below. Notice that States are added as a type of Event in most of these classifications and also that semelfactives are notably missing. Also, in Moens (1987)’ classification, the traditional categories coined by Vendler (1967) and Dowty (1979) have been replaced with other labels, although they point to very much the same types of Events. Their analyses classify Events according to their semantic features:
(62) Verkuyl’s (1993) Parameters of Event Classes19 State: -bounded, -continuous
activity: -bounded, + continuous achievement: +bounded, -continuous accomplishment: +bounded, +continuous (63) Carlson’s (1981) Parameters of Event Classes20
State: +continuous, -extended activity: +continuous, +extended achievement: -continuous, -extended accomplishment: -continuous, +extended
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19 Verkuyl (1993) defines the parameter [+/- continuous] as whether the event has a duration or not.
The parameter [+/- bounded] refers to whether the event has a natural inherent endpoint.
20 Carlson (1981) defines the parameter [+/-extended] as whether the event has a duration or it is a
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(64) Moens’ (1987) Parameters of Event Classes21
culmination: +consequence, atomic (recognize, win the race) culminated process: +consequence, extended (build a house) point: -consequence, atomic (hiccup, tap, wink) process: -consequence, extended (run, swim, play the piano) State (understand, love, resemble) (65) Hoeksma’s (1983) Parameters of Event Classes22
State: -countable, -duration activity: -countable, +duration achievement: +countable, -duration accomplishment: +countable, +duration
(66) Most Common Parameters of Event Classes, by Rosen (1999) extended: States, activities, accomplishments
nonextended (momentaneous): achievements
bounded (countable, definite): accomplishments, achievements unbounded: activities, States
On the other hand, there are classifications of Events based not just on features, but on the sub-eventive properties of Events. Classifications by Pustejovsky (1991), along with follow-up work on this theory by Moreno Cabrera (2003), De
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21 Moens (1987) defines the parameter [+/- consequence] as whether the event culminates. He defines [+/- atomic] as whether the event is momentaneous or not.
22 Hoeksma (1983) defines [+/-countable] as whether the event can be counted, and [+/- duration]
as whether the event lasts over time
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Miguel & Fernández Lagunilla (2000) and Moreno (2013) will be described in Chapter 5 below, when I move the focus of my research to Event theory.
Both the approaches based on features and the approaches that try to analyze the internal structure of Events in terms of them being comprised of other Events are useful in order to define the properties of the complex Events. I claim that in Japanese, Spanish and arguably in other languages too, Event types can be defined as being complex, very much in the way Pustejovsky (1991) proposes for English. This will be substantiated in later sections.
So far, I can define a complex Event as one like “hervir” in Spanish, seen above in (60) , which is comprised of two or more sub-events, as being “complex”. In the case of “hervir” (to boil), it consists of “reaching the boiling point” and “boiling up”.
Further examples such as this one in Spanish and Japanese that prove the existence of complex Events in these languages will be shown in Chapter 5 .
We have to bear in mind, in any case, that if we have complex Events, features of those sub-events will change their value between sub-events. For instance, an achievement that kick-starts an activity will have its [+bounded] feature become a [-bounded] feature, hence forcing distinct interactions with grammatical aspect markers depending on whether the kick-starting achievement or the resulting activity is focused on. This focusing mechanism is carried out through the interaction of the lexical item with grammatical aspect morphemes and Event quantifiers, as we will see later in this thesis. See the following examples in Standard Japanese and Spanish.
(67) “Hikouki ga tonda”23 (“The plane flew off”) [+bounded] (Achievement) Implies “Hikouki ga tondeiru” (“The plane is flying”) [-bounded] (Activity) (68) “Mado ga wareteiru” (“The window is broken”) implies an Event of “the window breaking” ([+bounded]) and a resulting State of “the window being broken” ([-bounded])
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23 This can be interpreted as distinct phases of a single event, in the manner of Coseriu (1976) and
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(69) "Alberto supo la verdad" ("Alberto found out the truth") implies an Event of "finding out the truth" ([+bounded]) and a resulting State of "Alberto knowing the truth" ([-bounded])
These changes in the value of features, along with the subsequent changes in the Aktionsart category that the Event goes through, are responsible for any distinct interpretation of the meaning in the construction. These features get licensed along features of grammatical aspect and other elements in order to allow for the properties of the Event to be interpreted. Interactions between features of lexical aspect of the different Event types and features of grammatical aspect in Spanish and Japanese regarding perfective, stative and progressive aspect will be dealt with in later sections of this dissertation.
In this section, we have seen the properties of tense, Aktionsart and grammatical aspect, with special attention to Yamamura (2010)’s approach to the aspectual differences between Imperfective and Indefinite Past forms of Spanish.
The following chapter summarizes the theories about lexical and grammatical aspect in Japanese and the Western Japanese dialect of Uwajima, in the island of Shikoku, which happens to have a system of marking grammatical aspect that is very different from that of standard Japanese.
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Chapter.3