The Intergressive as a New Category of Verbal Aktionsart
Markus Egg · Journal of Semantics · 1995
The topic of this paper are predicates like to play a sonata or to cough, whose classification in proposed systems of aknonsarten is unsatisfactory I will present an augmentation of Dowey‘s system of aknonsart to classify these predicates adequately. This revised classification employs the features ‘interval-based’ (- can be evaluated with respect to extended periods of time only), ‘bounded’ and ‘telic’. Boundedness and telicity are different features. Bounded predicates apply to limited stretches of time only, telic predicates introduce a change of state. The features are ordered (telic predicates are bounded, bounded predicates are interval-based) and distinguish four mutually non-overlapping groups of aknonsarten: state, process, intergressives and change. Intergressive predicates are represented as in Dowty (1979), i.e more complex predicates are analysed as less complex ones linked by suitable operators. Two intergressive operators account for the whole range of intergressive predicates. The close parallel between the classification of aknonsarten and the classification of nominal expressions carries over to the distinction of intergressive and change predicates. Next, an extension of one intergressive operator to non-temporal domains will be sketched and, finally, I will show that the assumption of an intergressive akuonsart has wide repercussions in other semantic fields.