Processes as Patterns of Occurrence
Antony Galton · Oxford University Press eBooks · 2018
This chapter explores the idea that processes may be understood as patterns of occurrence, whose individual realizations may take on the character of states or events, depending on the perspective from which they are considered. In this way the ontological relations between states, processes, and events are clarified by effectively defusing the question as to whether processes should be classed as subordinate to events, or vice versa, or whether they are both specializations of some broader superordinate category. A key distinction is made between open and closed patterns, initially in the spatial domain and then in the temporal domain, where new light is thrown on why the term ‘process’ has come to be used in strikingly different ways by different authors. Finally, the account of processes as patterns is put to use in providing a fruitful framework within which to investigate aspectual phenomena in natural language.