British Academy: The UK's National Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences

BA PDF Symposium 2005

26 April 2005

Abstracts

ABOUT THIS EVENT | PROGRAMME

Dr Raffaella Folli

Events in the Grammar: their Internal Structure and their Participants

Since Vendler (1967), much research on the nature of the linguistic representation of events has identified crucial semantic properties that can help distinguish events described by the verb (event structure). Some such properties include: the presence or absence of a process, of an endpoint, the homogeneity, the punctuality of the event itself, and so forth. Arguably, one of the most interesting discoveries in this field has been that these semantic properties are reflected by the syntactic use of verbs. Not only can events can be distinguished on the basis of whether they have a culmination point, or a process part, but we are entitled to say that events are grammatically composed of such sub-events which have grammatical reflexes.

Fundamental questions then are:

1. How many sub-events have grammatical reflexes?
2. What semantic and syntactic restrictions govern the interaction of event participants and sub-events?

Certain verbs place restrictions on the participants of the causing sub-event. The meaning of murder includes a specification of a particular kind of intention on the part of the causer which must be animate and conscious. The meaning of kill includes no such information. Thus, inanimate things like diseases or cars can kill, but only animate, intentional beings can murder.

Crucially, this type of distinction has event-structural consequences. In particular, there seem to be important correlations between the properties of a subject and the type of sub-event a verb can encode. When an inanimate subject is used with a verb of consumption such as eat or drink, the grammatical presence of a Result sub-event is necessary. If John, consumes an apple, we can say 'John ate the apple (up)' (with or without the telicity marker up). In contrast, if an inanimate subject such as the sea causes a beach to wear away, we have 'The sea ate the beach away'. With an inanimate subject, the telicity marker (hence, the result sub-event) away is necessary.

In my paper I will discuss the identified correlation between the type of participant and the event structure of the verb.

Dr Raffaella Folli researches comparative syntax and semantics, with particular focus on the lexicon-syntax and syntax-semantics interface. In her doctoral thesis, she investigated the interaction between lexical and syntactic knowledge. She completed her DPhil at the University of Oxford in 2001 and after a short period at the University of Arizona, in 2002 she took up a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Cambridge and Junior Research Fellowship at Fitzwilliam College. During the fellowship, she has furthered her research investigating various verb alternations in different languages (English, Italian, Scottish Gaelic, Afrikaans, Persian) and by investigating the effect of event structure on on-line comprehension. At Cambridge, she has taught graduate and undergraduate courses. Her research has been presented at many national and international conferences and various articles are now in different stages of publication.