Lecture: What makes a positive endstate reading?

On the semantic structure of deadjectival verbs

I am presenting work from my Master's thesis, which I defended in August this year. It is concerned with the semantic structure of deadjectival verbs and how it can be predicted from the semantics of the underlying adjectives. This talk is self-contained, but follows up my presentation at the last StuTS, where I presented the work in progress.

Gradability is a central property of adjectives and is semantically formalized as a set of degrees that are ordered along a scale. These scales can vary with regards to various properties, specifically boundedness (the presence of minima/maxima) and standard positioning (locating the degree that must be exceeded for the adjective to apply). Verbs derived from gradable adjectives vary between to readings: the positive endstate or telic reading, which implies that the adjective standard is met (e.g. 'He emptied the cup.' → the cup is empty) and the comparative or atelic reading, which has no such implications (e.g. 'He widened the gap.' ↛ the gap is wide). A popular analysis was proposed by Kennedy & Levin (2008), in which the type of reading in deadjectival verbs can be reliably predicted from the underlying adjective semantics. Kriz (2011) correctly observes, however, that this analysis is not able to account for the behaviour of adjectives with lower closed scales. In my presentation, I show that if we revise the classic understanding of the semantic properties of a positive endstate reading, separating it from the notion of telicity, the theory does in fact make the correct predictions.

References:
- Kennedy, Christopher & Beth Levin. 2008. Measure of change: The adjectival core of degree achievements. In Adjectives and Adverbs: Syntax, semantics and discourse, eds.: Louise McNally & Christopher Kennedy. 156-182. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Kriz, Manuel. 2011. Issues in the Semantics of Degree Achievements. Masterarbeit, Universität Wien.

Info

Day: 2024-11-23
Start time: 15:20
Duration: 00:30
Room: 00A02 CNMS
Track: Semantics
Language: en

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