Event Decomposition And The Semantics Of Durativity

Durativity is an important eventual feature of the situations described by verbs, verb phrases (VPs) and sentences. The events denoted by durable predicates are extendable along a certain time axis, that is, they can be investigated from an internal point of view. Durativity falls into different semantic types and is subject to distinct semantic mechanisms, depending on a combination of factors such as the eventualities of VPs, different grammatical aspectual selections, the semantic interpretations of sentences and different temporal measurements.This thesis focuses on two major types of durativity expressions:the progressive and temopral phrases (TPs). Drawing inspiration from the recent studies on event semantics, lexical aspect and grammatical aspect, we propose a mereological analysis to account for the durativity phenomena. On the present account, the events denoted by durable predicates can be decomposed into several subevents along a certain time axis; but the mereological (part-whole) relationship between the events and their subevents falls into different semantic types given that different predicates possess different eventuality features. Four types of durativity are established:homogenous durativity, incremental durativity, repetitive durativity and measuremental durativity.Homogenous durativity says each subevent has the same property, and we use zhe, to diagnose homogeneous durativity. Mandarin Chinese possesses two different progressive markers, namely, zai and zhe. The long existing accounts based on a distinction between dynamicity(zai) and stativity (zhe) face insurmountable difficulties (Li & Tompson 1981; Smith 1991; Guo 1993; Dai 1991/1997; Fang 2000; Xiao & McEnery 2004 etc.). First, it has been observed that zhe can express dynamic eventuality, but it is an open issue what governs the dynamic zhe. And granted that zhe also expresses stative eventuality, it needs to be studied whether the dynamic zhe and stative zhe has a common core of semantics. Second, the recent studies have been focusing on the distinctions between zai and zhe, but have overlooked the facts that they are interchangeable in certain conditions. By analyzing a number of syntactic and semantic restrictions, such as the co-occurrence between zhe and cumulative/quantized VPs, the simultaneous/successive and collective/distributive interpretations of zhe sentences, the co-occurrences of zhe with the VPs that denoting composite events, and the properties of 'V-zhe' in serial verbal constructions and existential sentences, we argue that zhe can only occur with homogeneous VPs, that is to say, the durativity marked by zhe is homogeneous durativity.Incremental durativity says each subevent has distinct properties relative to different participants. A predicate is incrementally durative if it can only co-occur with zai. We investigate this kind of durativity by looking at the progressive usages of resultative verb compounds (RVCs). On one hand, RVCs such as da-po 'hit-broken' and tui-dao 'push-fallen' denote events that obtain certain state of change instantaneously and cannot co-occur with the progressive in general (Teng1974/1979; Tai 1984; Lin 2002 etc.).However, some RVCs such as ran-hong 'paint-red' and tui-guang 'spread-wide' can co-occur with the progressive when the events relevant proceed in some gradual way. By investigating the derivation of the eventual properties of RVCs, we propose that the telicity of the RVC comes from the homomorphic mapping from the object denoted by the relevant argument to the event denoted by the resultative predicate. If the event takes an obvious process to achieve the endpoint, then the RVC can be used in the progressive and has the property of durativity. On the other hand, if the process is unavailable, then we can infer the RVC lacks the property of durativity. On the other hand, some RVCs can also co-occur with zhe, and in this case, they also obey the homogeneity restriction, i.e., they denote either the homogeneous repetitive scalar changes or the homogeneous stative results.Homogenous durativity and incremental durativity are two basic types. Not only the predicates that express singular events reflect this basic distinction, the durativity due to pluralized events also falls into these two categories. Some instantaneous predicates such as kesou 'cough' and daoda 'reach' are incompatible with the progressive when they denote singular events. However they can co-occur with the progressive when the events they denoted are pluralized. We discuss two types of plural events, i.e. the plurality aroused by repetitive readings and the plurality imposed on by plural arguments. We also observe that the predicates that denote plural events behave differently with respect to zai and zhe, which is about a distinction between phase repetition and event repetition. The former can be viewed as an instance of homogenous durativity. As for the latter, because each subevent involves a different participant or a different spatiotemporal argument, it can be viewed as an instance of incremental durativity. Both singular events and plural events can be measured by temporal phrases (TPs). TPs have two syntactic positions with respect to the main verbs. The existing accounts focus on post-verbal TPs and establish the semantics of 'durativity'(Ma 1981; Li 1987; Guo 1993; Shen 1995; Lin 2008 etc.). But TPs sometimes only express the measurement of events rather than durativity. Also, it is still not clear about the relationship between the durativity expressed by TPs and the progressive. We propose that durativity is a special case where TPs measure events. Two types of event measurement are established, i.e. holistic measurement and partitive measurement. Homogeneous durativity can only be measured via partitive measurement, while incremental durativity can be measured either by holistic measurement or partitive measurement. The choice between the two is regulated by different eventualities of predicates.