Activities: States or Events?

The semantic concepts & linguistic expressions of events & states are considered, with reference to Z. Vendler's (1957) proposal of four semantic categories or situation types: accomplishments, achievements, states, & activities. Whereas the first two are inarguably events & the third, states, the status of the fourth is still under debate. An argument is developed in favor of categorizing activities as forming a natural class with events. An examination of perfective activity sentences in fictional narrative & other sequential contexts show that they are bounded segments that function to advance the narrative. A semantic analysis of the activity situation type is presented, which describes activities in terms of the features atelic, dynamic, & durative. In conclusion, a model of narrative time is proposed, which maps the stages of dynamic situations into sequences of conventional time. 47 References. C. Brennan