![The event structure of CAUSE and BECOME 13
2. Background assumptions
Linguistic expressions relate a Phonetic Form PF to the representation of its meaning, the
linguistic aspect of which is called Logical Form or Semantic Form SF.1
Hence a linguistic
expression is a pair <PF, SF>, where PF determines its pronunciation and SF its conceptual
interpretation. Each expression is furthermore categorized by syntactic and morphological
features Cat, classifying e.g. dreams as alternatively verb, present, and third person singu-
lar, or as noun and plural. Finally, a linguistic expression is characterized by its Argument
Structure AS, which consists of a hierarchically structured sequence of argument positions
or theta roles, determining the properties of constituents the expression may or must com-
bine with. In particular, the theta roles in AS impose conditions called s-selection and c-
selection, determining the semantic and morpho-syntactic properties of expressions saturat-
ing the theta role in question.2
Thus the theta role to be saturated by the subject of the Verb
dreams requires semantically a human (or personal) entity and syntactically a nominative
singular DP. These two types of constraints are naturally determined by the semantic aspect
of the argument position and by morpho-syntactic features associated with it. More techni-
cally, a theta role Θ, is a pair < λχ,, F,>, where λχ, abstracts over a variable in SF, and F, is
a (possibly empty) set of features to be matched by the features in Cat of a constituent satu-
rating 0j. The s-selection of 0j can now be understood as an effect of the predicates apply-
ing to Xj in SF, while the c-selection is due to features that follow from grammatical rules or
principles, or are specified by lexical idiosyncrasy. A preliminary illustration of the as-
sumptions sketched so far is given in (2), the lexical entry for the German temporal preposi-
tion nach (after), which differs grammatically from the directional preposition nach (to-
wards) by the categorization [ - Directional] :
[ Τ y > Τ χ ]
SF
As indicated in (2), Cat and AS constitute jointly what one might call the Grammatical
Form GF of a linguistic expression, because Cat and AS together determine essentially its
grammatically controlled combinatorial potential. On the other hand, AS and SF together
1
I need not go here into details related to the terminological decision. While LF, as used in Chom-
sky (1981) and subsequent work, is primarily concerned with syntactically determined aspects of
meaning, SF is concerned also with the (grammatically relevant) internal structure of lexical items
determining their contribution to the meaning (or conceptual interpretation) of linguistic expres-
sions. For some discussion of these matters and the overlap in orientation between LF and SF see
Bierwisch (1997). As I am concerned here with issues that clearly relate to word-internal condi-
tions of semantic representation, I will take SF to provide the relevant representational format.
2
The terminology - semantic or s-selection and categorial or c-selection - is due to Chomsky
(1986), where selectional restrictions were not formally associated with theta roles, however.
(2) / nach / [-V,-N,-Dir] λχ λy
[+Obl]
PF Cat AS
GF](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/25189411-250513065347-7e2c6b46/85/Event-Arguments-Foundations-And-Applications-Claudia-Maienborn-Editor-Angelika-Wllstein-Editor-23-320.jpg)
![14 Manfred Bierwisch
can be considered as the Extended Semantic Form ESF, according to which e.g. a preposi-
tion like nach is a two-place relation.3
This will turn out to be crucial for the semantic
combinations an expression may enter into.
Within the SF of (2), Τ is a functor that assigns a time interval to its argument, and the
two place predicate > represents an ordering-relation over the set of time intervals. Hence χ
and y are variables over individuals susceptible to ordering in time. Hence the s-selection
associated with both argument positions of nach requires entities to which a time interval
can be assigned. The c-selection determined by the Object Position is expressed by the
feature [+Oblique] requiring a Dative-DP.4
The other argument of nach - and of preposi-
tions in general -, sometimes called the external or designated argument, does not specify
features of c-selection, a point to which we will return. The conditions of s- and c-selection
just mentioned must be met e.g. by the object of nach in a phrase like nach der Wahl (after
the election). Suppose for the sake of illustration that something like (3) abbreviates the
representation of the object-DP in question, where [DEF e [ ELECTION e ] ] identifies a defi-
nite individual:5
(3) /der Wahl/ [+N,-V,+Obl ] [ DEFe[ELECTIONe] ]
Merging (2) and (3) yields a PP with the representation indicated in (4), where the SF of (3)
replaces the variable χ in (2) as an effect of lambda-conversion, triggered by the combina-
tion of (2) and (3) through functional application:
(4) / nach der Wahl / [-V,-Ν,-Dir] λγ[ Τ y > Τ [ DEF e [ ELECTION e ]] ]
(4) illustrates in a rather simplified form the result of combining a head with its comple-
ment. In addition to this type of combination called complementation, we need an account
of the operation that merges a head with an adjunct, as e.g. in Besuch nach der Wahl (visit
after the election), where nach der Wahl is a modifier, not a complement of the head Be-
such. Abbreviating the representation of Besuch by (5), we get something like (6) as the
result of merging a head with an adjunct:
(5) /Besuch/ [+N,-V,...] λζ [VISITζ]
3
Technically, ESF is an expression in a so-called lambda-categorial language. Assuming that for
principled reasons the SF of major syntactic constituents is to be construed as an expression of
type t, i.e. as a proposition, ESF becomes an η-place predicate with AS defining its arity, i.e. the
number and type of its arguments. See Bierwisch (1997, 2003) for further discussion.
4
The feature [+Obl] is in fact predictable, being the default case for objects of prepositions in Ger-
man. Hence it would not have to be specified in the entry (2). The principles and conditions con-
trolling such regularities will largely be ignored in the present context, except where event posi-
tions are involved.
5
This is, of course, an oversimplification in various respects. First, e must be construed as referring
to a definite eventuality of the sort discussed in Bach (1986), a point to which we will return. Sec-
ond, the definiteness operator DEF is actually a short-hand for a number of assumptions that cannot
be discussed here. It must, however, provide a referential binding for the argument position of the
Noun Wahl, turning it into a definite description, as will be discussed shortly.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/25189411-250513065347-7e2c6b46/85/Event-Arguments-Foundations-And-Applications-Claudia-Maienborn-Editor-Angelika-Wllstein-Editor-24-320.jpg)
![The event structure of CAUSE and BECOME 15
(6) / Besuch nach der Wahl / [ +N, - V,... ]
λ ζ [ [ VISIT Ζ ] & [ Τ Ζ > Τ [ DEF e [ ELECTION e ] ] ] ]
What (6) is supposed to account for is the observation that head and modifier are semanti-
cally combined by logical conjunction, and more specifically that the condition abbreviated
by VISIT specifies an event that is additionally subject to the temporal location expressed by
nach der Wahl. To this effect, the argument position λy of the adjunct (4) is absorbed by (or
unified with) the argument position λζ of the head (5). As both operators abstract over the
same sort of variables, the absorbing theta role does not violate the s-selection of the ab-
sorbed Role, which furthermore does not impose c-selectional constraints that could be
violated. Absorption of a theta role must furthermore be assumed to have two conse-
quences: First, the SF of the adjunct is added to that of the head by logical conjunction &.6
Second, the variable bound by the absorbed operator is substituted by the variable of the
absorbing operator. In the present case, λy is absorbed by λζ and y is substituted by z.
This account of (extensional) modification follows essentially the proposal made in
Higginbotham (1985). It must be generalized in non-trivial ways if e.g. intensional modifi-
cation as in der angebliche Besuch (the alleged visit) is to be included, since an alleged visit
is not something that is a visit and an alleged event. In Bierwisch (2003), I have argued that
in head-adjunct-combinations the head characteristically absorbs a theta role, as opposed to
head-complement-combinations, where the head discharges a theta role. We will return to
these matters below.
To sum up the framework sketched so far, we have lexical entries as sketched in (2), the
argument structure of which specifies their s- and c-selectional properties as illustrated
above. On the basis of these entries, syntactically complex expressions are created by the
operation Merge as illustrated in (4) and (6) for complementation and adjunction, respec-
tively. Merge combines two (basic or complex) expressions X and Y into a complex ex-
pression Z. One ofZ's constituents is its head, determining its categorization. A provisional
formulation of the properties of Merge is given in (7), presupposing that complex expres-
sions have the same basic organization as lexical items.
(7) Merge (X, Y) ==> Z, where
a. PF of Ζ is the linear combination of PF of X and Y,7
b. Cat of Ζ is projected from Cat of X iff X is the head of Z, and either
c. X discharges the lowest (i.e. next available) position of its AS to Y by
functional application with subsequent lambda-conversion within SF, or
d. Y discharges the lowest position in its AS to X by lambda-absorption, followed
by logical conjunction of the SF of X and Y.
6
For principled reasons, discussed e.g. in Wunderlich (2000) and Bierwisch (2002), the conjunction
& is asymmetrical, at least in the sense that one conjunct is closer to the functor than the other.
Whether and which semantic consequences are connected to this asymmetry need not concern us
at the moment.
7
Two qualifications are to be made at this point. First, I will ignore here morphological processes
with non-linear aspects of combination. Second, the linear ordering of head and complement or ad-
junct is subject to complex conditions of various sorts that must be left aside here.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/25189411-250513065347-7e2c6b46/85/Event-Arguments-Foundations-And-Applications-Claudia-Maienborn-Editor-Angelika-Wllstein-Editor-25-320.jpg)
![The event structure of CAUSE and BECOME 17
(9) a. Der Fahrplan ändert sich.
The schedule changes.
b. Der Fahrplan ändert sich häufig/oft.
The schedule changes often/frequently.
c. Der Fahrplan ändert sich am Montag.
On Monday, the schedule changes.
(10) a. Die Änderung des Fahrplans
The change of the schedule
b. Die häufige/*oft Änderung des Fahrplans
The frequent change of the schedule
c. Die Änderung des Fahrplans am Montag
The change of the schedule on Monday
Besides the specification of reference by means of tense and complementizer or determiner,
the event-reference is parallel for the causative verb, the inchoative verb, and the noun, both
in German ändern, sich ändern, and Änderung and in English verb and noun change. Also,
frequency and temporal modifiers apply to verbal and nominal heads in the same way. The
fact that oft and often are restricted to verbal heads, while häufig can modify verbs as well
as nouns, is due to c-selection by the adjunct, with oft imposing something like [ +V ]."
Furthermore, the event reference of verbs can enter standard anaphoric relations and may
be picked up by appropriate pronouns, as shown by the italicized elements in (11):
(11) a. Sie ändern häufig den Fahrplan. Das macht viel Ärger.
b. Sie ändern häufig den Fahrplan, was viel Ärger macht.
c. They change the schedule frequently, that/which is very irritating.
Again, this is essentially parallel to the referential character of nouns, with the anaphoric
relations based on their referential argument, as shown in (12):
(12) a. Er kritisiert die häufige Änderung des Fahrplans. Sie macht viel Ärger.
b. Er kritisiert die häufige Änderung des Fahrplans, die viel Ärger macht.
c. He criticizes the frequent change of the schedule, which/it is disappointing.
As already noted, c-selection imposed by morpho-syntactic features of adjuncts can restrict
them to verbal heads - as in oft (often), heute (today),jetzt (now) - or to nominal heads - as
in häufig (frequently), heutig (today's), or jetzig (present). The familiar semantic restric-
tions, on the other hand, based on s-selection and depending on the content of SF, carry
over from verbs to nouns, preventing (proper) events from durational modifiers like for
'1
A different, but comparable condition on c-selection restricts heute (today), gestern (yesterday),
damals (then), bald (soon) and others to verbal heads, as opposed to heutig, gestrig, damalig,
baldig modifying nominal heads. A closely related distinction is realized more systematically (but
not without exceptions) by the English suffix -ly . For further discussion of this point see Bier-
wisch (2003).](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/25189411-250513065347-7e2c6b46/85/Event-Arguments-Foundations-And-Applications-Claudia-Maienborn-Editor-Angelika-Wllstein-Editor-27-320.jpg)
![18 Manfred Bierwisch
hours, and states from delimitations like quickly, or within a few minutes, as indicated in
(13) and (14).12
(13) a. Das Haus wurde {wiederholt/*stundenlang/ziemlich rasch} zerstört.
The house was {repeatedly/*for hours/rather quickly} destroyed,
b. Die {wiederholte/*stundenlange/ziemlich rasche} Zerstörung des Hauses.
The {repeated/rather quick} destruction of the house {*for hours}.
(14) a. Das Haus wurde {gestern/stundenlang/*ziemlich rasch} beobachtet.
The house was observed {yesterday/for hours/*rather quickly}.
b. Die {gestrige/stundenlange/*ziemlich rasche} Beobachtung des Hauses.
The {*rather quick} observation of the house {yesterday/for hours}.
Event variables cannot only enter anaphoric relations, they are also subject to quantifica-
tion, with frequency adverbials like always, often, occasionally, seldom, etc. acting as quan-
tifiers over eventualities. Thus the Logical or Semantic Form of (15a) should be something
like (15b), or slightly more formally (15c):
(15) a. The schedule changes frequently.
b. There are many e such that e is a change of schedule.
c. For many e [ the schedule changes (e) ]
Quantification applies not only to events but just as well to states, if instances are separable,
as in (16), where states are individuated by relevant occasions:
(16) a. Die Leitung ist immer besetzt.
The line is always busy,
b. Peter wiegt selten zu viel.
Peter seldom weighs too much.
Participating in quantification, event variables can furthermore be involved in scope rela-
tions. Thus the preferred reading of (17) assures that mail delivery occurrs regularly on
Monday, not on other days. In other words, on Monday qualifies the regular delivery, i.e. it
has scope over regularly. The preferred reading of (18), on the other hand, claims that on
Monday the delivery of mail is regular, i.e. regular qualifies the delivery on Monday, and
has, in this sense, scope over on Monday.
(17) Die Post wird regelmäßig am Montag zugestellt.
Mail is delivered regularly on Monday.
12
It should be noted that acceptability judgements can be obscured by a coerced, event-like interpre-
tation of observe, such that e.g. they will observe the house in three hours is construed as they will
start the observation of the house in three hours. But coercion of this sort confirms, rather than
spoils the tenet that s-selection is based on semantic conditions. I will return to these matters in de-
tail in section 7 and 8.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/25189411-250513065347-7e2c6b46/85/Event-Arguments-Foundations-And-Applications-Claudia-Maienborn-Editor-Angelika-Wllstein-Editor-28-320.jpg)
![The event structure of CAUSE and BECOME 19
(18) Die Post wird am Montag regelmäßig zugestellt.
On Monday, mail is delivered regularly.
Whether and under which conditions the preferred interpretation can be replaced by other
options need not concern us here. In part it is a matter of stress and focus-assignment,
which must be left aside. The point to be made is merely that event variables cannot only be
quantified - as in (15) and (16) -, but participate in standard relations of regular variables.13
4. Implementing event reference
As already noted, event reference has been introduced into standard semantic (or logical)
representations in different ways. The most direct proposal is due to Davidson (1967), who
suggested that the main predicate of an action sentence is to be extended by an additional
argument, which refers to the event characterized by the sentence in question. More techni-
cally, a proposition of the general form (19) should in fact be analyzed as (20), where P' is
an n+1 place predicate that relates Ρ and its arguments to the event e.
(19) P(x,,...,xn )
(20) 3 e [ P ' ( e , x , , . . . , x n ) ]
This proposal is illustrated in (21b), where the transitive verb butter of (21a) is analyzed as
a three-place relation between e and the arguments of the verb. Past tense, provisionally
indicated by T(e) < T(u), ordering e temporally before the utterance time T(u), and adver-
bials like in the kitchen are now treated as predications of e, conjoined to the main proposi-
lion.14
(21) a. Fred buttered the toast in the kitchen
b. 3e [ buttering (e, Fred, the toast) & T(e) < T(u) & in the kitchen (e) ]
Twenty years earlier, Reichenbach (1947) had already proposed a more general way to
introduce event variables. Instead of adding an argument to the major predicate, Reichen-
bach defined an event function [ ρ ]* which turns a proposition ρ into a property of events.
Substituting in this function the proposition (19) for p, one gets (22), which corresponds to
(19) very much like Davidson's (20) corresponds to the initial (19).
13
Scope variation of the sort illustrated in (17) and (18) does not carry over to nominalization, as
shown by (i) as opposed to (ii). This is due to conditions of DP-syntax that are not to be pursued
here.
(i) the regular delivery of mail on Monday
(ii) * the delivery of mail on Monday regular(ly)
14
The treatment of tense as a conjunct on a par with adjuncts must be modified for reasons to which
we return. For the time being it simply indicates the specification imposed on e.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/25189411-250513065347-7e2c6b46/85/Event-Arguments-Foundations-And-Applications-Claudia-Maienborn-Editor-Angelika-Wllstein-Editor-29-320.jpg)
![20 Manfred Bierwisch
(22) 3 e [ P ( x l s . . . , x n ) ] * ( e )
In these terms, the analysis of (21a) comes out as (23), with tense and adverbial modifica-
tion represented again by conjoined propositions:
(23) 3e [ [ buttering (Fred, the toast) ]*(e) & T(e) < T(u) & in the kitchen (e) ]
Reichenbach's proposal is more general than Davidson's, as it introduces an event variable
by a general event function15
, rather than by extending the arity of particular (classes of)
predicates.16
It could thus apply to any proposition, including those specifying e.g. locative
or temporal properties. This requires an empirically restricted occurrence of the event-
function, ultimately converging with the specification needed for event arguments of the
Davidsonian style. With this proviso, and ignoring certain consequences of the different
theoretical contexts of the two proposals, Davidson's and Reichenbach's event variables are
intended to account for roughly the same range of phenomena.17
In particular, both Rei-
chenbach and Davidson represent adverbial modification by conjoined predications of the
event argument, such that e.g. Fred buttered the toast follows from (21a) by the rules of
standard logic.
A rather different way to treat the event variable has been proposed a. o. by Parsons
(1990). This so-called neo-Davidsonian theory replaces (19) by (24), turning Ρ into a one-
place predicate P" of events to which the arguments of Ρ are then related by thematic rela-
tions Rj!,
(24) 3e [ P"(e) & R,(e, x,) & ... & Rn(e, xn) ]
Thematic relations are taken from the usual set of theta roles like agent, theme, source,
goal, etc. Under this proposal, the analysis of (21a) would come out as something like (25):
(25) 3e [ buttering (e) & Agent(e, Fred) & Patient (e, the toast) & T(e) < T(u) &
Location (e, the kitchen) ]
The move from (19) to (24) is - in spite of the deceptive terminology - a radical defection
from Davidson's original intention. Separating the core predicate from its original argu-
ments has far-reaching and fatal consequences. I will briefly sketch three of them.
15
Reichenbach explicitly uses fact function and event function synonymously. The distinction be-
tween facts on the one hand and events and states on the other made in Vendler (1967) and subse-
quent discussions corresponds more (but not exactly) to the distinction Reichenbach makes be-
tween objective or situational fact functions and propositional fact functions.
16
Davidson originally assumed event arguments for verbs of change and action. Later on, various
extensions have been discussed by various authors, including e-arguments not only for state verbs
but also for certain types of adjectives and heads of locative PPs. I will return to this matter below.
17
A hint to different notational variants appearing in the literature might be useful. In essentially the
sense of Reichenbach's event function, Kamp & Reyle (1993) use the colon to associate a proposi-
tion ρ with an event e, Wunderlich (2000) uses curly brackets, and Bierwisch (1988) an operator
inst. Thus [p]*(e), e:p, {p}e, and e iNSTp all specify an event e instantiating a proposition p.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/25189411-250513065347-7e2c6b46/85/Event-Arguments-Foundations-And-Applications-Claudia-Maienborn-Editor-Angelika-Wllstein-Editor-30-320.jpg)
![22 Manfred Bierwisch
(27) a. He doesn't sell it.
b. - 3 e [ sell (e) & Agent (e, he) & Theme (e, it) ]
c. Ve [ -i sell (e) ν -, Agent (e, he) ν -, Theme (e, it)]
According to normal understanding, (27a) is true if and only if there is no instance of his
selling it, whatever he and it are apt to refer to. The three options by which (27a) could be
falsified according to (27b) or (27c) are simply besides the point: There is no way to under-
stand what it would mean that someone referred to by he is not the agent of the selling
event e or something referred to by it is not the theme of that event, even if one ignores
problems related to quantification over events.20
Notice that this is different for something
like he doesn Ί sell it today, where the negation - in line with the original Davidsonian
approach - can appropriately apply to the event of his selling it and to the temporal location
of that event.
These and a number of further points concerning the controversial nature of separated
thematic roles strongly argue against the neo-Davidsonian approach. This leaves us with
two possibilities to incorporate event reference into the notational system sketched in sec-
tion 2. (28a) illustrates the Reichenbach-version of the verb sleep (using Kamp's ":" rather
than Reichenbach's "[ ]*"), while (28b) follows Davidson's proposal, extending the prop-
erty SLEEP into a relation between an individual and an event:
(28) a. / sleep / [ +V, -Ν ] λχ λε [ e : [ SLEEP Χ ] ]
b. / sleep / [ +V, -Ν ] λχ λε [ [ SLEEP' χ ] e ]
Assuming that eventualities like individuals are elements of type e, the one-place predicate
SLEEP in (28a) is of type (e, t), taking χ to build up a proposition of type t, and the colon : is
formally an operator of type (t,{e, t)), turning a proposition into a predicate of events. The
two-place predicate SLEEP' in (28b), on the other hand, is of type (e,(e, t)), turning two indi-
viduals into a proposition. In both versions, both variables are bound by argument posi-
tions, providing the subject position and the event reference, respectively. The difference
between (28a) and (28b) is in one respect more than merely a notational variant, however.
As the domain of eventualities includes events, processes, and states, the variable e is sub-
ject to a sortal choice, depending in one way or the other on the predicate that takes e as its
argument. In (28b) this choice is directly determined by the predicate SLEEP', while in (28a),
it must somehow be proliferated from the property SLEEP to the argument of the event op-
erator ":". I will return to this issue below.
It is worth noting that corresponding to the verb sleep, we have the entry (29) for the
event noun sleep, which differs merely by its categorization:
(29) / sleep / [ -V, +N ] λχ λβ [ e : [ SLEEP χ ] ]
20
It must be emphasized that what is at issue are the propositions that he and it are agent and theme
of e, not the identity of the individuals referred to. The identity of the individuals could be focused
and negated, as in HE doesn't sell it (but his BROTHER). - This is barely possible for the object
NP in (27), however, for independent reasons, preventing contrastive stress on it.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/25189411-250513065347-7e2c6b46/85/Event-Arguments-Foundations-And-Applications-Claudia-Maienborn-Editor-Angelika-Wllstein-Editor-32-320.jpg)
![The event structure of CAUSE and BECOME 23
This difference has important consequences beyond the categorization as such, because
argument positions differ systematically for nouns and verbs with respect to their syntactic
properties. Thus, argument positions of nouns are generally optional, except for the referen-
tial role, which happens to be the event position in (29). Hence λχ must be saturated by the
subject in (28), but can be left unspecified in (29), as in the sleep last night, etc.
In (29), as in lexical entries in general, the c-selectional properties associated with the
argument positions (such as case requirements) are largely predictable by the categoriza-
tion. Thus λχ requires nominative for the verb in (28), but (possessive) genitive for the
noun in (29). See e.g. Bierwisch (1997) and Wunderlich (2000) for further discussion.
Given the assumptions about SF sketched in section 2, the entry (28a) would now sup-
port representations like (30b) and (31b), again with obvious simplifications in various
respects:
(30) a. Fred slept in the kitchen
b . 3 e [ [ T e < T u ] [ e : [ SLEEP FRED ] & [ e IN [ DEF y [ KITCHEN y ] ] ] ] ]
(31) a. Fred slept for an hour in the kitchen
b . 3 e [ [ T e < T u ] [ e : [ SLEEP FRED ] & [ EXTENT e • 1 HOUR ] &
[ LOC e IN [ DEF y [ KITCHEN y ] ] ] ] ]
It must be added that (31b) is at best a first approximation, as it does not account for the
relative scope of temporal and locative adverbials in relation to their syntactic position.
5. The event structure of inchoativity and causativity
The verb sleep refers to a particular sort of state. The same type of state provides the source
of the change referred to by the verb awake (and wake up) and also the target state of the
inverse change referred to by fall asleep. The transitive variant of wake up furthermore
exemplifies the possibility to add an agent identifying the source of the change denoted by
the intransitive verb, a pattern characteristic for so-called ergative verbs like break, close,
change, etc. Following familiar assumptions, deriving from McCawley (1973), Dowty
(1979) and related work, grammatically relevant semantic relations within and between
causative and inchoative verbs based on the state characterized by SLEEP can be represented
as follows, with [ ACT y ] specifying the event which brings about the relevant change of
state:21
21
Actually, the proposition [ ACT y ] used here and in the sequel is a shorthand in various respects.
First, ACT must be construed as a predicate subsuming all sorts of appropriate activities by which
the effect in question can be brought about. Thus ACT comes close to a variable ranging over activ-
ity predicates. For a more detailed discussion of cause, effect, and causation see section 7 below.
Second, ACT is treated as a predicate applying to an individual that provides the argument position
of the agent, as exemplified in (i):](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/25189411-250513065347-7e2c6b46/85/Event-Arguments-Foundations-And-Applications-Claudia-Maienborn-Editor-Angelika-Wllstein-Editor-33-320.jpg)
![24 Manfred Bierwisch
(32) a. / sleep / [ +V ] λχ λε [ e : [ SLEEP χ ] ]
b. / awake / [ +V ] λχ λβ [ e : [ BECOME -, [ SLEEP χ ] ] ]
c. / awake / [ +V ] λχ λγ λε [ e : [ [ A C T y] [ C A U S E [ B E C O M E [ S L E E P χ ] ] ] ] ]
The transitive verb awake and its intransitive variant should, of course, be based on
(roughly) the same lexical item. (32a) and (32b) can in fact be collapsed into one entry as
shown in (33), where heavy parentheses include optional parts, the subscripts indicating
that they must simultaneously be present or absent:
(33) / awake / [ +V ] λχ (α λγ) λε [ e : ( Α [ [ A C T y ] [ C A U S E ) [ B E C O M E - . [ S L E E P χ ] ] ] ] ]
Thus, according to (33), if an agent is present, it is realized as the grammatical subject,
otherwise the argument of SLEEP becomes the subject. In German, the items integrated in
(33) require separate entries shown in (34c) and (34d), which cannot be collapsed, even
though they are etymologically related. German furthermore provides a lexical entry denot-
ing the inverse event of (33), as shown in (34b).22
(34) a. / schlaf- / [ +V ] λχ λε [ε: [ S L E E P Χ ] ]
b. / ein + schlaf- / [ +V ] λχ λε [ε: [ BECOME [ SLEEP χ ]]]
c. / auf + wach- / [ +V ] λχ λε [e: [ B E C O M E - , [ S L E E P χ ] ] ]
d. / (auf+) weck- / [ +V ] λχ Xy λβ [e: [ [ ACT y] [ CAUSE [ BECOME -, [ SLEEP x]]]]]
It might be added, that 8rgative verbs like (33) are represented in German by cases like
brechen(break), heilen(hea), schmelzen(melt) and others. However, the dominating pattern
relating inchoative and causativc constructions of the same verb in German is reflexiviza-
tion of the type (sich) öffnen (open), (sich) drehen (turn), (sich) biegen (bend), (sich)
ändern (change) etc. (Cf. sie ändern den Fahrplan vs. der Fahrplan ändert sich in (8) and
(9) above). A lexical entry of ändern (change) that would account for this aspect is
sketched in (35), where heavy parentheses again indicate optionality:23
(i) Paul woke me up
(ii) A sudden noise woke me up
As shown by (ii), however, the subject position of a causative verb can also be assigned to an
expression referring to an event rather than the relevant actor. Now, mutual substitution of actor
and event is a rather general phenomenon. It therefore needs a systematic account, which cannot
be pursued here any further.
22
The differences between (33) and (34) are in fact typical phenomena of lexicalization, exploiting
general principles of lexical representation in idiosyncratic ways. This includes the incidental
"overload" by the almost synonymous entries awake and wake up. A similar overload appears in
German with aufwachen and erwachen being largely synonymous. It is worth noting on this back-
ground that the lack of a straight causative counterpart for einschlafen (fall asleep) is not a mere
idiosyncrasy: the verb einschläfern (lull asleep), which would fill this position morphologically,
has the highly specialized interpretation of narcotize, obviously due to the fact that falling asleep is
internally triggered and cannot directly be caused by an external agent.
23
As a side-remark it might be mentioned that the predicate DIFFERENT is an abbreviation, to be
defined provisionally as follows, where { ρ } indicates that ρ is presupposed, as discussed below:](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/25189411-250513065347-7e2c6b46/85/Event-Arguments-Foundations-And-Applications-Claudia-Maienborn-Editor-Angelika-Wllstein-Editor-34-320.jpg)
![The event structure of CAUSE and BECOME 25
(35) / änder- / [ +V ] λχ λγ λε [ e : [ ([ ACT y] [ CAUSE )[ BECOME [ DIFFERENT χ ] ] ] ] ]
In contrast to ergative verbs like (33), de-causativization is simpler in (35): No position
from the argument structure is deleted, optionality applies only to the causative component
in SF, leaving a spurious position Xy, as a consequence of which the object position is real-
ized by a reflexive pronoun.24
Thus although the reflexive construction looks superficially
more complex than the un-ergative use of a causative verb, the lexical information it re-
quires is surprisingly simple.
Turning now to the event structure based on lexical items with the internal make up il-
lustrated in (32) - (35), we notice first that inchoative verbs referring to an event e, involve
at least three eventualities: a source state Sj and a target state sk, such that the event e, is to
be defined as the transition from Sj to sk. Thus for einschlafen, Sj and sk are the states of
being awake and being asleep, respectively. Generally, the properties of the source state are
defined by those of the target state simply by negation. Hence if c, is just the transition from
Sj to sk, the information needed for the SF of an inchoative verb is only the specification of
BECOME and the proposition ρ specifying the target state.25
Second, causative verbs referring to an eventuality en involve at least a cause em and an
effect ei, such that en consists in the causation of ei by em. The effect ei might be a process,
as in the truck moved the trailer steadily, or a state as in the squad kept the rope straight,
but in the majority of cases it is an event, as in Max opened the bottle, Eve woke the kids up,
Macy's changed the schedule, etc. In case of an event causation, the event's source and
target state are to be distinguished. Hence causation of an event involves (at least) five
eventualities:
(36) a. the causing event em
b. the effect ei, identified as the change e,
c. the causation en of ei by the cause em
d. the source state Sj of e;
e. the target state sk of e;
(i) [DIFFERENTX] =def 5 (P, s) [ { SI [ P x ] } -, [ Ρ X ] ]
In other words, for something to be different with respect to some property P, a state meeting this
condition is presupposed. It is only this presupposed condition with respect to which a difference
can be identified in the first place.
24
This analysis implies (i) specific assumptions about improper positions in AS, i.e. operators that
do not bind a variable in SF, and (ii) a natural, but non-trivial assumption about reflexive anaphors,
according to which the antecedent of a reflexive pronoun provides the value for its argument posi-
tion. See Bierwisch (1997) for some discussion of both assumptions.
25
For inchoatives like close, open, wake up, redden, etc. this fact manifests itself even in their mor-
phological make-up. But also inchoatives like come and receive, where the target state is not
marked morphologically, derive the initial from the final state by negation. There are, however, at
least two types of lexical amendments that can be added to this basic pattern. First, for very few
cases the source state may impose additional conditions. A case in point is melt, which requires its
theme to start out as solid, rather than merely not liquid. Second, in cases like ersticken (choke),
ertrinken (drown), erfrieren (freeze to death), all with the target state not alive, the transition is to
be qualified by the mode of dying. Again the morphological make-up is relevant in many cases, an
issue that must be left aside here.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/25189411-250513065347-7e2c6b46/85/Event-Arguments-Foundations-And-Applications-Claudia-Maienborn-Editor-Angelika-Wllstein-Editor-35-320.jpg)
![26 Manfred Bierwisch
Corresponding to the target state, by which inchoatives are determined, the effect of the
causation tends to be characteristic for causatives. This is in fact the essence of the pattern
illustrated in (33), which captures the crucial property of so-called ergative verbs. It fur-
thermore turns in many cases the resulting state into the defining condition of the causation
as a whole. Obvious examples are the causative variants of open, close, wake up, dry, clean
or German schwärzen (blacken), kühlen (cool), töten (kill) etc.26
Differing from the source
state of inchoatives, the cause of causatives can be and often is lexically specified: erschla-
gen (slay) erstechen (stab (to death)), erschießen (shoot), erdolchen (stab (with a dagger))
differ from töten (kill) by specifying the action, left open in kill. As already mentioned, ACT
in (33) is a kind of dummy, in causatives like stab, shoot, or hang it is replaced by a lexical
specification of the pertinent action.27
Besides these differences in lexical specification, the eventualities listed in (36) differ
with respect to their temporal structure, their logical status, and their referential accessibil-
ity, as shown in sections 6 and 7.
6. The eventualities involved in BECOME
Taking BECOME as the core component of inchoatives, I will characterize its basic temporal
structure by means of conditions proposed e.g. in Dowty (1979), taking BECOME as an op-
erator of type (t, t) with the properties indicated in (37), where ρ specifies the target-state,
and I, J, Κ are time intervals as schematized in (38):
(37) [ BECOME ρ ] is true at I if and only if
(i) there is an interval J containing the initial bound of I such that —.p is true at J, and
(ii) there is an interval Κ containing the final bound of I such that ρ is true at K.
(38) J Κ
1 [' 1 " :
>
I
Two problems must be clarified here. First, as it stands, the interval I can extend over arbi-
trary parts of the source as well as the target state, such that Fred woke up would hold for a
situation that includes arbitrary parts of Fred's sleep and of his being awake. Second, if one
relies on strictly two-valued logic, no interval I' between J and Κ is possible, as at any time
26
Again, the defining target state may, but need not be morphologically realized. Thus while German
töten is related to tot (dead), the resulting state has no overt reflex in kill. Similarly give, show, or
convince are characterized by the resulting state, viz. have, see, and believe, respectively, without
morphological relationship.
27
The basic causative pattern can be enriched by further conditions, as in assassinate, murder, do-
nate, etc. Amendments of this sort don't change the event reference and can thus be ignored here.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/25189411-250513065347-7e2c6b46/85/Event-Arguments-Foundations-And-Applications-Claudia-Maienborn-Editor-Angelika-Wllstein-Editor-36-320.jpg)
![The event structure of CAUSE and BECOME 27
either ρ or —.p must hold, with no transition. Hence any change would have to be strictly
momentary. Dowty suggests to avoid these problems first by means of some sort of Gricean
maxim, which picks out the shortest non-empty interval appropriate under conditions of
encyclopedic or common sense knowledge, and second by acknowledging intervening
time-intervals with undecided (or not two-valued) truth conditions. This ambivalent time
structure of the event ej, which overlaps with both Sj and sk, is reflected by the fact that
normally ej is not available for durational adverbials, as shown in (39a), but might still be
qualified for extension in time in (39b):
(39) a. * The cat died for three hours,
b. The cat died very slowly.
The next point to be noted is the different status to be assigned to the event, its initial and
its final state. According to standard criteria, they instantiate what is usually called asser-
tion, presupposition and implication, respectively. Consider (40) for illustration:
(40) a. The cat died.
b. The cat didn't die.
c. Did the cat die?
d. Didn't the cat die?
Asserting and denying the cat's dying equally requires the initial state of the event, viz. the
cat's being alive, to hold before. It must also hold for both types of question (40c) and (40d)
to be appropriate. The negation of the initial state, i.e. the cat's being dead before the event,
is compatible with the negation (40b) only as a correction of the presupposition. The target
state on the other hand, viz. the cat being dead afterwards, follows from the truth of the
assertion (40a), while its negation, that the cat is still alive, follows from the denial (40b).
These observations are expressed more formally in (41) for the target state and in (42) for
the source state, where t o t ' represents (temporal) overlap of t and t', and { φ } ψ indicates
that φ is presupposed by ψ :28
(41) Ve [ 5s' [ e: [ BECOME ρ ] implies s': [ ρ ] ] ]
where Τ e = t, Τ s' = t', t' ο t , t' ο t", t < t" .
(42) Ve [ 3s [ e : [ BECOME [ ρ ] ] ] => [ { s: ρ ] } [ e : [ BECOME [ ρ ] ] ] ] ]
where Τ s z>c Τ e (i.e. s precedes e immediately)
(41) requires the target state s' to share its time in part with e and in part with the subse-
quent interval t". Because of (41), the source state s can overlap only with the initial part of
the event e. One might construe (42) as an operation that expands the expression to the left
of the arrow into that to the right of it, supplying automatically the presupposed source state
28
This notation is adopted from Kamp (2001), where properties of presuppositions are explored
more generally.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/25189411-250513065347-7e2c6b46/85/Event-Arguments-Foundations-And-Applications-Claudia-Maienborn-Editor-Angelika-Wllstein-Editor-37-320.jpg)
![28 Manfred Bierwisch
of an inchoative event. In any case, (41) and (42) spell out the properties of BECOME and the
predictable aspects of inchoatives based on it.
I will now turn to the intriguing question to what extent the eventualities involved in a
change of state are accessible for reference and modification. The analysis proposed for
wake up, einschlafen, or aufwachen (in (32b) and (34)) suggests that it is just the main
event, which the referential position Xc makes available to this effect. This seems to be born
out by cases like (43), where apparently tense, temporal and modal adverbials all apply to
the main event:
(43) Dann schlief sie innerhalb von drei Minuten ganz sanft ein.
Then she fell asleep very softly within three minutes
Similarly, adverbial quantification by frequently, usually, mostly, occasionally etc. as in
(44a) must rely on the same variable, given that adverbial quantifiers range over events, as
proposed e.g. by von Fintel (1994). Simplifying with respect to irrelevant details, (44a) is
thus to be analyzed as (44b), where [ MOST e ] must be construed as a quantifier with the
restrictor given by the SF of Eva schläft ein and the nucleus in zehn Minuten·.
(44) a. Eva schläft meistens in zehn Minuten ein.
Eva usually falls asleep within ten minutes
b . MOST e [ e : [ BECOME [ SLEEP EVA ] ] ] [ Τ e c 1 0 MINUTES ] ]
As noted right in the beginning, this is not the whole story, though. A crucial problem,
already illustrated in (1) above, is shown by the minimal pair in (45):
(45) a. Er ist in kurzer Zeit eingeschlafen.
(He fell asleep within a moment)
b. Er ist für kurze Zeit eingeschlafen.
(He fell asleep for a moment)
The temporal delimitation within a moment in (45a) characterizes the change, while the
durational adverbial for a moment in (45b) can only concern its resulting state. In other
words, different aspects of the complex eventuality must be available for modification.
One way to account for this observation has been proposed by McCawley (1973) within
the framework of Generative Semantics. According to this proposal, the system of pre-
lexical syntax provides two syntactic positions for an adverbial in cases like (45): within a
moment commands [ BECOME [ SLEEP χ ] ], whilefor a moment commands just the predica-
tion [ SLEEP χ ].29
The pros and cons of pre-lexical syntax need not be repeated here, as the
observation illustrated by (1) and (45) has various ramifications not naturally accounted for
on the basis of pre-lexical syntax. Notice first, that the alternative interpretation illustrated
in (45) carries over to adnominal modification, as shown by the parallel properties of the
(a)- and (b)-cases in (46) and (47):
29
This approach has been pursued in a number of ways, especially with respect to elements like
almost and again e.g. in von Stechow (1996). Alternative accounts of these facts, which do not
rely on pre-lexical syntax, are discussed e.g. in Kamp & Roßdeutscher (1994).](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/25189411-250513065347-7e2c6b46/85/Event-Arguments-Foundations-And-Applications-Claudia-Maienborn-Editor-Angelika-Wllstein-Editor-38-320.jpg)
![The event structure of CA USE and BECOME 29
(46) a. Er kehrte nach kurzer Zeit/für kurze Zeit heim.
He returned home after/for a short time
b. Seine Heimkehr nach so kurzer Zeit/für so kurze Zeit
His return home after/for such a short time
(47) a. Das Wetter änderte sich plötzlich/dauerhaft.
The weather changed suddenly/permanently
b. Die plötzliche/dauerhafte Änderung des Wetters
The sudden/permanent change of the weather
The alternative furthermore persists under adverbial quantification as illustrated in (44).
Thus, a generic sentence like (48a) clearly requires quantification and modification to apply
to the event as a whole, while in (48b) only the temporally restricted sleeping period is
quantified over:
(48) a. Ein normaler Patient schläft meistens in ungefähr einer Stunde ein.
An average patient usually falls asleep within roughly one hour
b. Ein normaler Patient schläft meistens fur ungefähr eine Stunde ein.
An average patient usually falls asleep for roughly one hour
In principle, this type of interpretation again carries over from adverbial cases like (49) to
the adnominal modification in (50), which might be considered as clumsy, but neither as
ungrammatical nor unclear in interpretation:
(49) a. Gelegentlich ändert sich das Wetter in wenigen Minuten.
Occasionally the weather changes within a few minutes
b. Gelegentlich ändert sich das Wetter fur mehrere Wochen.
Occasionally the weather changes for several weeks
(50) a. Gelegentliche Änderungen des Wetters in wenigen Minuten waren absehbar
Occasional changes of the weather for within a few minutes were to be expected
b. Gelegentliche Änderungen des Wetters für mehrere Wochen waren absehbar
Occasional changes of the weather for several weeks were to be expected
With respect to the background assumptions sketched in section 2, the question arises
whether and how the state s', instantiating according to (41) the result of the change, should
be available for reference and modification in the same way as the event e. Formally, two
options can be adumbrated, if we assume that both the event e and its target state s' are
actually available in SF for abstraction by argument positions, an assumption that requires
the SF of an inchoative verb like einschlafen as illustrated in (34b) to be modified as shown
in (51), with the obvious modification in (41) and (42). The two options to be considered
can then be illustrated by (52).
(51) [ e :[ BECOME [s': [SLEEP χ ] ] ] ]](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/25189411-250513065347-7e2c6b46/85/Event-Arguments-Foundations-And-Applications-Claudia-Maienborn-Editor-Angelika-Wllstein-Editor-39-320.jpg)
![30 Manfred Bierwisch
(52) a. / ein + schlaf- / [ +V ] λχ Xs' Xe [ e : [ BECOME [ s': [ SLEEP χ ] ] ] ]
b. / ein + schlaf- / [ +V ] λχ X(e,s') [ e : [ BECOME [ s': [ SLEEP χ ] ] ] ]
Both of these possibilities raise non-trivial problems. In (52a) an additional, presumably
optional, in any case rather specific position would have to be introduced into AS requiring
various conditions determining its properties and behavior. Even if s-selection would guar-
antee that only an appropriate adverbial can get its argument position absorbed by either Xs'
or Xe, there are still a fair number of unsolved problems raised by the additional, improper
referential position. These problems would not arise in (52b), where no additional position
is introduced, but merely λε, the regular event reference, is replaced by the position
supporting the complex variable (e,s') instead of the original e. This would require, how-
ever, an intricate and completely ad hoc regime of lambda abstraction, dealing with com-
plex variables and their effects. Hence instead of exploring artificial ways to adapt one of
the solutions hinted at in (52), it seems reasonable to stick to already available means as far
as possible, getting along without an additional eventuality-variable squeezed into AS.
Two observations seem to be relevant in this respect. First, adverbials that are neutral
with respect to event or state apply by default to the overall event. Thus even though the
time, the companionship, and the localization of Peter's change of place could just as well
characterize the target state, it is interpreted as a specification of the event:
(53) a. Peter kam gestern abend.
Peter came last night
b. Peter kam unerwartet nach Hause.
Peter came home unexpectedly
Even though (53a) would be compatible with the truth of Peter was here last night, it
clearly does not semantically represent that proposition. Corresponding comments apply to
(53b). Second, tense and time adverbials seem to be forced to apply to the same eventuality.
Thus, the durational modification in (54a) concerns the target state, which the past tense
locates before the utterance time, while the manner adverbial in (54b) modifies the change,
which the present tense locates (preferably) at utterance time.
(54) a. Das Tor öffnete sich fur fünf Minuten.
The door opened for five minutes
b. Das Tor öffnet sich langsam.
The door opened slowly
These observations suggest that there is only one event reference available, which must
support both the change or - under appropriate conditions - its result. This would be the
natural effect if inchoative verbs with the operator BECOME have the representation illus-
trated in (55) for sich öffnen (intransitive open):
(55) / öffn- / [ +V, -N ] XxXyXe [ e : [ BECOME [ OPEN χ ] ] ]](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/25189411-250513065347-7e2c6b46/85/Event-Arguments-Foundations-And-Applications-Claudia-Maienborn-Editor-Angelika-Wllstein-Editor-40-320.jpg)
![The event structure of CAUSE and BECOME 31
The crucial point here is the status of BECOME marked by italicization.30
What this is in-
tended to indicate is a special type of optionality, in the sense that it can be ignored for
conceptual and truth-conditional interpretation, such that (54a) would have more or less the
interpretation of (56a) with the SF as indicated in (56b):
(56) a. Das Tor war fur fünf Minuten offen.
The door was open for five minutes
b . 3 e [ T e < T u [ e : [ O P E N [ D E F χ [ D O O R Χ ] ] ] & [ T e D 5 M I N U T E S ] ] ]
There is, however, a crucial difference in interpretation between (54a) and (56a): While
(54a) explicitly claims the resulting state to be the effect of a change, (56b) simply states a
past situation.31
This difference would be an automatic effect of the condition (42), if we
assume that the presupposed source state is introduced also if the "shadowy" operator does
not participate in further interpretation, in other words, if (55) is expanded into (57) in any
case,32
while (42) would of course not apply in (56):
(57) / öffn- / [ +V, -Ν ] λχ λy λε [{ s z>c e & s: -.[ OPEN χ ] } [e: [ BECOME [ OPEN χ ]]]]
Notice that the presupposed state s immediately precedes e, whether e instantiates an event
or a state. This fairly restricted stipulation associated with the status of BECOME yields ex-
actly the two options for reference to eventualities illustrated before. It furthermore carries
over to nouns as exemplified in (50). Thus Änderung (change) would have an entry like
(58), which refers either to the change or its result, triggering again by means of (42) the
presupposed source state:33
( 5 8 ) / änder-ung / [ +N ] (λχ) λβ [ e : [ BECOME [ D I F F E R E N T χ ] ] ]
On this background, it is interesting to note that reference and modification may oscillate
between the event (as a whole) and its target state, but not between the event and its pre-
supposed source state. Even adverbials that would conceptually fit the source state can only
30
For the improper argument position λy giving rise to the reflexive anaphor, see note 23
31
There are, of course, implicatures arising from the delimitation for five minutes, but that is a differ-
ent issue which I'll leave aside here.
32
For the sake of completeness, it might be noted that the implication required by (41) holds trivi-
ally, even if BECOME is ignored.
33
As Änderung is a regular derivation, it presumably does not require a separate lexical entry. (58)
furthermore leaves aside the relation to the causative variant of ändern (included in (35) above),
which would show up in cases like seine überraschende Änderung der Liste (his changing the list
surprisingly). - It should be noted, though, that applying (42) to (58) to introduce the presupposed
state would give (ii), if the definition (i) for DIFFERENT given in fn. 22 is taken into account:
(i) [ DIFFERENT χ ] = d c f 3 ( P , s) [ { s : [ Ρ χ ] } - . [ Ρ χ ] ]
(ii) / änder-ung / [ +N ] (λχ) X e [ { s z > c e & s : [ P x ] } [ e : BECOME -, [ Ρ χ ] ] ] ]
This correctly specifies the (result of the) change as cancellation of some property Ρ that held of χ
before.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/25189411-250513065347-7e2c6b46/85/Event-Arguments-Foundations-And-Applications-Claudia-Maienborn-Editor-Angelika-Wllstein-Editor-41-320.jpg)
![The event structure of CA USE and BECOME 35
(65) Paul left for three hours. Two hours are already over.
It might be noted in conclusion that the issues of event and state reference of BECOME must
not be confused with the intriguing problem of complex temporal frames and other condi-
tions, as shown in (66):
(66) Vor zwei Jahren in Paris bin ich drei Wochen lang jeden Tag zwei Stunden ins Mu-
seum gegangen.
Two years ago in Paris, I went for three weeks every day two hours to the museum
How the event reference of inchoatives (and other expressions) is taken up by complex
frames of this sort is a problem of its own.
7. The event structure o f CAUSE
As noted above, CAUSE is a functor relating two propositions, specifying a cause and its
effect, respectively. For the sake of illustration, consider the entry (35), collapsing the
causative and inchoative reading of ändern (change), repeated here as (67):
(67) / änder- / [ +V ] λχ λy λβ [ e : [ ( [ ACT y] [ CAUSE )[ BECOME [ DIFFERENT Χ ] ] ] ] ]
The cause is specified by [ ACT y ], the effect is specified by [ BECOME [ DIFFERENT Χ ] ],
which determines either a change or - under appropriate conditions - its result. As borne
out by (68a) and (68b), this option carries over from inchoatives to causatives:
(68) a. Sie haben den Plan gestern geändert.
They changed the schedule yesterday
b. Sie haben den Plan fur fünf Tage geändert.
They changed the schedule for five days
Before looking into the event structure of CAUSE more closely, I will sketch its truth-
conditional properties. A widely accepted view on this matter has been proposed in Dowty
(1979). The proposal is based on the notion of causal factor: φ is a causal factor for ψ if φ
necessarily implies ψ and ψ would not hold without φ. With this proviso, the following
truth-condition for CAUSE can be formulated:39
39
Actually, Dowty provides a more sophisticated characterization of "causal factor", based on the
notion of causal dependence of ψ on φ, and φ is a causal factor for ψ, if and only if a sequence of
causal dependencies connects φ with ψ. Similarly, the intuitive notion of a more remote causal
factor has a more technical characterization in Dowty's original definition:
(i) [φ CAUSE ψ ] is true if and only if (i) φ is a causal factor for ψ, and (ii) for all other φ', such that
φ' is also a causal factor for ψ, some -^φ-world is as similar or more similar to the actual world
than any other —ιφ'-world is.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/25189411-250513065347-7e2c6b46/85/Event-Arguments-Foundations-And-Applications-Claudia-Maienborn-Editor-Angelika-Wllstein-Editor-45-320.jpg)
![36 Manfred Bierwisch
(69) [φ CAUSE ψ ] is true if and only if
(i) φ is a causal factor for ψ, and
(ii) any other causal factor φ' for ψ is more remote than φ.
Concerning the event structure related to CAUSE, the properties and dependencies of three
eventualities are at issue (cf. (36) above):40
(70) a. the cause em, characterized by φ
b. the effect β|, characterized by ψ
c. the causation en, specified as [φ CAUSE ψ ]
As shown in (68), the effect of the causation can be an event or a state, an alternative that
need not be due to the particular status of BECOME in the effect-proposition. Thus (71a) is
naturally interpreted as the causation of an event, (71b) is the causation of a process, and
(71c) indicates the causation of a state:
(71) a. The truck broke the fence rapidly
b. The truck moved the cart quite a while very slowly
c. The students held the rope straight for at least two hours.
What might be less obvious is the observation that the structure of the effect determines
conceptually the homogeneous or non-homogeneous nature of the causation. To put it dif-
ferently: The causation of an event is an event, while the causation of a state or process is a
state or process. This might appear paradoxical at first glance, as one would expect the
effect to be determined by the cause, rather the other way round. But notice that here we
talk about the interdependence of causation and the effect it gives rise to, rather than the
dependence of the effect on its cause. According to this consideration, it would be a natural
conclusion that the causation as a whole and its effect are open for the same range of modi-
fiers. As cases like (71) indicate, the modification is just not specialized in this respect. This
would be a natural consequence of the assumption that the causation en and the effect ei are
not available for separate event reference. Notice that this accounts automatically for cases
like (68), where the event- or state-interpretation of BECOME in ändern carries over from the
effect to the causation.
So far, the assumption that BECOME should not overtly provide multiple event-reference
seems to carry over to CAUSE: causation and effect are not accessed by separate event-
variables.41
What must be clarified, however, is the status of the cause em. That cause and
For the present concerns, the intuitive notion that the cause of an eventuality can be specified as
the closest possible causal factor will be sufficient.
40
It should be noted that this is fully in line with Dowty's definition, as he explicitly considers cau-
sation as a relation between eventualities, specified by the propositions they instantiate.
41
This applies not only to the temporal structure of the eventualities involved but also to other as-
pects, for reasons to which we will return shortly. Roughly speaking, the causation en does not ex-
hibit a modality independently from the cause em.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/25189411-250513065347-7e2c6b46/85/Event-Arguments-Foundations-And-Applications-Claudia-Maienborn-Editor-Angelika-Wllstein-Editor-46-320.jpg)
![The event structure of CAUSE and BECOME 39
b. Das Feuer erleuchtete die Höhle nur teilweise.
The fire lightened the cage only partially
c. Peter hat die Kinder furchtbar erschreckt.
Peter frightened the kids furiously
An apparent counter-example to this generalization needs to be clarified, though. Locative
adverbials as in (76) can obviously apply only to the effected event or state, as neither the
cause nor the causal connection can reasonably be said to be located on the table or in front
of the window:
(76) a. Hans legte das Buch auf den Tisch.
Hans put the book on the table
b. Sie hängten Tücher vor die Fenster.
They hang cloths in front of the windows
Notice first that the PPs are directional rather locative. Hence one might argue that they
specify a goal rather than a location, which could specify the causal event as well as its
effect. A different observation concerns the fact that the PPs are not free adverbials, but
directional arguments saturating an argument position, since verbs of location like legen
(lay), setzen (set, put), hängen (hang), ziehen (pull, drag), etc. require an (at least implicit)
specification of the goal of motion. Constructions like er legte das Buch would in fact be
elliptical without some directional complement.45
Hence lexical entries for these verbs
would look like (77), where [ LIE y ] abbreviates the condition that the maximal dimension
of y must be horizontal.46
(77) / leg / [ + V , - N ] λ Ρ λ y λ χ λ ε [ e: [ χ ACT ] [CAUSE [BECOME [[ LIE y ] & [ Ρ y ]]]]]
[+Dir]
On the basis of (77), the directional PP in (76a) saturates the argument position λΡ, such
that its Semantic Form applies to the referent of the object das Buch.
A rather different problem arises in cases with two (or more) adverbials that seem to af-
fect different (sub)eventualities. Thus in (78) for two hours turns the change into a state, as
discussed above, while yesterday places this state as a whole into the day before utterance
time.
(78) Max hat uns gestern fur zwei Stunden geweckt.
Yesterday, Max woke us up for two hours
45
In fact, causative verbs like stellen (put upright) 'inherit' the directional argument from the loca-
tive complement of the corresponding positional verb stehen (stand). Similarly for hang, lay, etc.
46
In view of the above consideration that a directional might indicate the goal of an event, and more-
over with respect to the Semantic Form of directional prepositions, one might adumbrate an entry
like (i) instead of (77), where the PP would specify the event:
(i) / leg/ [ +V,-N ] λΡ λγ λχ λβ [ e: [ [ χ a c t ] [ c a u s e [BECOME [ l i e y ] ] & [ P e ] ] ] ]
[+Dir]
For some discussion of these alternatives see Bierwisch (1988).](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/25189411-250513065347-7e2c6b46/85/Event-Arguments-Foundations-And-Applications-Claudia-Maienborn-Editor-Angelika-Wllstein-Editor-49-320.jpg)
![The event structure of CAUSE and BECOME 41
8. In conclusion
Assuming that propositions, i.e. representations of sets of possible worlds, are to be instan-
tiated by eventualities of different sorts, the considerations and proposals pursued here have
tried to motivate four general conclusions.
First, verbal as well as nominal descriptions of causative and inchoative situations in-
volve a fairly complex structure of eventualities. A causation involves a cause and an ef-
fect, the effect being either a state or a change from source to target state. This does not
provide an equally complex instantiation by means of event variables available for posi-
tions in the argument structure of lexical items. As a matter of fact, only one event variable
seems to be available for a position in the argument structure of lexical items, susceptible
for reference, quantification, and modification.49
Second, with respect to the formal status of the event variable, the alternative between
Davidson and Reichenbach seems to be clearly in favor of Reichenbach: Event reference is
not a matter of the individual (basic) predicate constants, which would have to be extended
from η-place into n+1-place predicates. It rather comes with the operator that provides an
instantiation for the proposition it applies to. This is not a purely formal decision, though. It
rather reflects the fact that the s-selection, associated with the position in AS, derives ulti-
mately from the role of its variable within SF. Under this perspective, the s-selection of λε
in a case like öffnen (open), discussed in (55) and repeated here as (81), differs depending
on the presence or absence of BECOME, yielding the restrictions of either event or state
restrictions.
(81) / öffn- / [ +V, -Ν ] λχ λy λβ [ e : [ BECOME [ OPEN χ ] ] ]
These considerations do not only relate to problems of inchoativity, they carry over to cau-
satives and their unaccusative, i.e. decausativized use, as reflected in lexical entries like
ändern (change) and many other causative verbs:
(82) / ander- / [ +V ] λχ λy λβ [ e : [ ( [ ACT y] [ CAUSE )[ BECOME [ DIFFERENT χ ] ] ] ] ]
is a short hand for the operator indicating the illocutionary force of the imperative, heavy brackets
enclose the abridged SF of the state represented by 'ne Weile das Fenster aufmachen, and the tem-
poral adverbials specify the duration of the state e and the location of its beginning e':
(i) IMP e' [ f e ' : [BECOME [ [e : [ [ACT y o u ] [CAUSE [OPEN [ w i n d o w ]]]] & [ T e 3 s o m e t i m e ]
I & [ 10 MINUTES 3 Te' ] ]
This representation would emerge if ingressive interpretation would be the effect of an interpretive
template, i.e. a phonologically empty lexical entry with the following provisional characterization:
(ii) λ Ρ λβ' [ e ' : [ BECOME [ Ρ e ] ]
where e' necessarily overlaps with (the initial boundary of) e.
49
It must be emphasized that this restriction concerns only the relevance of event variables for the
syntactically controlled compositional SF. Conceptually, however, event reference plays a role in
various other respects, among them the presupposed source state required by BECOME. Thus the
multiple event reference usually found e.g. in DRS representations such as for instance in Kamp
(2001) and the references given there is by no means at variance with the claim under discussion.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/25189411-250513065347-7e2c6b46/85/Event-Arguments-Foundations-And-Applications-Claudia-Maienborn-Editor-Angelika-Wllstein-Editor-51-320.jpg)
![The event structure of CAUSE and BECOME 43
(84) e : [ Ρ χ ] e : [ BECOME [ Ρ χ ]] e:[[ACT y ] CAUSE [BECOME [Ρ χ ] ] ]
b. wach sein wach werden ~ erwachen
be awake wake up
c. liegen sich legen
lie lie down
a. tot sein tot gehen ~ sterben
be dead die
tot machen ~ töten
kill
wach machen ~ wecken
wake up
legen
lay
d. berühmt sein berühmt werden
be famous become famous
berühmt machen
make famous
geben
get ~ give
e. haben bekommen ~ kriegen
have get
f. wissen lernen
know learn
lehren
teach
w h e r e Ρ = -> ALIVE f o r (a), Ρ = -.SLEEP f o r ( b ) , Ρ = HORIZONTAL LOCATION f o r ( c ) ,
Ρ = FAMOUS f o r ( d ) , Ρ = HAVE Ζ f o r ( e ) , Ρ = KNOW Ζ f o r ( f )
There are wide ranging variations of quite different types to be observed here. What is
worth noting, though, is the recurrent pattern according to which predicates of different
type are turned into characterizations of states, events, and causations.
References
Bach, Emmon (1986): "The Algebra of Events." - In: Linguistics and Philosophy 9, 1-16.
Bierwisch, Manfred (1982): "Formal and Lexical Semantics." - In: Linguistische Berichte 80, 3-17.
- (1988): "On the Grammar of Local Prepositions." - In: M. Bierwisch, W. Mötsch & I. Zimmer-
mann (eds.): Syntax, Semantik und Lexikon. 1-65. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag.
- (1997): "Lexical Information from a Minimalist Point of View." - In: Ch. Wilder, H.-M. Gartner &
M. Bierwisch (eds.): The Role of Economy Principles in Linguistic Theoiy, 227-266. Berlin: Aka-
demie Verlag.
- (2002): "A Case for CAUSE." - In: I. Kaufmann & Β. Stiebeis (eds.): More than Words, 327-353.
Berlin: Akademie Verlag.
- (2003): "Heads, Complements, Adjuncts: Projection and Saturation." - In: E. Lang, C. Maienborn
& C. Fabricius-Hansen (eds.): Modifying Adjuncts. 113-159. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Chomsky, Noam (1981): Lectures on Government and Binding. - Dordrecht: Foris.
- (1986): Knowledge of Language: Its Nature, Origin, and Use. - New York: Praeger.
- (1995): The Minimalist Program. - Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Davidson, Donald (1967): "The Logical Form of Action Sentences." - In: N. Resher (ed.): The Logic
of Decision and Action. 81-95. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Dowty, David R. (1979): Word Meaning and Montague Grammar. - Dordrecht: Reidel.
Fintel, Kai von (1994): Restrictions on Quantifier Domains. - Doctoral dissertation, Amherst.
Fodor, Jerry A. (1970): "Three Reasons for not Deriving 'kill' from 'cause to die'", - In: Linguistic
Inquiry 1, 429-448.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/25189411-250513065347-7e2c6b46/85/Event-Arguments-Foundations-And-Applications-Claudia-Maienborn-Editor-Angelika-Wllstein-Editor-53-320.jpg)
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- 5. Linguistische Arbeiten 5 0 1 Herausgegeben von Hans Altmann, Peter Blumenthal, Klaus von Heusinger, Ingo Plag, Beatrice Primus und Richard Wiese
- 7. Event Arguments: Foundations and Applications Edited by Claudia Maienborn and Angelika Wöllstein Max Niemeyer Verlag Tübingen 2005
- 8. Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Bibliothek Die Deutsche Bibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.ddb.de abrufbar. ISBN 3-484-30501 -0 ISSN 0344-6727 © Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 2005 Ein Unternehmen der K. G. Saur Verlag GmbH, München http://www. niemeyer. de Das Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulässig und strafbar. Das gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Übersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und die Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen. Printed in Germany. Gedruckt auf alterungsbeständigem Papier. Druck: Laupp & Göbel GmbH, Nehren Einband: Industriebuchbinderei Nadele, Nehren
- 9. Contents Claudia Maienborn and Angelika Wöllstein Introduction 1 Section I: Events - states - causation Manfred Bierwisch The event structure of CAUSE and BECOME 11 Stefan Engelberg Stativity, supervenience, and sentential subjects 45 Anita Mittwoch Do states have Davidsonian arguments? Some empirical considerations 69 Kay-Eduardo Gonzalez- Vilbazo and Eva-Maria Remberger Ser and estar: The syntax of stage level and individual level predicates in Spanish 89 Horst Lohnstein Sentence connection as quantificational structure 113 Section II: Event nominals Artemis Alexiadou Gerund types, the present participle and patterns of derivation 139 Ingrid Kaufmann Referential arguments of nouns and verbs 153 Section III: Events in composition Angelika Kratzer Building resultatives 177 Daniel Hole Reconciling "possessor" datives and "beneficiary" datives - Towards a unified voice account of dative binding in German 213 Werner Abraham Event arguments and modal verbs 243
- 10. vi Contents Section IV: Measuring events Patrick Caudal and David Nicolas Types of degrees and types of event structures 277 Regine Eckardt Too poor to mention: Subminimal events and negative polarity items 301 Kimiko Nakanishi Semantic properties of split topicalization in German 331 Author index 357 Subject index 361
- 11. Claudia Maienborn and Angelika Wöllstein Introduction Since entering the linguistic stage in the late sixties, Davidsonian event arguments have taken on an important role in linguistic theorizing. The central claim of Donald Davidson's seminal (1967) work "The logical form of action sentences" is that events are spatio- temporal things, i.e., concrete particulars with a location in space and time. This enrichment of the underlying ontology has proven to be of great benefit in explaining numerous combinatorial and inferential properties of natural language expressions. Among the many remarkable advances achieved within the Davidsonian paradigm since then figure most prominently the progress made in the theoretical description of verb semantics, including tense and aspect, and the break through in analyzing adverbial modification. Numerous monographs and collections attest to the extraordinary fertility of the Davidsonian program; see, e.g., Rothstein (1998), Tenny & Pustejovsky (2000), Higginbotham, Pianesi & Varzi (2000), Lang, Maienborn & Fabricius-Hansen (2003), Austin, Engelberg & Rauh (2004) to mention just a few more recent collections. In the course of the evolution of the Davidsonian paradigm, two moves have turned out to be particularly influential in terms of expanding and giving new direction to this overall approach. These are, first, the "Neo-Davidsonian turn" introduced by Higginbotham (1985, 2000) and Parsons (1990, 2000), and, secondly, Kratzer's (1995) merger of event semantics with the stage-level/individual-level distinction. The neo-Davidsonian approach has lately developed into kind of a standard for event semantics. It is basically characterized by two largely independent assumptions. The first assumption concerns the arity of verbal predicates. While Davidson introduced event arguments as an additional argument of (some) verbs, neo-Davidsonian accounts take the event argument of a verbal predicate to be its only argument. The relation between events and their participants is accounted for by the use of thematic roles. The second neo- Davidsonian assumption concerns the distribution of event arguments. They are considered to be much more widespread than originally envisaged by Davidson. Hence, neo- Davidsonian approaches typically assume that it is not only (action) verbs that introduce Davidsonian event arguments, but also adjectives, nouns, and prepositions. Thus, nowadays event arguments are widely seen as a trademark for predicates in general.1 The second milestone in the development of the Davidsonian program is Kratzer's (1995) event semantic treatment of the so-called stage-level/individual-level distinction, which goes back to Carlson (1977) and, as a precursor, Milsark (1974, 1977). Stage-level predicates (SLPs) express - roughly speaking - temporary or accidental properties, whereas A note on terminology: Bach (1986) coined the term "eventuality" for the broader notion of events, which includes, besides events proper, i.e., accomplishments and achievements in Vendler's (1967) terms, also processes and states. Other labels for event arguments in the broad sense are, e.g., "spatiotemporal location" (Kratzer 1995), "Davidsonian argument" (Chierchia 1995), or "E-position" (Higginbotham 1985).
- 12. 2 Claudia Maienborn and Angelika Wöllstein individual-level predicates (ILPs) express (more or less) permanent or inherent properties.2 On Kratzer's (1995) account, the SLP/ILP-distinction basically boils down to the presence or absence of an extra event argument. Stage-level predicates are taken to have an additional event argument, while individual-level predicates lack such an extra argument. This difference in argument structure is then exploited syntactically by the assumption of different subject positions for SLPs and ILPs; see Diesing (1992). Since then interest has been directed towards the role of event arguments at the syntax/semantics interface and the impact they have on syntax proper in terms of, e.g., event phrases. All in all, Davidsonian event arguments have become a very familiar "all-purpose" linguistic instrument over the past decades, and recent years have seen a continual extension of possible applications far beyond the initial focus on verb semantics and adverbials. These developments are accompanied by a newly found interest in the linguistic and ontological foundation of events. To the extent that more attention is paid to less typical events than the classical 'Jones buttering a toast' or 'Brutus stabbing Caesar', which always come to the Davidsonian semanticist's mind first, there is a growing awareness of the vagueness and incongruities lurking behind the notion of events and its use in linguistic theorizing. A particularly controversial case in point is the status of states. The question of whether state expressions can be given a Davidsonian treatment analogous to process and event expressions (in the narrow sense) is still open for debate; see Maienborn (2005) and the commentaries to this target article for some of the pros and cons. The present volume grew out of a workshop "Event arguments in syntax, semantics and discourse" that the editors organized in February 26-28, 2003, in Munich (as part of the annual meeting of the German association for linguistics, DGfS), and in which we invited contributions geared towards drawing an interim balance of the use of and motivation for event arguments in linguistic theory. The articles presented here offer proposals towards this end from different empirical and theoretical perspectives. The leading question shared by the majority of the articles could be phrased in the following way. How do lexical semantics, syntax, and pragmatics conspire to project event structure? Discussing a wide range of linguistic phenomena (mostly pertaining to English, German and Romance) the articles (a) supply fresh evidence for the virtually ubiquitous presence of event arguments in linguistic structure; (b) they provide new, event-based, solutions as superior alternatives to already existing analyses; and/or (c) they shed new light on the nature of event arguments and the way these are handled by the linguistic machinery. 2 See, e.g., Higginbotham & Ramchand (1997), Jäger (2001) for overviews of the linguistic phe- nomena that have been associated with the stage-level/individual-level distinction.
- 13. Introduction 3 The volume is organized into four sections: Events - states - causation; Event nominals; Events in composition; Measuring events. Section I: Events - states - causation addresses mainly foundational issues concerning the nature of events and states, how they relate to causation, and how they show up in the linguistic structure. Manfred Bierwisch discusses the anchoring and accessibility of event arguments in semantic structure. He compares the different ways in which event arguments are structurally anchored in Davidsonian, neo-Davidsonian, and Reichenbachian approaches and presents arguments in favor of the latter variant. Bierwisch then goes on to argue that, no matter how complex a verb's internal event structure might be, only the highest event argument is made accessible for reference, quantification, modification, etc. This means, in particular, that inchoative and causative verbs will never project a target state into their argument structure. Apparent counterevidence as provided by durational adverbials, which obviously serve to specify the duration of an inchoative's target state, is accounted for by assuming that the operator BECOME is of an elusive nature. That is, target state modification of inchoatives relies on the improper absence of BECOME. Stefan Engelberg draws attention to one of the classes of verbs that do not fit easily into the Davidsonian picture, namely dispositional verbs such as German helfen (help), gefährden (endanger), erleichtern (facilitate). These verbs may have an eventive or a Stative reading depending on whether the subject is nominal or sentential. Trying to account for their readings within the Davidsonian program turns out to be challenging in several respects and provides new insights into the different nature of events and states. Engel- berg advocates the philosophical concept of supervenience as a useful device to account for the evaluative rather than causal dependency of the effect state expressed by these verbs. The proper analysis of state expressions is taken up again by Anita Mittwoch. She examines the arguments raised by Katz (2000, 2003) and Maienborn against extending the Davidsonian approach to (all) state expressions and rejects most of them, thereby corroborating the general neo-Davidsonian approach. On this view, states, rather than being different things, are merely somewhat poor examples of event(ualitie)s. Engelberg's and Mittwoch 's considerations concerning the ontological nature of states are supplemented by an article on the syntax of copular state expressions. Kay-Eduardo Gonzälez-Vilbazo and Eva-Maria Remberger present a minimalist account of the Spanish copula forms ser and estar, which figure as lexical exponents of the stage- level/individual-level distinction. Ser and estar are analyzed as syntactic default strategies (last resort) that are introduced into the derivation at different functional layers: tense (T°) and predication (Pr°). Motivation for this comes from current semantic analyses of the ser/estar alternation for which the authors strive for a more transparent syntactic correlation. Finally, causality is taken up again by Horst Lohnstein, who proposes a uniform account of the semantics of clause-connectives (while, if, when, because etc.) in terms of an invariant quantificational structure whose components are subject to parametrization. Lohnstein shows how different interpretive effects as, e.g., the temporal vs. adversative reading of German während (while/whereas) can be derived in this framework.
- 14. 4 Claudia Maienborn and Angelika Wöllstein Section II: Event nominals presents a syntactic and a lexicalist approach towards an analysis of the argument structure of deverbal nominalizations. Artemis Alexiadou discusses nominal and verbal gerunds in English within the framework of Distributed Morphology suggesting that the different properties associated with these forms follow from different attachment sites of a nominal -ing affix. Whereas nominal gerunds result from attaching -ing directly to the verbal root, verbal gerunds result from combining -ing with AspectP. On Alexiadou's perspective, argument structure is derived syntactically via an event structure which in turn is introduced by a special type of functional layer in the syntax. Ingrid Kaufmann, instead, pursues a lexicalist approach according to which argument structure is basically determined at the level of lexical-semantic structure. Kaufmann's analysis is based on a corpus study of German nominalized infinitives showing that nominalized infinitives display two different patterns of argument realization whose distribution is determined by genuine semantic and pragmatic conditions. In order to account for these findings Kaufmann proposes an "ontological" solution according to which the two different patterns of nominalized infinitives differ in the way how the verb's event argument is referentially anchored. Section III: Events in composition focuses on the role of event arguments at the syntax/semantics interface. The studies aim at uncovering the combinatorial mechanisms that lead to the formation of complex event descriptions. Angelika Kratzer develops a novel analysis of German and English adjectival resultatives along the lines of serial verb constructions. In expressions like to drink my teapot dry the adjective is taken to combine with an empty CAUSE-affix. The resulting causing event is identified with the event expressed by the verb via the combinatorial operation of Event Identification. Kratzer succeeds in showing (a) how several syntactic and semantic properties of resultative constructions can be derived from her analysis and (b) that the direct object in a resultative construction is not a true argument of the verb but always starts out from within the adjectival phrase. Working within Kratzer's framework, Daniel Hole proposes an analysis of possessor and beneficiary datives in German that extends Kratzer's Event Identification into a more general combinatorial operation, called Variable Identification. This mechanism serves to augment an event description by an additional thematic argument that will be bound by an already existing argument. Thus, operations like Event Identification and Hole's dative- induced Variable Identification can be seen as a specific implementation of the neo- Davidsonian program of building up complex event descriptions from a maximally coherent conjunction of a set of smaller predications. Werner Abraham is concerned with the deontic and epistemic readings of modal verbs in the Germanic languages. Putting special emphasis on their Aktionsart-sensitivity, Abraham suggests to account for the polyfunctionality of modal verbs by assuming a control analysis for the deontic reading and a raising analysis for the epistemic read- ing. This syntactic analysis is correlated with a semantic analysis according to which epistemic modal verbs inherit both the theta properties and the event characteristics of the embedded full verbs, whereas deontic modal verbs project event and thematic arguments of their own.
- 15. Introduction 5 Finally, Section IV: Measuring events provides a particularly clear picture of the many ways in which event arguments can be involved in measuring expressions. Patrick Caudal and David Nicolas explore the relationship between degree structure and event structure by an analysis of various degree adverbials. Differences in distribution and interpretation are accounted for by assuming different types of degree scales. Degree modifiers like partially, completely act as modifiers on quantity scales, whereas extremely, perfectly and the like act as modifiers on intensity scales. The proposal rests on the assumption that most verbal predicates, including Stative predicates, can receive a degree argument, either for inherent lexical reasons, or by virtue of their structural context. On this basis, Caudal and Nicolas introduce a new - and broader - characterization of (a)telicity in terms of a mapping between degrees and events. Regine Eckardt draws attention to negative polarity items such as bat an eyelash, lift a finger, which serve to single out events of a particularly insignificant size. Eckardt develops an event-based variant of the pragmatic approach to NPI licensing proposed by Krifka (1995), showing that her event-based variant has several advantages compared to Krifka's event-free original account. On Eckardt's analysis, the respective NPIs turn out to be a special kind of adverbial modifier denoting functions from event predicates to event predicates. Weak NPIs map event predicates to the minimal events in their extension whereas strong NPIs yield so-called subminimal events, i.e., events that are even below the extension of an event predicate. Besides accounting for the different licensing contexts for weak and strong negative polarity items, Eckardt's approach also offers new insights into the ontology of events in terms of mereological structure. Finally, Kimiko Nakanishi examines measure phrases that are separated from their host NP in German split topicalizations as opposed to measure phrases that are adjacent to their host NP. Nakanishi proposes to account for their different semantic properties in terms of different domains of measurement. Whereas the non-split case involves the measurement of individuals in the nominal domain, measure phrases in split topicalizations are analyzed as a means of measuring events in the verbal domain. Several semantic restrictions on split measure phrases such as the incompatibility with single-occurrence events, the incompati- bility with individual-level predicates, and the unavailability of collective readings follow from monotonicity constraints applying to the verbal domain. In their entirety, the articles collected here offer a representative overview of the questions, assumptions and strategies that are presently being pursued in the further development of the Davidsonian program. Our aim is that they will offer further impulses to work in this area. We wish to thank all the authors for their enthusiasm and cooperation during all stages traversed along the way from the DGfS conference to the publication of this volume. We are particularly grateful to those who agreed to review one or more of the submitted papers: Artemis Alexiadou, Manfred Bierwisch, Miriam Butt, Patrick Caudal, Regine Eckardt, Stefan Engelberg, Werner Frey, Kay-Eduardo Gonzalez-Vilbazo, Daniel Hole, Gerhard Jäger, Graham Katz, Ingrid Kaufmann, Manfred Krifka, Ewald Lang, Jürgen Lenerz, Jörg Meibauer, Anita Mittwoch, Kimiko Nakanishi, David Nicolas, Susan Olsen, Luis Paris, Christopher Pinon, Beatrice Primus, Irene Rapp, Eva-Maria Remberger, Barbara Stiebels, Thomas Ede Zimmermann.
- 16. 6 Claudia Maienborn and Angelika Wöllstein Fabienne Fritzsche deserves special thanks for her competent help in formatting the manuscript. Finally, we would like to thank the team at Niemeyer, especially Brigitta Zeller and Wolfgang Herbst, for their helpfulness and expertise that have contributed to the successful completion of this volume. References Austin, Jennifer R., Stefan Engelberg & Gisa Rauh (eds.) (2004): Adverbials. The interplay between meaning, context, and syntactic structure. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamins. Bach, Emmon (1986): "The Algebra of Events." - In: Linguistics and Philosophy 9, 1-16. Carlson, Gregory (1977).· Reference to kinds in English. - Doctoral dissertation, University of California. Chierchia, Gennaro (1995): "Individual predicates as inherent generics." - In: Gregory N. Carlson & Francis J. Pelletier (eds.): The generic book, 176-223. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Davidson, Donald (1967): "The Logical Form of Action Sentences." - In: N. Resher (ed.): The Logic of Decision and Action. 81-95. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Diesing, Molly (1992): Indefinites. - Cambridge Mass.: MIT Press. Higginbotham, James (1985): "On Semantics." - In: Linguistic Inquiry 16, 547-593. (2000): "On Events in Linguistic Semantics." - In: J. Higginbotham, F. Pianesi & A. Varzi (eds.): Speaking of Events, 49-79. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Higginbotham, James & Gillian Ramchand (1997): "The Stage-Level/Individual-Level Distinction and the Mapping Hypothesis." - In: Oxford University Working Papers in Linguistics, Philology & Phonetics 2, 53-83. Higginbotham, James, Fabio Pianesi & Achille C. Varzi (eds.) (2000): Speaking of Events. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jäger, Gerhard (2001): "Topic-Comment Structure and the Contrast between Stage Level and Individual Level Predicates." - In: Journal of Semantics 18, 83-126. Katz, Graham (2000): "Anti Neo-Davidsonianism: Against a Davidsonian Semantics for State Sentences." - In: C. Tenny & J. Pustejovsky (eds.): Events as Grammatical Objects, 393-416. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications. (2003): "Event arguments, adverb selection, and the Stative Adverb Gap." - In: E. Lang, C. Maienborn & C. Fabricius-Hansen (eds.): Modifying Adjuncts, 455-474. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Kratzer, Angelika (1995): "Stage-level and individual-level predicates as inherent generics." - In: G. N. Carlson & F. J. Pelletier (eds.): The Generic Book, 125-175. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Krifka, Manfred (1995): "The semantics and pragmatics of polarity items." - In: Linguistic Analysis 25, 209-257. Lang, Ewald, Claudia Maienbom, & Cathrine Fabricius-Hansen (eds.) (2003): Modifying Adjuncts. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Maienbom, Claudia (2005): "On the limits of the Davidsonian approach. The case of copula sentences." - To appear in: Theoretical Linguistics 31/3. Milsark, Gary L. (1974): Existential Sentences in English. - Doctoral dissertation, MIT. - (1977): "Toward an Explanation of Certain Peculiarities of the Existential Construction in English." - Linguistic Analysis 3, 1-29.
- 17. Introduction 7 Parsons, Terence (1990): Events in the Semantics of English. A Study in Subatomic Semantics. - Cambridge/Mass.: MIT Press. - (2000): "Underlying States and Time Travel." In: J. Higginbotham, F. Pianesi & A.Varzi (eds.): Speaking of Events, 81-93. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rothstein, Susan (ed.) (1998): Events and Grammar. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Tenny, Carol & James Pustejovsky (eds.) (2000): Events as Grammatical Objects. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications. Vendler, Zeno (1967): Linguistics in Philosophy. - Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press.
- 19. Section I: Events - states - causation
- 21. Manfred Bierwisch The event structure of CAUSE and BECOME Adopting the widely held view that verbs are predicates of events or states and refer to situations or eventualities, the present paper explores consequences of this assumption for the structure of in- choative and causative verbs. Inchoatives like aufaachen (wake up) are supposed to be semanti- cally characterized by the operator BECOME, causatives like wecken (wake up) by the operator CAUSE. While BECOME specifies the transition from a source state to a target state, CAUSE identifies the causal connection between a cause and its effect, the latter often specified by an event of the inchoative sort. The paper argues that, with respect to its syntactically based compositional inter- pretation, a verb refers to one and only one state or event, irrespective of the complex structure of causatives and inchoatives involving causation, cause, effect, transition, source-, and target-state. Technically, the event-reference of a verb is based on the highest position in its argument struc- ture. This position absorbs (or unifies with) the qualification represented by (extensional) modifi- ers, as in I woke him up at nine by a phone call. Comparing the status of the fact variable proposed by Reichenbach with the event variable introduced by Davidson, Reichenbach's referential opera- tor is argued to provide the more appropriate analysis for compositionally complex verbs. Further problems created by the "Neo-Davidsonian" variant of argument structure are argued to provide additional motivation for the view adopted here. The analysis proposed for verbs carries over to event nouns, as shown by the parallel structure of the change of the schedule last week and the schedule changed last week. Apparent counterexam- ples are related to durational adverbials like for two weeks, which are usually supposed to be in- compatible with proper events. But they are compatible with inchoatives in cases like the schedule changed for two weeks. In these cases, however, the adverbial clearly specifies the duration of the target state, rather than the duration of the event. The paper shows how this effect derives from the proposed analysis, if independently motivated assumptions about the status of BECOME are added. 1. The problem The fairly trivial observation that natural language expressions are about situations, or more specifically states, events, and processes, raises non-trivial questions concerning the refer- ence to situations and its proper analysis. Current proposals for dealing with these questions derive in one way or the other from Reichenbach (1947) or Davidson (1967). Both accounts are based on the assumption that a proposition ρ is to be enriched by an additional variable e which establishes the reference to a situation which is characterized by p. The technical details of the two proposals are different, but for a wide range of problems their conse- quences are the same and their representations can be translated into each other, as we will see. Both approaches are primarily concerned with the logical form and semantic interpreta- tion of linguistic expressions, paying only marginal attention to the question of how the relevant representations are built up syntactically, and which role in particular the situation
- 22. 12 Manfred Bierwisch or event variables play within the morpho-syntactic structure of linguistic expressions. Against this background, I will be concerned in this paper with the following questions: A Which of the semantic event variables are syntactically accessible, and how? Β Which effects of event variables can be assigned to their syntactic and semantic selection restrictions? Question A presupposes that semantic variables are accessible for syntactic specification, assuming that this is in fact the function of theta roles a head assigns to its syntactic com- plements, and it queries which event variables may realize a function of that sort in which way. Question Β presupposes that it is by means of theta roles that a head realizes its se- mantic restrictions and morpho-syntactic or categorial requirements, called s-selection and c-selection, respectively, and it raises the non-trivial question of whether event variables, which are not normally specified by syntactic complements, can be associated with selec- tion restrictions, and what their effects may be. These relevant issues will be pursued with respect to the semantic predicates CAUSE and BECOME and their combinations appearing in lexical items like close, kill, change etc. I will adopt the basic assumptions about these elements developed in Dowty (1979), extended by proposals discussed a.o. in Bierwisch (2002, 2003). The problems to be faced are illustrated by cases like these: (1) a. He woke up for a while, but then he slept quietly for hours. b. Mach am Abend bitte ein paar Minuten das Fenster auf. In the evening, please open the window for a few minutes. c. Yesterday, he came quite a while to my office. According to standard and in fact well motivated assumptions, events denoted by verbs like open, come, wake up etc. can be temporally located by adverbials such as yesterday, then, in the evening, etc, but they cannot be modified by durational adverbials like for hours, (for) quite a wile, afew minutes, which combine freely with processes and states like sleep, rest, or wait. In (la) however, durational adverbials combine with the event wake up as well as the state sleep. In (lb), moreover, the same event denoted by aufmachen (open) seems to be modified by the temporal adverbial in the evening and the durative adverbial a few min- utes. In a similar vein, come is modified by both yesterday and quite a while in (lc). On closer inspection, one has to note, however, that the temporal adverbs locate the event in question, while the durational adverbs qualify the resulting state, rather than the event. Similarly, the durative adverbial for a while modifying wake up in (la) specifies only the state of being awake. This illustrates the problem to be pursued here, viz. the question of how events and states and their properties are to be systematically accounted for. Some remarks about background assumptions needed to deal with these problems seem to be in point.
- 23. The event structure of CAUSE and BECOME 13 2. Background assumptions Linguistic expressions relate a Phonetic Form PF to the representation of its meaning, the linguistic aspect of which is called Logical Form or Semantic Form SF.1 Hence a linguistic expression is a pair <PF, SF>, where PF determines its pronunciation and SF its conceptual interpretation. Each expression is furthermore categorized by syntactic and morphological features Cat, classifying e.g. dreams as alternatively verb, present, and third person singu- lar, or as noun and plural. Finally, a linguistic expression is characterized by its Argument Structure AS, which consists of a hierarchically structured sequence of argument positions or theta roles, determining the properties of constituents the expression may or must com- bine with. In particular, the theta roles in AS impose conditions called s-selection and c- selection, determining the semantic and morpho-syntactic properties of expressions saturat- ing the theta role in question.2 Thus the theta role to be saturated by the subject of the Verb dreams requires semantically a human (or personal) entity and syntactically a nominative singular DP. These two types of constraints are naturally determined by the semantic aspect of the argument position and by morpho-syntactic features associated with it. More techni- cally, a theta role Θ, is a pair < λχ,, F,>, where λχ, abstracts over a variable in SF, and F, is a (possibly empty) set of features to be matched by the features in Cat of a constituent satu- rating 0j. The s-selection of 0j can now be understood as an effect of the predicates apply- ing to Xj in SF, while the c-selection is due to features that follow from grammatical rules or principles, or are specified by lexical idiosyncrasy. A preliminary illustration of the as- sumptions sketched so far is given in (2), the lexical entry for the German temporal preposi- tion nach (after), which differs grammatically from the directional preposition nach (to- wards) by the categorization [ - Directional] : [ Τ y > Τ χ ] SF As indicated in (2), Cat and AS constitute jointly what one might call the Grammatical Form GF of a linguistic expression, because Cat and AS together determine essentially its grammatically controlled combinatorial potential. On the other hand, AS and SF together 1 I need not go here into details related to the terminological decision. While LF, as used in Chom- sky (1981) and subsequent work, is primarily concerned with syntactically determined aspects of meaning, SF is concerned also with the (grammatically relevant) internal structure of lexical items determining their contribution to the meaning (or conceptual interpretation) of linguistic expres- sions. For some discussion of these matters and the overlap in orientation between LF and SF see Bierwisch (1997). As I am concerned here with issues that clearly relate to word-internal condi- tions of semantic representation, I will take SF to provide the relevant representational format. 2 The terminology - semantic or s-selection and categorial or c-selection - is due to Chomsky (1986), where selectional restrictions were not formally associated with theta roles, however. (2) / nach / [-V,-N,-Dir] λχ λy [+Obl] PF Cat AS GF
- 24. 14 Manfred Bierwisch can be considered as the Extended Semantic Form ESF, according to which e.g. a preposi- tion like nach is a two-place relation.3 This will turn out to be crucial for the semantic combinations an expression may enter into. Within the SF of (2), Τ is a functor that assigns a time interval to its argument, and the two place predicate > represents an ordering-relation over the set of time intervals. Hence χ and y are variables over individuals susceptible to ordering in time. Hence the s-selection associated with both argument positions of nach requires entities to which a time interval can be assigned. The c-selection determined by the Object Position is expressed by the feature [+Oblique] requiring a Dative-DP.4 The other argument of nach - and of preposi- tions in general -, sometimes called the external or designated argument, does not specify features of c-selection, a point to which we will return. The conditions of s- and c-selection just mentioned must be met e.g. by the object of nach in a phrase like nach der Wahl (after the election). Suppose for the sake of illustration that something like (3) abbreviates the representation of the object-DP in question, where [DEF e [ ELECTION e ] ] identifies a defi- nite individual:5 (3) /der Wahl/ [+N,-V,+Obl ] [ DEFe[ELECTIONe] ] Merging (2) and (3) yields a PP with the representation indicated in (4), where the SF of (3) replaces the variable χ in (2) as an effect of lambda-conversion, triggered by the combina- tion of (2) and (3) through functional application: (4) / nach der Wahl / [-V,-Ν,-Dir] λγ[ Τ y > Τ [ DEF e [ ELECTION e ]] ] (4) illustrates in a rather simplified form the result of combining a head with its comple- ment. In addition to this type of combination called complementation, we need an account of the operation that merges a head with an adjunct, as e.g. in Besuch nach der Wahl (visit after the election), where nach der Wahl is a modifier, not a complement of the head Be- such. Abbreviating the representation of Besuch by (5), we get something like (6) as the result of merging a head with an adjunct: (5) /Besuch/ [+N,-V,...] λζ [VISITζ] 3 Technically, ESF is an expression in a so-called lambda-categorial language. Assuming that for principled reasons the SF of major syntactic constituents is to be construed as an expression of type t, i.e. as a proposition, ESF becomes an η-place predicate with AS defining its arity, i.e. the number and type of its arguments. See Bierwisch (1997, 2003) for further discussion. 4 The feature [+Obl] is in fact predictable, being the default case for objects of prepositions in Ger- man. Hence it would not have to be specified in the entry (2). The principles and conditions con- trolling such regularities will largely be ignored in the present context, except where event posi- tions are involved. 5 This is, of course, an oversimplification in various respects. First, e must be construed as referring to a definite eventuality of the sort discussed in Bach (1986), a point to which we will return. Sec- ond, the definiteness operator DEF is actually a short-hand for a number of assumptions that cannot be discussed here. It must, however, provide a referential binding for the argument position of the Noun Wahl, turning it into a definite description, as will be discussed shortly.
- 25. The event structure of CAUSE and BECOME 15 (6) / Besuch nach der Wahl / [ +N, - V,... ] λ ζ [ [ VISIT Ζ ] & [ Τ Ζ > Τ [ DEF e [ ELECTION e ] ] ] ] What (6) is supposed to account for is the observation that head and modifier are semanti- cally combined by logical conjunction, and more specifically that the condition abbreviated by VISIT specifies an event that is additionally subject to the temporal location expressed by nach der Wahl. To this effect, the argument position λy of the adjunct (4) is absorbed by (or unified with) the argument position λζ of the head (5). As both operators abstract over the same sort of variables, the absorbing theta role does not violate the s-selection of the ab- sorbed Role, which furthermore does not impose c-selectional constraints that could be violated. Absorption of a theta role must furthermore be assumed to have two conse- quences: First, the SF of the adjunct is added to that of the head by logical conjunction &.6 Second, the variable bound by the absorbed operator is substituted by the variable of the absorbing operator. In the present case, λy is absorbed by λζ and y is substituted by z. This account of (extensional) modification follows essentially the proposal made in Higginbotham (1985). It must be generalized in non-trivial ways if e.g. intensional modifi- cation as in der angebliche Besuch (the alleged visit) is to be included, since an alleged visit is not something that is a visit and an alleged event. In Bierwisch (2003), I have argued that in head-adjunct-combinations the head characteristically absorbs a theta role, as opposed to head-complement-combinations, where the head discharges a theta role. We will return to these matters below. To sum up the framework sketched so far, we have lexical entries as sketched in (2), the argument structure of which specifies their s- and c-selectional properties as illustrated above. On the basis of these entries, syntactically complex expressions are created by the operation Merge as illustrated in (4) and (6) for complementation and adjunction, respec- tively. Merge combines two (basic or complex) expressions X and Y into a complex ex- pression Z. One ofZ's constituents is its head, determining its categorization. A provisional formulation of the properties of Merge is given in (7), presupposing that complex expres- sions have the same basic organization as lexical items. (7) Merge (X, Y) ==> Z, where a. PF of Ζ is the linear combination of PF of X and Y,7 b. Cat of Ζ is projected from Cat of X iff X is the head of Z, and either c. X discharges the lowest (i.e. next available) position of its AS to Y by functional application with subsequent lambda-conversion within SF, or d. Y discharges the lowest position in its AS to X by lambda-absorption, followed by logical conjunction of the SF of X and Y. 6 For principled reasons, discussed e.g. in Wunderlich (2000) and Bierwisch (2002), the conjunction & is asymmetrical, at least in the sense that one conjunct is closer to the functor than the other. Whether and which semantic consequences are connected to this asymmetry need not concern us at the moment. 7 Two qualifications are to be made at this point. First, I will ignore here morphological processes with non-linear aspects of combination. Second, the linear ordering of head and complement or ad- junct is subject to complex conditions of various sorts that must be left aside here.
- 26. 16 Manfred Bierwisch (7c) and (7d) determine the argument structure and the Semantic Form of Ζ (i.e. the ESF as noted above) under complementation and adjunction, respectively, where (7d) covers only extensional modification and is thus in need of further elaboration. As a consequence, con- ditions of s- and c-selection are imposed either according to (7c) by the head on the com- plement, or according to (7d) by the adjunct on the head.8 3. Some aspects of event arguments Within this framework, the status of argument positions providing event reference is to be made explicit in two steps. First, as noted initially, an event variable, originally proposed as "fact variable" in Reichenbach (1947) and reinvented, in a somewhat different guise, in Davidson (1967), is assumed to explicitly represent states and events as entities in SF. The formal ontology of the values to be assigned to this variable is developed in Bach (1986).9 The second step takes up the notion of a referential theta role, proposed in Williams (1981) and elaborated in Higginbotham (1985), and others. Originally, Williams considered this type of role as characteristic for nouns, creating the basis for reference and quantification as in this man, every book, some problems etc.10 In Higginbotham (1985) and Bierwisch (1988) it was also taken as the basis for extensional modification, as sketched in (6) and (7d). With these prerequisites, it is a natural move to assume that verbs refer to events in roughly the same way in which nouns are assumed to refer to individuals to be assumed for nouns. The point is illustrated by the parallel between (8) and (9) compared to (10): (8) a. Sie ändern den Fahrplan. They change the schedule. b. Sie ändern häufig/oft den Fahrplan. They often change the schedule. c. Sie ändern am Montag den Fahrplan. On Monday, they change the schedule. 8 It might be added that Merge is deliberately based on the operation Merge as introduced e.g. in Chomsky (1995), with the following amendments: (i) Merge as defined in (7) does not project the full set of features of the head, but only those in Cat, (ii) it does not only merge the phonetic and syntactic information but also the information in ESF, thereby realizing the selection restrictions. 9 For the time being, I will ignore the much debated difference between events and states, both covered by what Bach called "eventualities". 10 It must be noted that the notion of Referential Role is crucially different from that of agent, theme, goal etc., although Williams (1981) is not quite clear in this respect. While agent, theme, etc. are supposed to relate somehow to the conceptual content of an argument position, referentiality has to do exclusively with the way in which variables relate to the domain of interpretation. In fact, agent, theme, patient, etc. all can become referential roles, as e.g. in murderer, proposal, em- ployee, which are referential by means of the agent, theme, and patient role, respectively.
- 27. The event structure of CAUSE and BECOME 17 (9) a. Der Fahrplan ändert sich. The schedule changes. b. Der Fahrplan ändert sich häufig/oft. The schedule changes often/frequently. c. Der Fahrplan ändert sich am Montag. On Monday, the schedule changes. (10) a. Die Änderung des Fahrplans The change of the schedule b. Die häufige/*oft Änderung des Fahrplans The frequent change of the schedule c. Die Änderung des Fahrplans am Montag The change of the schedule on Monday Besides the specification of reference by means of tense and complementizer or determiner, the event-reference is parallel for the causative verb, the inchoative verb, and the noun, both in German ändern, sich ändern, and Änderung and in English verb and noun change. Also, frequency and temporal modifiers apply to verbal and nominal heads in the same way. The fact that oft and often are restricted to verbal heads, while häufig can modify verbs as well as nouns, is due to c-selection by the adjunct, with oft imposing something like [ +V ]." Furthermore, the event reference of verbs can enter standard anaphoric relations and may be picked up by appropriate pronouns, as shown by the italicized elements in (11): (11) a. Sie ändern häufig den Fahrplan. Das macht viel Ärger. b. Sie ändern häufig den Fahrplan, was viel Ärger macht. c. They change the schedule frequently, that/which is very irritating. Again, this is essentially parallel to the referential character of nouns, with the anaphoric relations based on their referential argument, as shown in (12): (12) a. Er kritisiert die häufige Änderung des Fahrplans. Sie macht viel Ärger. b. Er kritisiert die häufige Änderung des Fahrplans, die viel Ärger macht. c. He criticizes the frequent change of the schedule, which/it is disappointing. As already noted, c-selection imposed by morpho-syntactic features of adjuncts can restrict them to verbal heads - as in oft (often), heute (today),jetzt (now) - or to nominal heads - as in häufig (frequently), heutig (today's), or jetzig (present). The familiar semantic restric- tions, on the other hand, based on s-selection and depending on the content of SF, carry over from verbs to nouns, preventing (proper) events from durational modifiers like for '1 A different, but comparable condition on c-selection restricts heute (today), gestern (yesterday), damals (then), bald (soon) and others to verbal heads, as opposed to heutig, gestrig, damalig, baldig modifying nominal heads. A closely related distinction is realized more systematically (but not without exceptions) by the English suffix -ly . For further discussion of this point see Bier- wisch (2003).
- 28. 18 Manfred Bierwisch hours, and states from delimitations like quickly, or within a few minutes, as indicated in (13) and (14).12 (13) a. Das Haus wurde {wiederholt/*stundenlang/ziemlich rasch} zerstört. The house was {repeatedly/*for hours/rather quickly} destroyed, b. Die {wiederholte/*stundenlange/ziemlich rasche} Zerstörung des Hauses. The {repeated/rather quick} destruction of the house {*for hours}. (14) a. Das Haus wurde {gestern/stundenlang/*ziemlich rasch} beobachtet. The house was observed {yesterday/for hours/*rather quickly}. b. Die {gestrige/stundenlange/*ziemlich rasche} Beobachtung des Hauses. The {*rather quick} observation of the house {yesterday/for hours}. Event variables cannot only enter anaphoric relations, they are also subject to quantifica- tion, with frequency adverbials like always, often, occasionally, seldom, etc. acting as quan- tifiers over eventualities. Thus the Logical or Semantic Form of (15a) should be something like (15b), or slightly more formally (15c): (15) a. The schedule changes frequently. b. There are many e such that e is a change of schedule. c. For many e [ the schedule changes (e) ] Quantification applies not only to events but just as well to states, if instances are separable, as in (16), where states are individuated by relevant occasions: (16) a. Die Leitung ist immer besetzt. The line is always busy, b. Peter wiegt selten zu viel. Peter seldom weighs too much. Participating in quantification, event variables can furthermore be involved in scope rela- tions. Thus the preferred reading of (17) assures that mail delivery occurrs regularly on Monday, not on other days. In other words, on Monday qualifies the regular delivery, i.e. it has scope over regularly. The preferred reading of (18), on the other hand, claims that on Monday the delivery of mail is regular, i.e. regular qualifies the delivery on Monday, and has, in this sense, scope over on Monday. (17) Die Post wird regelmäßig am Montag zugestellt. Mail is delivered regularly on Monday. 12 It should be noted that acceptability judgements can be obscured by a coerced, event-like interpre- tation of observe, such that e.g. they will observe the house in three hours is construed as they will start the observation of the house in three hours. But coercion of this sort confirms, rather than spoils the tenet that s-selection is based on semantic conditions. I will return to these matters in de- tail in section 7 and 8.
- 29. The event structure of CAUSE and BECOME 19 (18) Die Post wird am Montag regelmäßig zugestellt. On Monday, mail is delivered regularly. Whether and under which conditions the preferred interpretation can be replaced by other options need not concern us here. In part it is a matter of stress and focus-assignment, which must be left aside. The point to be made is merely that event variables cannot only be quantified - as in (15) and (16) -, but participate in standard relations of regular variables.13 4. Implementing event reference As already noted, event reference has been introduced into standard semantic (or logical) representations in different ways. The most direct proposal is due to Davidson (1967), who suggested that the main predicate of an action sentence is to be extended by an additional argument, which refers to the event characterized by the sentence in question. More techni- cally, a proposition of the general form (19) should in fact be analyzed as (20), where P' is an n+1 place predicate that relates Ρ and its arguments to the event e. (19) P(x,,...,xn ) (20) 3 e [ P ' ( e , x , , . . . , x n ) ] This proposal is illustrated in (21b), where the transitive verb butter of (21a) is analyzed as a three-place relation between e and the arguments of the verb. Past tense, provisionally indicated by T(e) < T(u), ordering e temporally before the utterance time T(u), and adver- bials like in the kitchen are now treated as predications of e, conjoined to the main proposi- lion.14 (21) a. Fred buttered the toast in the kitchen b. 3e [ buttering (e, Fred, the toast) & T(e) < T(u) & in the kitchen (e) ] Twenty years earlier, Reichenbach (1947) had already proposed a more general way to introduce event variables. Instead of adding an argument to the major predicate, Reichen- bach defined an event function [ ρ ]* which turns a proposition ρ into a property of events. Substituting in this function the proposition (19) for p, one gets (22), which corresponds to (19) very much like Davidson's (20) corresponds to the initial (19). 13 Scope variation of the sort illustrated in (17) and (18) does not carry over to nominalization, as shown by (i) as opposed to (ii). This is due to conditions of DP-syntax that are not to be pursued here. (i) the regular delivery of mail on Monday (ii) * the delivery of mail on Monday regular(ly) 14 The treatment of tense as a conjunct on a par with adjuncts must be modified for reasons to which we return. For the time being it simply indicates the specification imposed on e.
- 30. 20 Manfred Bierwisch (22) 3 e [ P ( x l s . . . , x n ) ] * ( e ) In these terms, the analysis of (21a) comes out as (23), with tense and adverbial modifica- tion represented again by conjoined propositions: (23) 3e [ [ buttering (Fred, the toast) ]*(e) & T(e) < T(u) & in the kitchen (e) ] Reichenbach's proposal is more general than Davidson's, as it introduces an event variable by a general event function15 , rather than by extending the arity of particular (classes of) predicates.16 It could thus apply to any proposition, including those specifying e.g. locative or temporal properties. This requires an empirically restricted occurrence of the event- function, ultimately converging with the specification needed for event arguments of the Davidsonian style. With this proviso, and ignoring certain consequences of the different theoretical contexts of the two proposals, Davidson's and Reichenbach's event variables are intended to account for roughly the same range of phenomena.17 In particular, both Rei- chenbach and Davidson represent adverbial modification by conjoined predications of the event argument, such that e.g. Fred buttered the toast follows from (21a) by the rules of standard logic. A rather different way to treat the event variable has been proposed a. o. by Parsons (1990). This so-called neo-Davidsonian theory replaces (19) by (24), turning Ρ into a one- place predicate P" of events to which the arguments of Ρ are then related by thematic rela- tions Rj!, (24) 3e [ P"(e) & R,(e, x,) & ... & Rn(e, xn) ] Thematic relations are taken from the usual set of theta roles like agent, theme, source, goal, etc. Under this proposal, the analysis of (21a) would come out as something like (25): (25) 3e [ buttering (e) & Agent(e, Fred) & Patient (e, the toast) & T(e) < T(u) & Location (e, the kitchen) ] The move from (19) to (24) is - in spite of the deceptive terminology - a radical defection from Davidson's original intention. Separating the core predicate from its original argu- ments has far-reaching and fatal consequences. I will briefly sketch three of them. 15 Reichenbach explicitly uses fact function and event function synonymously. The distinction be- tween facts on the one hand and events and states on the other made in Vendler (1967) and subse- quent discussions corresponds more (but not exactly) to the distinction Reichenbach makes be- tween objective or situational fact functions and propositional fact functions. 16 Davidson originally assumed event arguments for verbs of change and action. Later on, various extensions have been discussed by various authors, including e-arguments not only for state verbs but also for certain types of adjectives and heads of locative PPs. I will return to this matter below. 17 A hint to different notational variants appearing in the literature might be useful. In essentially the sense of Reichenbach's event function, Kamp & Reyle (1993) use the colon to associate a proposi- tion ρ with an event e, Wunderlich (2000) uses curly brackets, and Bierwisch (1988) an operator inst. Thus [p]*(e), e:p, {p}e, and e iNSTp all specify an event e instantiating a proposition p.
- 31. The event structure of CAUSE and BECOME 21 First, as shown by (25), arguments and adjuncts of a verb cannot differ with respect to their semantic effect: Both are conjuncts added in the same way to the event predication.18 Now, a major point in Davidson's treatment of events and adverbials was to provide a sys- tematic account for the inference from e.g. (26a) to (26b) by standard conjunction reduc- tion: (26) a. Fred met Eve in Paris. b. Fred met Eve. c. * Fred met in Paris. d. * Fred met. According to the neo-Davidsonian analysis, (26c) and even (26d) should be derivable by conjunction reduction in the same way, obviously a wrong conclusion without any empiri- cal justification. Notice that the deviance of (26c) and (26d) is not merely a matter of the syntactic surface, violating conditions of c-selection, but indicates rather a semantic defi- 19 ciency. The second point, directly related to this problem, concerns the fact that the number and type of arguments a predicate requires belong to its essential, intrinsic properties. The event expressed by the verb give, for instance, requires necessarily what is usually called an agent, a theme, and a recipient; it cannot get along with, say, an experiencer and a goal or just a theme. Similarly think needs an experiencer and a theme, while sleep requires an experiencer, but excludes a theme. This is not a matter of arbitrary incidences, but system- atically determined by the respective event predicates. That requires highly intricate sets of postulates, determining not only the required, but also the excluded thematic relations. Such postulates, which have never been considered by neo-Davidsonians in an even remotely adequate way, do nothing but supply information that has artificially been stripped away from the core predicates - an arbitrariness that becomes particularly obvious if one takes into account the internal structure of complex predicates of the sort to be looked at below. Third, representations of the neo-Davidsonian style are in conflict with requirements of standard logic in a much wider range of the cases than those illustrated in (26). They yield inappropriate results also in lots of other cases, notably with respect to negation. Thus ac- cording to (24), the representation of (27a) - ignoring tense - would be (27b), which is equivalent to (27c). 18 The basic distinction between arguments and adjuncts is not obviated by the fact that there are similarities or even borderline cases. Thus in Paris is a locative argument selected by stay in (i), it is a free locative adjunct in (ii), and something in between, often called argument-adjunct, option- ally selected by the noun stay in (iii). (i) He stayed in Paris (ii) He visited me in Paris (iii) his stay in Paris For some discussion of these similarities and borderline cases see Bierwisch (1988, 2003). The present problem is in no way affected by these phenomena. 19 It might be noted that these considerations apply also to the condition T(e) < T(u) indicating past tense in (25). This is one of the reasons requiring a different treatment of tense, as mentioned in fn.13.
- 32. 22 Manfred Bierwisch (27) a. He doesn't sell it. b. - 3 e [ sell (e) & Agent (e, he) & Theme (e, it) ] c. Ve [ -i sell (e) ν -, Agent (e, he) ν -, Theme (e, it)] According to normal understanding, (27a) is true if and only if there is no instance of his selling it, whatever he and it are apt to refer to. The three options by which (27a) could be falsified according to (27b) or (27c) are simply besides the point: There is no way to under- stand what it would mean that someone referred to by he is not the agent of the selling event e or something referred to by it is not the theme of that event, even if one ignores problems related to quantification over events.20 Notice that this is different for something like he doesn Ί sell it today, where the negation - in line with the original Davidsonian approach - can appropriately apply to the event of his selling it and to the temporal location of that event. These and a number of further points concerning the controversial nature of separated thematic roles strongly argue against the neo-Davidsonian approach. This leaves us with two possibilities to incorporate event reference into the notational system sketched in sec- tion 2. (28a) illustrates the Reichenbach-version of the verb sleep (using Kamp's ":" rather than Reichenbach's "[ ]*"), while (28b) follows Davidson's proposal, extending the prop- erty SLEEP into a relation between an individual and an event: (28) a. / sleep / [ +V, -Ν ] λχ λε [ e : [ SLEEP Χ ] ] b. / sleep / [ +V, -Ν ] λχ λε [ [ SLEEP' χ ] e ] Assuming that eventualities like individuals are elements of type e, the one-place predicate SLEEP in (28a) is of type (e, t), taking χ to build up a proposition of type t, and the colon : is formally an operator of type (t,{e, t)), turning a proposition into a predicate of events. The two-place predicate SLEEP' in (28b), on the other hand, is of type (e,(e, t)), turning two indi- viduals into a proposition. In both versions, both variables are bound by argument posi- tions, providing the subject position and the event reference, respectively. The difference between (28a) and (28b) is in one respect more than merely a notational variant, however. As the domain of eventualities includes events, processes, and states, the variable e is sub- ject to a sortal choice, depending in one way or the other on the predicate that takes e as its argument. In (28b) this choice is directly determined by the predicate SLEEP', while in (28a), it must somehow be proliferated from the property SLEEP to the argument of the event op- erator ":". I will return to this issue below. It is worth noting that corresponding to the verb sleep, we have the entry (29) for the event noun sleep, which differs merely by its categorization: (29) / sleep / [ -V, +N ] λχ λβ [ e : [ SLEEP χ ] ] 20 It must be emphasized that what is at issue are the propositions that he and it are agent and theme of e, not the identity of the individuals referred to. The identity of the individuals could be focused and negated, as in HE doesn't sell it (but his BROTHER). - This is barely possible for the object NP in (27), however, for independent reasons, preventing contrastive stress on it.
- 33. The event structure of CAUSE and BECOME 23 This difference has important consequences beyond the categorization as such, because argument positions differ systematically for nouns and verbs with respect to their syntactic properties. Thus, argument positions of nouns are generally optional, except for the referen- tial role, which happens to be the event position in (29). Hence λχ must be saturated by the subject in (28), but can be left unspecified in (29), as in the sleep last night, etc. In (29), as in lexical entries in general, the c-selectional properties associated with the argument positions (such as case requirements) are largely predictable by the categoriza- tion. Thus λχ requires nominative for the verb in (28), but (possessive) genitive for the noun in (29). See e.g. Bierwisch (1997) and Wunderlich (2000) for further discussion. Given the assumptions about SF sketched in section 2, the entry (28a) would now sup- port representations like (30b) and (31b), again with obvious simplifications in various respects: (30) a. Fred slept in the kitchen b . 3 e [ [ T e < T u ] [ e : [ SLEEP FRED ] & [ e IN [ DEF y [ KITCHEN y ] ] ] ] ] (31) a. Fred slept for an hour in the kitchen b . 3 e [ [ T e < T u ] [ e : [ SLEEP FRED ] & [ EXTENT e • 1 HOUR ] & [ LOC e IN [ DEF y [ KITCHEN y ] ] ] ] ] It must be added that (31b) is at best a first approximation, as it does not account for the relative scope of temporal and locative adverbials in relation to their syntactic position. 5. The event structure of inchoativity and causativity The verb sleep refers to a particular sort of state. The same type of state provides the source of the change referred to by the verb awake (and wake up) and also the target state of the inverse change referred to by fall asleep. The transitive variant of wake up furthermore exemplifies the possibility to add an agent identifying the source of the change denoted by the intransitive verb, a pattern characteristic for so-called ergative verbs like break, close, change, etc. Following familiar assumptions, deriving from McCawley (1973), Dowty (1979) and related work, grammatically relevant semantic relations within and between causative and inchoative verbs based on the state characterized by SLEEP can be represented as follows, with [ ACT y ] specifying the event which brings about the relevant change of state:21 21 Actually, the proposition [ ACT y ] used here and in the sequel is a shorthand in various respects. First, ACT must be construed as a predicate subsuming all sorts of appropriate activities by which the effect in question can be brought about. Thus ACT comes close to a variable ranging over activ- ity predicates. For a more detailed discussion of cause, effect, and causation see section 7 below. Second, ACT is treated as a predicate applying to an individual that provides the argument position of the agent, as exemplified in (i):
- 34. 24 Manfred Bierwisch (32) a. / sleep / [ +V ] λχ λε [ e : [ SLEEP χ ] ] b. / awake / [ +V ] λχ λβ [ e : [ BECOME -, [ SLEEP χ ] ] ] c. / awake / [ +V ] λχ λγ λε [ e : [ [ A C T y] [ C A U S E [ B E C O M E [ S L E E P χ ] ] ] ] ] The transitive verb awake and its intransitive variant should, of course, be based on (roughly) the same lexical item. (32a) and (32b) can in fact be collapsed into one entry as shown in (33), where heavy parentheses include optional parts, the subscripts indicating that they must simultaneously be present or absent: (33) / awake / [ +V ] λχ (α λγ) λε [ e : ( Α [ [ A C T y ] [ C A U S E ) [ B E C O M E - . [ S L E E P χ ] ] ] ] ] Thus, according to (33), if an agent is present, it is realized as the grammatical subject, otherwise the argument of SLEEP becomes the subject. In German, the items integrated in (33) require separate entries shown in (34c) and (34d), which cannot be collapsed, even though they are etymologically related. German furthermore provides a lexical entry denot- ing the inverse event of (33), as shown in (34b).22 (34) a. / schlaf- / [ +V ] λχ λε [ε: [ S L E E P Χ ] ] b. / ein + schlaf- / [ +V ] λχ λε [ε: [ BECOME [ SLEEP χ ]]] c. / auf + wach- / [ +V ] λχ λε [e: [ B E C O M E - , [ S L E E P χ ] ] ] d. / (auf+) weck- / [ +V ] λχ Xy λβ [e: [ [ ACT y] [ CAUSE [ BECOME -, [ SLEEP x]]]]] It might be added, that 8rgative verbs like (33) are represented in German by cases like brechen(break), heilen(hea), schmelzen(melt) and others. However, the dominating pattern relating inchoative and causativc constructions of the same verb in German is reflexiviza- tion of the type (sich) öffnen (open), (sich) drehen (turn), (sich) biegen (bend), (sich) ändern (change) etc. (Cf. sie ändern den Fahrplan vs. der Fahrplan ändert sich in (8) and (9) above). A lexical entry of ändern (change) that would account for this aspect is sketched in (35), where heavy parentheses again indicate optionality:23 (i) Paul woke me up (ii) A sudden noise woke me up As shown by (ii), however, the subject position of a causative verb can also be assigned to an expression referring to an event rather than the relevant actor. Now, mutual substitution of actor and event is a rather general phenomenon. It therefore needs a systematic account, which cannot be pursued here any further. 22 The differences between (33) and (34) are in fact typical phenomena of lexicalization, exploiting general principles of lexical representation in idiosyncratic ways. This includes the incidental "overload" by the almost synonymous entries awake and wake up. A similar overload appears in German with aufwachen and erwachen being largely synonymous. It is worth noting on this back- ground that the lack of a straight causative counterpart for einschlafen (fall asleep) is not a mere idiosyncrasy: the verb einschläfern (lull asleep), which would fill this position morphologically, has the highly specialized interpretation of narcotize, obviously due to the fact that falling asleep is internally triggered and cannot directly be caused by an external agent. 23 As a side-remark it might be mentioned that the predicate DIFFERENT is an abbreviation, to be defined provisionally as follows, where { ρ } indicates that ρ is presupposed, as discussed below:
- 35. The event structure of CAUSE and BECOME 25 (35) / änder- / [ +V ] λχ λγ λε [ e : [ ([ ACT y] [ CAUSE )[ BECOME [ DIFFERENT χ ] ] ] ] ] In contrast to ergative verbs like (33), de-causativization is simpler in (35): No position from the argument structure is deleted, optionality applies only to the causative component in SF, leaving a spurious position Xy, as a consequence of which the object position is real- ized by a reflexive pronoun.24 Thus although the reflexive construction looks superficially more complex than the un-ergative use of a causative verb, the lexical information it re- quires is surprisingly simple. Turning now to the event structure based on lexical items with the internal make up il- lustrated in (32) - (35), we notice first that inchoative verbs referring to an event e, involve at least three eventualities: a source state Sj and a target state sk, such that the event e, is to be defined as the transition from Sj to sk. Thus for einschlafen, Sj and sk are the states of being awake and being asleep, respectively. Generally, the properties of the source state are defined by those of the target state simply by negation. Hence if c, is just the transition from Sj to sk, the information needed for the SF of an inchoative verb is only the specification of BECOME and the proposition ρ specifying the target state.25 Second, causative verbs referring to an eventuality en involve at least a cause em and an effect ei, such that en consists in the causation of ei by em. The effect ei might be a process, as in the truck moved the trailer steadily, or a state as in the squad kept the rope straight, but in the majority of cases it is an event, as in Max opened the bottle, Eve woke the kids up, Macy's changed the schedule, etc. In case of an event causation, the event's source and target state are to be distinguished. Hence causation of an event involves (at least) five eventualities: (36) a. the causing event em b. the effect ei, identified as the change e, c. the causation en of ei by the cause em d. the source state Sj of e; e. the target state sk of e; (i) [DIFFERENTX] =def 5 (P, s) [ { SI [ P x ] } -, [ Ρ X ] ] In other words, for something to be different with respect to some property P, a state meeting this condition is presupposed. It is only this presupposed condition with respect to which a difference can be identified in the first place. 24 This analysis implies (i) specific assumptions about improper positions in AS, i.e. operators that do not bind a variable in SF, and (ii) a natural, but non-trivial assumption about reflexive anaphors, according to which the antecedent of a reflexive pronoun provides the value for its argument posi- tion. See Bierwisch (1997) for some discussion of both assumptions. 25 For inchoatives like close, open, wake up, redden, etc. this fact manifests itself even in their mor- phological make-up. But also inchoatives like come and receive, where the target state is not marked morphologically, derive the initial from the final state by negation. There are, however, at least two types of lexical amendments that can be added to this basic pattern. First, for very few cases the source state may impose additional conditions. A case in point is melt, which requires its theme to start out as solid, rather than merely not liquid. Second, in cases like ersticken (choke), ertrinken (drown), erfrieren (freeze to death), all with the target state not alive, the transition is to be qualified by the mode of dying. Again the morphological make-up is relevant in many cases, an issue that must be left aside here.
- 36. 26 Manfred Bierwisch Corresponding to the target state, by which inchoatives are determined, the effect of the causation tends to be characteristic for causatives. This is in fact the essence of the pattern illustrated in (33), which captures the crucial property of so-called ergative verbs. It fur- thermore turns in many cases the resulting state into the defining condition of the causation as a whole. Obvious examples are the causative variants of open, close, wake up, dry, clean or German schwärzen (blacken), kühlen (cool), töten (kill) etc.26 Differing from the source state of inchoatives, the cause of causatives can be and often is lexically specified: erschla- gen (slay) erstechen (stab (to death)), erschießen (shoot), erdolchen (stab (with a dagger)) differ from töten (kill) by specifying the action, left open in kill. As already mentioned, ACT in (33) is a kind of dummy, in causatives like stab, shoot, or hang it is replaced by a lexical specification of the pertinent action.27 Besides these differences in lexical specification, the eventualities listed in (36) differ with respect to their temporal structure, their logical status, and their referential accessibil- ity, as shown in sections 6 and 7. 6. The eventualities involved in BECOME Taking BECOME as the core component of inchoatives, I will characterize its basic temporal structure by means of conditions proposed e.g. in Dowty (1979), taking BECOME as an op- erator of type (t, t) with the properties indicated in (37), where ρ specifies the target-state, and I, J, Κ are time intervals as schematized in (38): (37) [ BECOME ρ ] is true at I if and only if (i) there is an interval J containing the initial bound of I such that —.p is true at J, and (ii) there is an interval Κ containing the final bound of I such that ρ is true at K. (38) J Κ 1 [' 1 " : > I Two problems must be clarified here. First, as it stands, the interval I can extend over arbi- trary parts of the source as well as the target state, such that Fred woke up would hold for a situation that includes arbitrary parts of Fred's sleep and of his being awake. Second, if one relies on strictly two-valued logic, no interval I' between J and Κ is possible, as at any time 26 Again, the defining target state may, but need not be morphologically realized. Thus while German töten is related to tot (dead), the resulting state has no overt reflex in kill. Similarly give, show, or convince are characterized by the resulting state, viz. have, see, and believe, respectively, without morphological relationship. 27 The basic causative pattern can be enriched by further conditions, as in assassinate, murder, do- nate, etc. Amendments of this sort don't change the event reference and can thus be ignored here.
- 37. The event structure of CAUSE and BECOME 27 either ρ or —.p must hold, with no transition. Hence any change would have to be strictly momentary. Dowty suggests to avoid these problems first by means of some sort of Gricean maxim, which picks out the shortest non-empty interval appropriate under conditions of encyclopedic or common sense knowledge, and second by acknowledging intervening time-intervals with undecided (or not two-valued) truth conditions. This ambivalent time structure of the event ej, which overlaps with both Sj and sk, is reflected by the fact that normally ej is not available for durational adverbials, as shown in (39a), but might still be qualified for extension in time in (39b): (39) a. * The cat died for three hours, b. The cat died very slowly. The next point to be noted is the different status to be assigned to the event, its initial and its final state. According to standard criteria, they instantiate what is usually called asser- tion, presupposition and implication, respectively. Consider (40) for illustration: (40) a. The cat died. b. The cat didn't die. c. Did the cat die? d. Didn't the cat die? Asserting and denying the cat's dying equally requires the initial state of the event, viz. the cat's being alive, to hold before. It must also hold for both types of question (40c) and (40d) to be appropriate. The negation of the initial state, i.e. the cat's being dead before the event, is compatible with the negation (40b) only as a correction of the presupposition. The target state on the other hand, viz. the cat being dead afterwards, follows from the truth of the assertion (40a), while its negation, that the cat is still alive, follows from the denial (40b). These observations are expressed more formally in (41) for the target state and in (42) for the source state, where t o t ' represents (temporal) overlap of t and t', and { φ } ψ indicates that φ is presupposed by ψ :28 (41) Ve [ 5s' [ e: [ BECOME ρ ] implies s': [ ρ ] ] ] where Τ e = t, Τ s' = t', t' ο t , t' ο t", t < t" . (42) Ve [ 3s [ e : [ BECOME [ ρ ] ] ] => [ { s: ρ ] } [ e : [ BECOME [ ρ ] ] ] ] ] where Τ s z>c Τ e (i.e. s precedes e immediately) (41) requires the target state s' to share its time in part with e and in part with the subse- quent interval t". Because of (41), the source state s can overlap only with the initial part of the event e. One might construe (42) as an operation that expands the expression to the left of the arrow into that to the right of it, supplying automatically the presupposed source state 28 This notation is adopted from Kamp (2001), where properties of presuppositions are explored more generally.
- 38. 28 Manfred Bierwisch of an inchoative event. In any case, (41) and (42) spell out the properties of BECOME and the predictable aspects of inchoatives based on it. I will now turn to the intriguing question to what extent the eventualities involved in a change of state are accessible for reference and modification. The analysis proposed for wake up, einschlafen, or aufwachen (in (32b) and (34)) suggests that it is just the main event, which the referential position Xc makes available to this effect. This seems to be born out by cases like (43), where apparently tense, temporal and modal adverbials all apply to the main event: (43) Dann schlief sie innerhalb von drei Minuten ganz sanft ein. Then she fell asleep very softly within three minutes Similarly, adverbial quantification by frequently, usually, mostly, occasionally etc. as in (44a) must rely on the same variable, given that adverbial quantifiers range over events, as proposed e.g. by von Fintel (1994). Simplifying with respect to irrelevant details, (44a) is thus to be analyzed as (44b), where [ MOST e ] must be construed as a quantifier with the restrictor given by the SF of Eva schläft ein and the nucleus in zehn Minuten·. (44) a. Eva schläft meistens in zehn Minuten ein. Eva usually falls asleep within ten minutes b . MOST e [ e : [ BECOME [ SLEEP EVA ] ] ] [ Τ e c 1 0 MINUTES ] ] As noted right in the beginning, this is not the whole story, though. A crucial problem, already illustrated in (1) above, is shown by the minimal pair in (45): (45) a. Er ist in kurzer Zeit eingeschlafen. (He fell asleep within a moment) b. Er ist für kurze Zeit eingeschlafen. (He fell asleep for a moment) The temporal delimitation within a moment in (45a) characterizes the change, while the durational adverbial for a moment in (45b) can only concern its resulting state. In other words, different aspects of the complex eventuality must be available for modification. One way to account for this observation has been proposed by McCawley (1973) within the framework of Generative Semantics. According to this proposal, the system of pre- lexical syntax provides two syntactic positions for an adverbial in cases like (45): within a moment commands [ BECOME [ SLEEP χ ] ], whilefor a moment commands just the predica- tion [ SLEEP χ ].29 The pros and cons of pre-lexical syntax need not be repeated here, as the observation illustrated by (1) and (45) has various ramifications not naturally accounted for on the basis of pre-lexical syntax. Notice first, that the alternative interpretation illustrated in (45) carries over to adnominal modification, as shown by the parallel properties of the (a)- and (b)-cases in (46) and (47): 29 This approach has been pursued in a number of ways, especially with respect to elements like almost and again e.g. in von Stechow (1996). Alternative accounts of these facts, which do not rely on pre-lexical syntax, are discussed e.g. in Kamp & Roßdeutscher (1994).
- 39. The event structure of CA USE and BECOME 29 (46) a. Er kehrte nach kurzer Zeit/für kurze Zeit heim. He returned home after/for a short time b. Seine Heimkehr nach so kurzer Zeit/für so kurze Zeit His return home after/for such a short time (47) a. Das Wetter änderte sich plötzlich/dauerhaft. The weather changed suddenly/permanently b. Die plötzliche/dauerhafte Änderung des Wetters The sudden/permanent change of the weather The alternative furthermore persists under adverbial quantification as illustrated in (44). Thus, a generic sentence like (48a) clearly requires quantification and modification to apply to the event as a whole, while in (48b) only the temporally restricted sleeping period is quantified over: (48) a. Ein normaler Patient schläft meistens in ungefähr einer Stunde ein. An average patient usually falls asleep within roughly one hour b. Ein normaler Patient schläft meistens fur ungefähr eine Stunde ein. An average patient usually falls asleep for roughly one hour In principle, this type of interpretation again carries over from adverbial cases like (49) to the adnominal modification in (50), which might be considered as clumsy, but neither as ungrammatical nor unclear in interpretation: (49) a. Gelegentlich ändert sich das Wetter in wenigen Minuten. Occasionally the weather changes within a few minutes b. Gelegentlich ändert sich das Wetter fur mehrere Wochen. Occasionally the weather changes for several weeks (50) a. Gelegentliche Änderungen des Wetters in wenigen Minuten waren absehbar Occasional changes of the weather for within a few minutes were to be expected b. Gelegentliche Änderungen des Wetters für mehrere Wochen waren absehbar Occasional changes of the weather for several weeks were to be expected With respect to the background assumptions sketched in section 2, the question arises whether and how the state s', instantiating according to (41) the result of the change, should be available for reference and modification in the same way as the event e. Formally, two options can be adumbrated, if we assume that both the event e and its target state s' are actually available in SF for abstraction by argument positions, an assumption that requires the SF of an inchoative verb like einschlafen as illustrated in (34b) to be modified as shown in (51), with the obvious modification in (41) and (42). The two options to be considered can then be illustrated by (52). (51) [ e :[ BECOME [s': [SLEEP χ ] ] ] ]
- 40. 30 Manfred Bierwisch (52) a. / ein + schlaf- / [ +V ] λχ Xs' Xe [ e : [ BECOME [ s': [ SLEEP χ ] ] ] ] b. / ein + schlaf- / [ +V ] λχ X(e,s') [ e : [ BECOME [ s': [ SLEEP χ ] ] ] ] Both of these possibilities raise non-trivial problems. In (52a) an additional, presumably optional, in any case rather specific position would have to be introduced into AS requiring various conditions determining its properties and behavior. Even if s-selection would guar- antee that only an appropriate adverbial can get its argument position absorbed by either Xs' or Xe, there are still a fair number of unsolved problems raised by the additional, improper referential position. These problems would not arise in (52b), where no additional position is introduced, but merely λε, the regular event reference, is replaced by the position supporting the complex variable (e,s') instead of the original e. This would require, how- ever, an intricate and completely ad hoc regime of lambda abstraction, dealing with com- plex variables and their effects. Hence instead of exploring artificial ways to adapt one of the solutions hinted at in (52), it seems reasonable to stick to already available means as far as possible, getting along without an additional eventuality-variable squeezed into AS. Two observations seem to be relevant in this respect. First, adverbials that are neutral with respect to event or state apply by default to the overall event. Thus even though the time, the companionship, and the localization of Peter's change of place could just as well characterize the target state, it is interpreted as a specification of the event: (53) a. Peter kam gestern abend. Peter came last night b. Peter kam unerwartet nach Hause. Peter came home unexpectedly Even though (53a) would be compatible with the truth of Peter was here last night, it clearly does not semantically represent that proposition. Corresponding comments apply to (53b). Second, tense and time adverbials seem to be forced to apply to the same eventuality. Thus, the durational modification in (54a) concerns the target state, which the past tense locates before the utterance time, while the manner adverbial in (54b) modifies the change, which the present tense locates (preferably) at utterance time. (54) a. Das Tor öffnete sich fur fünf Minuten. The door opened for five minutes b. Das Tor öffnet sich langsam. The door opened slowly These observations suggest that there is only one event reference available, which must support both the change or - under appropriate conditions - its result. This would be the natural effect if inchoative verbs with the operator BECOME have the representation illus- trated in (55) for sich öffnen (intransitive open): (55) / öffn- / [ +V, -N ] XxXyXe [ e : [ BECOME [ OPEN χ ] ] ]
- 41. The event structure of CAUSE and BECOME 31 The crucial point here is the status of BECOME marked by italicization.30 What this is in- tended to indicate is a special type of optionality, in the sense that it can be ignored for conceptual and truth-conditional interpretation, such that (54a) would have more or less the interpretation of (56a) with the SF as indicated in (56b): (56) a. Das Tor war fur fünf Minuten offen. The door was open for five minutes b . 3 e [ T e < T u [ e : [ O P E N [ D E F χ [ D O O R Χ ] ] ] & [ T e D 5 M I N U T E S ] ] ] There is, however, a crucial difference in interpretation between (54a) and (56a): While (54a) explicitly claims the resulting state to be the effect of a change, (56b) simply states a past situation.31 This difference would be an automatic effect of the condition (42), if we assume that the presupposed source state is introduced also if the "shadowy" operator does not participate in further interpretation, in other words, if (55) is expanded into (57) in any case,32 while (42) would of course not apply in (56): (57) / öffn- / [ +V, -Ν ] λχ λy λε [{ s z>c e & s: -.[ OPEN χ ] } [e: [ BECOME [ OPEN χ ]]]] Notice that the presupposed state s immediately precedes e, whether e instantiates an event or a state. This fairly restricted stipulation associated with the status of BECOME yields ex- actly the two options for reference to eventualities illustrated before. It furthermore carries over to nouns as exemplified in (50). Thus Änderung (change) would have an entry like (58), which refers either to the change or its result, triggering again by means of (42) the presupposed source state:33 ( 5 8 ) / änder-ung / [ +N ] (λχ) λβ [ e : [ BECOME [ D I F F E R E N T χ ] ] ] On this background, it is interesting to note that reference and modification may oscillate between the event (as a whole) and its target state, but not between the event and its pre- supposed source state. Even adverbials that would conceptually fit the source state can only 30 For the improper argument position λy giving rise to the reflexive anaphor, see note 23 31 There are, of course, implicatures arising from the delimitation for five minutes, but that is a differ- ent issue which I'll leave aside here. 32 For the sake of completeness, it might be noted that the implication required by (41) holds trivi- ally, even if BECOME is ignored. 33 As Änderung is a regular derivation, it presumably does not require a separate lexical entry. (58) furthermore leaves aside the relation to the causative variant of ändern (included in (35) above), which would show up in cases like seine überraschende Änderung der Liste (his changing the list surprisingly). - It should be noted, though, that applying (42) to (58) to introduce the presupposed state would give (ii), if the definition (i) for DIFFERENT given in fn. 22 is taken into account: (i) [ DIFFERENT χ ] = d c f 3 ( P , s) [ { s : [ Ρ χ ] } - . [ Ρ χ ] ] (ii) / änder-ung / [ +N ] (λχ) X e [ { s z > c e & s : [ P x ] } [ e : BECOME -, [ Ρ χ ] ] ] ] This correctly specifies the (result of the) change as cancellation of some property Ρ that held of χ before.
- 42. 32 Manfred Bierwisch modify the event - as in (59a) - or the target state - as in (59b). Adverbials that would be appropriate only for the source state, as in (59c), are anomalous. (59) a. Er ist qualvoll gestorben. He died painfully b. Er ist eine halbe Stunde weggegangen. He left half an hour c. ?? Er hat sich seit zwei Stunden hingesetzt. He sat down since two hours In cases like (60a) the adverbial clearly specifies the duration before the event to which the clause refers. Hence the time interval of the event differs from that specified by the adver- bial, exactly as cases like (60b). Thus, the adverbial in (60a) and (60b) does not rely on reference to the target state. (60) a. Er ist nach einer Stunde aufgestanden. He got up after an hour b. Er ist vor einer Stunde aufgestanden. He got up an hour ago In general, then, an inchoative verb (or noun, for that matter) refers to one and only one eventuality. This is primarily the event it describes, and secondarily - due to the peculiar, elusive status of BECOME - the target state, but never the source state. Although presup- posed and necessary, the source state is not available for reference in SF. The particular, somehow diaphanous character of BECOME may also be supported from the opposite direc- tion, so to speak. One of the criteria for the standard distinction between (a-telic) processes and states on the one hand and (telic) events on the other is their behavior with respect to durational and terminating adverbials. As discussed so far, proper events like come, die, get sick combine freely with temporal delimitations like (with)in a week, but allow durational adverbials only as a specification of the resulting state, such that die for a week is awkward: (61) a. Hans schlief innerhalb einer Stunde ein. Hans fell asleep within one hour b. Hans schlief für eine Stunde ein. Hans fell asleep for one hour c. Anna starb innerhalb einer Woche. Anna died within one week d. ?? Anna starb für eine Woche ?? Anna died for one week States and homogeneous processes on the other hand allow durational adverbials, but should resist temporal delimitations, such that be sick within three days would be out. That this is not the case is shown by the acceptability of (62a) and (62c). This does not mean, however, that states and homogeneous processes combine with time-limits, but rather that
- 43. The event structure of CA USE and BECOME 33 states are provided with an initial limitation by what has been called ingressive re- interpretation.34 (62) a. Hans schlief innerhalb einer Stunde. Hans slept within an hour b. Hans schlief eine Stunde lang. Hans slept for an hour c. Anna war innerhalb einer Woche krank. Anna was ill within one week d. Anna war eine Woche krank. Anna was ill for one week Technically, the re-interpretation that provides the required (initial) limitation of the state or process might be considered as introducing the operator BECOME, such that e.g. the SF of schlafen given in (34a) is turned into that of einschlafen in (34b). Similarly, the SF of the copula sein (be) is converted into the SF of the inchoative copula werden (become, get) in (62c). In other words, ingressive reinterpretation of states relies in a way on the improper presence of BECOME, just as the durativization of events is due to its improper absence. Thus the adaptation illustrated in (61) comes out as the inverse to that in (62), both based on the same operator that can be invoked or dropped on demand. These considerations raise the question of whether the optional state reference associated with BECOME is not to be construed as a special case of the more general phenomenon called conceptual shift in Bierwisch (1982) and coercion in Pustejovsky (1995). By concep- tual shift, the semantic interpretation of lexical items is adapted to contextual conditions that would otherwise violate conditions of s-selection.35 Under this perspective, the state reference of inchoatives as e.g. in (61b) is the effect of conceptual shift, just like the ingres- sive interpretation of duratives in (62a).36 If this is correct, the particular status of BECOME 34 A survey of the extensive discussion about states, processes, events and several types of re- interpretation is given e.g. in Maienborn (2003, chapter 3). 35 For the sake of illustration, consider institute, which refers to a particular social organization in (i), its building(s) in (ii), its personnel in (iii), and something like its general principle in (iv): (i) The institute appointed a new director. (ii) The institute has a new entrance. (iii) The whole institute went on a long prepared excursion. (iv) An institute is usually shaped by its head. In each of these cases, the subject DP refers to a different sort of entities. The variation is, of course, not arbitrary. It can only select from an organized range of options. It must be emphasized, however, that in spite of systematic restrictions things are more complex than these hints might seem to suggest. 36 Another well known type of adaptation is the wide-spread iterative or habitual interpretation, illustrated in (i) and (ii): (i) Martin ist den ganzen Tag rein- und rausgegangen. Martin went in and out all day long (ii) Maria ist jahrelang mit dem Rad nach Hause gefahren. For years, Maria went home by bike
- 44. 34 Manfred Bierwisch would merely indicate a systematic possibility for adaptation under contextual conditions. Under this assumption, (63a) would differ from (63b) merely by the presence of BECOME, which (63b) lacks: (63) a. Auguste wurde drei Tage krank. Auguste became ill for three days b. Auguste war drei Tage krank. Auguste was ill for three days This might correspond to a subtle semantic difference, due to the presupposed source state invoked by BECOME in (63a), but not in (63b). A final problem to be taken up concerns the claim that the argument structure of a verb provides one and only one event position related to BECOME. The problem originates with examples like (64), where both the event and its result seem to be modified, requiring two separate positions in AS: (64) a. Er ist gestern zehn Minuten in mein Büro gekommen. Yesterday, he came in my office for ten minutes b. Später wird sich ganz langsam für eine halbe Stunde der Vorhang öffnen. Later on, very slowly the curtain will open for half an hour Things are fairly uncomplicated in (64a), where the time adverbial yesterday can naturally apply to the state modified by (for) ten minutes. After all, (64a) is almost synonymous with Er war gestern zehn Minuten in meinem Büro. (64b) is more complicated, as very slowly cannot modify the target state, while the event cannot properly be modified by the duration for half an hour. It seems, however, that for half an hour in (64b) does in fact specify the underlying plan of the event, rather than the duration of the result.37 If this is correct, then in both (64a) and (64b) only one eventuality is referred to, viz. the target state in (64a), and the planned event in (64b). This sort of interpretation applies also to cases like (65), where the duration of the target state would be at variance with the time interval between past and present tense - unlessfor three hours is the destination or intention assigned to the event of leaving.38 A particular type of iteration, creating a homogeneous process, is involved in cases like (iii): (iii) Er wird langsam größer (und größer). He is slowly getting taller (and taller) 37 This gets more obvious if (64b) is contrasted with (i), where the durational adverbial cannot natu- rally be construed as indicating an intended period, such that the combination becomes deviant: (i) 77 Später wird sich ganz langsam eine halbe Stunde lang der Vorhang öffnen. 38 To the extent to which this sort of reconciliation is blocked or unnatural, the combination of two adverbials becomes deviant: (i) 77 Das Wetter änderte sich plötzlich für eine Woche. 77 Suddenly, the weather changed for a week I owe this observation to an anonymous reviewer.
- 45. The event structure of CA USE and BECOME 35 (65) Paul left for three hours. Two hours are already over. It might be noted in conclusion that the issues of event and state reference of BECOME must not be confused with the intriguing problem of complex temporal frames and other condi- tions, as shown in (66): (66) Vor zwei Jahren in Paris bin ich drei Wochen lang jeden Tag zwei Stunden ins Mu- seum gegangen. Two years ago in Paris, I went for three weeks every day two hours to the museum How the event reference of inchoatives (and other expressions) is taken up by complex frames of this sort is a problem of its own. 7. The event structure o f CAUSE As noted above, CAUSE is a functor relating two propositions, specifying a cause and its effect, respectively. For the sake of illustration, consider the entry (35), collapsing the causative and inchoative reading of ändern (change), repeated here as (67): (67) / änder- / [ +V ] λχ λy λβ [ e : [ ( [ ACT y] [ CAUSE )[ BECOME [ DIFFERENT Χ ] ] ] ] ] The cause is specified by [ ACT y ], the effect is specified by [ BECOME [ DIFFERENT Χ ] ], which determines either a change or - under appropriate conditions - its result. As borne out by (68a) and (68b), this option carries over from inchoatives to causatives: (68) a. Sie haben den Plan gestern geändert. They changed the schedule yesterday b. Sie haben den Plan fur fünf Tage geändert. They changed the schedule for five days Before looking into the event structure of CAUSE more closely, I will sketch its truth- conditional properties. A widely accepted view on this matter has been proposed in Dowty (1979). The proposal is based on the notion of causal factor: φ is a causal factor for ψ if φ necessarily implies ψ and ψ would not hold without φ. With this proviso, the following truth-condition for CAUSE can be formulated:39 39 Actually, Dowty provides a more sophisticated characterization of "causal factor", based on the notion of causal dependence of ψ on φ, and φ is a causal factor for ψ, if and only if a sequence of causal dependencies connects φ with ψ. Similarly, the intuitive notion of a more remote causal factor has a more technical characterization in Dowty's original definition: (i) [φ CAUSE ψ ] is true if and only if (i) φ is a causal factor for ψ, and (ii) for all other φ', such that φ' is also a causal factor for ψ, some -^φ-world is as similar or more similar to the actual world than any other —ιφ'-world is.
- 46. 36 Manfred Bierwisch (69) [φ CAUSE ψ ] is true if and only if (i) φ is a causal factor for ψ, and (ii) any other causal factor φ' for ψ is more remote than φ. Concerning the event structure related to CAUSE, the properties and dependencies of three eventualities are at issue (cf. (36) above):40 (70) a. the cause em, characterized by φ b. the effect β|, characterized by ψ c. the causation en, specified as [φ CAUSE ψ ] As shown in (68), the effect of the causation can be an event or a state, an alternative that need not be due to the particular status of BECOME in the effect-proposition. Thus (71a) is naturally interpreted as the causation of an event, (71b) is the causation of a process, and (71c) indicates the causation of a state: (71) a. The truck broke the fence rapidly b. The truck moved the cart quite a while very slowly c. The students held the rope straight for at least two hours. What might be less obvious is the observation that the structure of the effect determines conceptually the homogeneous or non-homogeneous nature of the causation. To put it dif- ferently: The causation of an event is an event, while the causation of a state or process is a state or process. This might appear paradoxical at first glance, as one would expect the effect to be determined by the cause, rather the other way round. But notice that here we talk about the interdependence of causation and the effect it gives rise to, rather than the dependence of the effect on its cause. According to this consideration, it would be a natural conclusion that the causation as a whole and its effect are open for the same range of modi- fiers. As cases like (71) indicate, the modification is just not specialized in this respect. This would be a natural consequence of the assumption that the causation en and the effect ei are not available for separate event reference. Notice that this accounts automatically for cases like (68), where the event- or state-interpretation of BECOME in ändern carries over from the effect to the causation. So far, the assumption that BECOME should not overtly provide multiple event-reference seems to carry over to CAUSE: causation and effect are not accessed by separate event- variables.41 What must be clarified, however, is the status of the cause em. That cause and For the present concerns, the intuitive notion that the cause of an eventuality can be specified as the closest possible causal factor will be sufficient. 40 It should be noted that this is fully in line with Dowty's definition, as he explicitly considers cau- sation as a relation between eventualities, specified by the propositions they instantiate. 41 This applies not only to the temporal structure of the eventualities involved but also to other as- pects, for reasons to which we will return shortly. Roughly speaking, the causation en does not ex- hibit a modality independently from the cause em.
- 47. The event structure of CAUSE and BECOME 37 effect of a causative verb cannot be temporally distant has already been noted by Fodor (1970). As he observes, (72b) is not an acceptable paraphrase of (72a).42 (72) a. Floyd heated the glass on Saturday such that it melted on Sunday b. Floyd melted the glass on Sunday by heating it on Saturday Notice that the truth conditions for CAUSE given in (69) do not restrict the temporal relation between cause and effect.43 Their coherence within one eventuality comes out as a natural consequence, however, if we assume that the constituent eventualities do not allow for reference by separate event variables. Strictly speaking, this assumption would require one temporal structure for the causation as a whole. Hence not only the nature of the causation and the effect are interdependent, as already noted, but also that of the causal event and - via causation - the effect. In other words, events can only cause events, and processes or states can be causal only for processes or states. This assumption is not as implausible as it might appear in view of the fact that e.g. Floyd broke the glass describes a causal event the effect of which is the state of the broken glass. The effect of Floyd's action, however, is the event described as the glass broke, the target state of which is naturally construed as the result of Floyd's action. Conversely, if the effect cannot be a change, but must be a bare state or process, then ac- cording to this assumption the cause must be a process or state as well. This seems to be borne out by examples like (71b) and (71c): The action of the truck in (71b) must be as continuous a process as the motion of the cart it continuously causes. Similarly for the stu- dents causing the rope to be straight in (71c). The claim that only the overall eventuality is available for reference or modification in entries with CAUSE (and BECOME) raises a number of problems, the first of which is illus- trated in (73). In cases like these, the adverbial apparently modifies just the causal act. Brute force in (73a) and despair in (73b) are neither properties of the effect nor of the causal connection as such. Similarly the slowness in (73c) and the recklessness in (73d) are neither properties of the result nor the causal connection: (73) a. Floyd broke the glass with brute force b. Elvira closed the shop in despair c. He sharpened the pencil slowly d. The enemy's reckless destruction of most of the city 42 Fodor's argument is directed against pre-lexical syntax, according to which transitive melt would have the same underlying structure as cause to melt. Thus Fodor's point is that this assumption must be refuted, since (72b) is deviant, while (i) with the putatively synonymous cause to melt is acceptable, providing the basis for an overt separation of cause and effect: (i) Floyd caused the glass to melt on Sunday by heating it on Saturday. 43 As a matter of fact, Dowty does not exclude a time course that has the effect preceding the cause, a possibility assumed in certain theories of modem physics. It might be added that Dowty's causal factor explicitly relies on a sequence of causally dependent events, such that "direct causation" be- comes the borderline case.
- 48. 38 Manfred Bierwisch It would, however, be an artificial abstraction to separate the causing activity from its causal connection. Especially the notion of an activity modified independently from its causal role would not correspond to the conceptual structure imposed on the situation. The despair, for instance, attested in (73b) qualifies Elvira's behavior with regard to the ex- pected or intended effect, rather than her pure performance. Similarly, the brute force in- volved in (73a) becomes relevant with respect to the causal connection, not the physical act as such. Similarly, what is slow in (73c)44 or reckless in (73d) can only be determined with respect to the effect. Considerations of this sort, which apply, by the way, to nouns as well as verbs, hold in particular for modifiers of intentionality, as in (74), where the causal activ- ity is qualified as incidental or intentional just with respect to its causal aspect: (74) a. Mary turned the page inadvertently b. Frank's considerate separation of the different cases A somewhat different problem arises with respect to the effect-proposition of a causal even- tuality. As already noted with respect to (68b), the durative adverbial for five days concerns the situation of the changed schedule, indicating that the effect of the causal eventuality is a state, rather than an event. Otherwise the durative adverbial would be inappropriate. In fact, cases like (68) and (71) were meant to show that the adverbial determines at the same time the structure of the causation and its effect. This observation can only be correct, however, if the characteristics represented by the modifier carry over from the effect to the causal eventuality. This looks plausible with respect to the fence-breaking truck or the rope- holding students in (71). But how could the activity of changing the schedule in (68) be either punctual or durative, depending on the different types of effect? The answer to this puzzle is that the activity is conceptualized differently: Changing the schedule for a certain period imposes a causal condition for the relevant time - just as holding a rope creates a causal condition for a certain period. In other words, to be the source of a condition that holds for a certain time span differs from an otherwise identical situation without this con- dition, just as a certain activity with a certain intention - say cleaning the table - differs from the same physical movements executed without this goal. Under this perspective, the adverbials in (68) apply naturally to the eventuality as a whole, due to the particular charac- ter they impose on the effect. These considerations seem to be supported by the fact that adverbials can hardly specify the effect without automatically involving the eventuality as a whole. Even though the adverbial rasch und eindeutig in (75a) is a genuine qualification of the effected change, it cannot avoid to include the causal connection from which it results. Similarly the causal power of the fire is as partial as its effect in (75b), and even the kids' getting frightened in (75c) is hardly separable from Peter's acting furiously in some way. (75) a. Die Untersuchung klärte die Situation rasch und eindeutig. The inquiry clarified the situation quickly and unequivocally 44 What counts is obviously not the activity as such - which might depend on the knife or whatever device is used - but the time needed to achieve the result in question. Example (73c) is due to an anonymous reviewer.
- 49. The event structure of CAUSE and BECOME 39 b. Das Feuer erleuchtete die Höhle nur teilweise. The fire lightened the cage only partially c. Peter hat die Kinder furchtbar erschreckt. Peter frightened the kids furiously An apparent counter-example to this generalization needs to be clarified, though. Locative adverbials as in (76) can obviously apply only to the effected event or state, as neither the cause nor the causal connection can reasonably be said to be located on the table or in front of the window: (76) a. Hans legte das Buch auf den Tisch. Hans put the book on the table b. Sie hängten Tücher vor die Fenster. They hang cloths in front of the windows Notice first that the PPs are directional rather locative. Hence one might argue that they specify a goal rather than a location, which could specify the causal event as well as its effect. A different observation concerns the fact that the PPs are not free adverbials, but directional arguments saturating an argument position, since verbs of location like legen (lay), setzen (set, put), hängen (hang), ziehen (pull, drag), etc. require an (at least implicit) specification of the goal of motion. Constructions like er legte das Buch would in fact be elliptical without some directional complement.45 Hence lexical entries for these verbs would look like (77), where [ LIE y ] abbreviates the condition that the maximal dimension of y must be horizontal.46 (77) / leg / [ + V , - N ] λ Ρ λ y λ χ λ ε [ e: [ χ ACT ] [CAUSE [BECOME [[ LIE y ] & [ Ρ y ]]]]] [+Dir] On the basis of (77), the directional PP in (76a) saturates the argument position λΡ, such that its Semantic Form applies to the referent of the object das Buch. A rather different problem arises in cases with two (or more) adverbials that seem to af- fect different (sub)eventualities. Thus in (78) for two hours turns the change into a state, as discussed above, while yesterday places this state as a whole into the day before utterance time. (78) Max hat uns gestern fur zwei Stunden geweckt. Yesterday, Max woke us up for two hours 45 In fact, causative verbs like stellen (put upright) 'inherit' the directional argument from the loca- tive complement of the corresponding positional verb stehen (stand). Similarly for hang, lay, etc. 46 In view of the above consideration that a directional might indicate the goal of an event, and more- over with respect to the Semantic Form of directional prepositions, one might adumbrate an entry like (i) instead of (77), where the PP would specify the event: (i) / leg/ [ +V,-N ] λΡ λγ λχ λβ [ e: [ [ χ a c t ] [ c a u s e [BECOME [ l i e y ] ] & [ P e ] ] ] ] [+Dir] For some discussion of these alternatives see Bierwisch (1988).
- 50. 40 Manfred Bierwisch While duration and temporal localization, i.e. time specification "from inside" and "from outside" the same eventuality so to speak, are well compatible in (78), this type of reason- ing gets in trouble with ordinary cases like (79), where one adverbial is not in the same way compatible with the other: (79) a. Mach in zehn Minuten mal 'ne Weile das Fenster auf. Could you in ten minutes open the window for a while b. Die Polizei hat um acht zwei Stunden lang alle Ausgänge geschlossen. At eight o'clock the police closed all exits for two hours In (79a), the durational adverbial for a while identifies the time interval of a state, viz. that of keeping the window open, but the temporal location in ten minutes seems to locate the causal act, rather than the resulting state, relative to the utterance time. The clash between the state holdingfor two hours and the act taking place at eight ο 'clock is even more obvi- ous in (79b). What needs to be clarified, then, is the question how in these cases the effect of the durative adverbial is reconciled with the temporal location. This question does not arise in (78), because the causation of being awake is easily situ- ated within the time interval yesterday. In (79) however, the temporal specification in ten minutes and at eight ο 'clock must be construed as preceding the duration of the open win- dow and the closed exits, respectively. This situation is by no means unusual, though. Sen- tences like (80) exhibit essentially the same time structure: (80) a. Wir fahren in zehn Minuten nach Wien. We'll drive to Vienna in ten minutes b. Um zehn Uhr warteten die Studenten am Eingang. At ten o'clock the students were waiting at the entrance Here, the adverbials in ten minutes and at ten ο 'clock do not specify the time covered by the process, but rather its beginning, as already noted with respect to cases like (62).47 As ob- served there, the adverbial in Hans slept within an hour coerces an ingressive interpretation of sleep, by which the state it applies to is turned into the resulting state of a change. In the same way, the temporal delimitation in (79) yields an ingressive interpretation with the causative situation as resulting state. The peculiarity in this case is the fact the state in ques- tion is created by the durative adverbial, which turns the change originally involved in aufmachen (open) and schließen (close) into a state, as discussed above. Intuitively, then, the same eventuality is characterized twice, once with respect to its duration, whereby the state is defined in the first place, and once with respect to its beginning, whereby it is sepa- rated from the preceding state. Whether and how the ingressive component is to be repre- sented in SF is an issue that has to be left open here.48 47 As a matter of fact, (79a) is ambiguous, as the time interval may determine either the initial or the endpoint of the travel. Under the latter interpretation, in zehn Minuten (within ten minutes) be- comes a durational adverbial that specifies the temporal delimitation of a process. The latter possi- bility is not relevant in the present context. 48 If the ingressive interpretation is indeed to be captured by (some version of) BECOME, as adum- brated above in connection with (62), then the SF of (79a) should look roughly like (i), where IMP
- 51. The event structure of CAUSE and BECOME 41 8. In conclusion Assuming that propositions, i.e. representations of sets of possible worlds, are to be instan- tiated by eventualities of different sorts, the considerations and proposals pursued here have tried to motivate four general conclusions. First, verbal as well as nominal descriptions of causative and inchoative situations in- volve a fairly complex structure of eventualities. A causation involves a cause and an ef- fect, the effect being either a state or a change from source to target state. This does not provide an equally complex instantiation by means of event variables available for posi- tions in the argument structure of lexical items. As a matter of fact, only one event variable seems to be available for a position in the argument structure of lexical items, susceptible for reference, quantification, and modification.49 Second, with respect to the formal status of the event variable, the alternative between Davidson and Reichenbach seems to be clearly in favor of Reichenbach: Event reference is not a matter of the individual (basic) predicate constants, which would have to be extended from η-place into n+1-place predicates. It rather comes with the operator that provides an instantiation for the proposition it applies to. This is not a purely formal decision, though. It rather reflects the fact that the s-selection, associated with the position in AS, derives ulti- mately from the role of its variable within SF. Under this perspective, the s-selection of λε in a case like öffnen (open), discussed in (55) and repeated here as (81), differs depending on the presence or absence of BECOME, yielding the restrictions of either event or state restrictions. (81) / öffn- / [ +V, -Ν ] λχ λy λβ [ e : [ BECOME [ OPEN χ ] ] ] These considerations do not only relate to problems of inchoativity, they carry over to cau- satives and their unaccusative, i.e. decausativized use, as reflected in lexical entries like ändern (change) and many other causative verbs: (82) / ander- / [ +V ] λχ λy λβ [ e : [ ( [ ACT y] [ CAUSE )[ BECOME [ DIFFERENT χ ] ] ] ] ] is a short hand for the operator indicating the illocutionary force of the imperative, heavy brackets enclose the abridged SF of the state represented by 'ne Weile das Fenster aufmachen, and the tem- poral adverbials specify the duration of the state e and the location of its beginning e': (i) IMP e' [ f e ' : [BECOME [ [e : [ [ACT y o u ] [CAUSE [OPEN [ w i n d o w ]]]] & [ T e 3 s o m e t i m e ] I & [ 10 MINUTES 3 Te' ] ] This representation would emerge if ingressive interpretation would be the effect of an interpretive template, i.e. a phonologically empty lexical entry with the following provisional characterization: (ii) λ Ρ λβ' [ e ' : [ BECOME [ Ρ e ] ] where e' necessarily overlaps with (the initial boundary of) e. 49 It must be emphasized that this restriction concerns only the relevance of event variables for the syntactically controlled compositional SF. Conceptually, however, event reference plays a role in various other respects, among them the presupposed source state required by BECOME. Thus the multiple event reference usually found e.g. in DRS representations such as for instance in Kamp (2001) and the references given there is by no means at variance with the claim under discussion.
- 52. 42 Manfred Bierwisch The s-selection mediated by λβ depends on the presence or absence of CAUSE as well as BECOME. Third, this effect - and the generalizations it supports - is strictly dependent on the fact that there is at most one event reference for each AS. Besides the matters of s-selection already mentioned, this assumption accounts also for the problems related to the require- ment of direct causation. It prevents lexical items from covering cases that allow temporal or other distances between cause and effect. This restriction to one event reference applies equally to verbs and nouns, with the further condition that verbs must have a referential e- position, while nouns may have one.50 The structures leading to these observations give rise to interesting patterns of lexicaliza- tion with language particular variations within fairly systematic possibilities. An obvious case in point are the pairs of inchoative and causative verbs, often realized by homonyms like (transitive and intransitive) open, close, break, change, get, etc. but sometimes lexical- ized by independent items like kill/die, bring/come, give/receive, and, of course, cause/become. Language-particular and idiosyncratic variations are illustrated by German reflexive inchoatives like sich öffnen (open), sich ändern (change), etc. as opposed to non- reflexive inchoatives brechen (break), schmelzen (melt), which are parallel to their English counterparts. The causative/inchoative alternation carries over to some extent to the event nominaliza- tions, as indicated in (83): (83) a. Die Änderung der Fahrzeiten durch die Bahn (causative) the change of the schedule by the company b. Die Änderung der Windrichtung (inchoative) the change of the direction of the wind The lexicalization-patterns include, of course, also expressions for the resulting state, such that correspondences of the following type emerge: 50 Nouns and verbs as lexical categories are characterized by the fact that their AS has a referential position as its highest (innermost) operator. For verbs, this position must be an e-position, for nouns it may be any sort of individual reference. Discussion and motivation of this aspect of ar- gument structure goes beyond the present scope.
- 53. The event structure of CAUSE and BECOME 43 (84) e : [ Ρ χ ] e : [ BECOME [ Ρ χ ]] e:[[ACT y ] CAUSE [BECOME [Ρ χ ] ] ] b. wach sein wach werden ~ erwachen be awake wake up c. liegen sich legen lie lie down a. tot sein tot gehen ~ sterben be dead die tot machen ~ töten kill wach machen ~ wecken wake up legen lay d. berühmt sein berühmt werden be famous become famous berühmt machen make famous geben get ~ give e. haben bekommen ~ kriegen have get f. wissen lernen know learn lehren teach w h e r e Ρ = -> ALIVE f o r (a), Ρ = -.SLEEP f o r ( b ) , Ρ = HORIZONTAL LOCATION f o r ( c ) , Ρ = FAMOUS f o r ( d ) , Ρ = HAVE Ζ f o r ( e ) , Ρ = KNOW Ζ f o r ( f ) There are wide ranging variations of quite different types to be observed here. What is worth noting, though, is the recurrent pattern according to which predicates of different type are turned into characterizations of states, events, and causations. References Bach, Emmon (1986): "The Algebra of Events." - In: Linguistics and Philosophy 9, 1-16. Bierwisch, Manfred (1982): "Formal and Lexical Semantics." - In: Linguistische Berichte 80, 3-17. - (1988): "On the Grammar of Local Prepositions." - In: M. Bierwisch, W. Mötsch & I. Zimmer- mann (eds.): Syntax, Semantik und Lexikon. 1-65. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag. - (1997): "Lexical Information from a Minimalist Point of View." - In: Ch. Wilder, H.-M. Gartner & M. Bierwisch (eds.): The Role of Economy Principles in Linguistic Theoiy, 227-266. Berlin: Aka- demie Verlag. - (2002): "A Case for CAUSE." - In: I. Kaufmann & Β. Stiebeis (eds.): More than Words, 327-353. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. - (2003): "Heads, Complements, Adjuncts: Projection and Saturation." - In: E. Lang, C. Maienborn & C. Fabricius-Hansen (eds.): Modifying Adjuncts. 113-159. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Chomsky, Noam (1981): Lectures on Government and Binding. - Dordrecht: Foris. - (1986): Knowledge of Language: Its Nature, Origin, and Use. - New York: Praeger. - (1995): The Minimalist Program. - Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Davidson, Donald (1967): "The Logical Form of Action Sentences." - In: N. Resher (ed.): The Logic of Decision and Action. 81-95. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Dowty, David R. (1979): Word Meaning and Montague Grammar. - Dordrecht: Reidel. Fintel, Kai von (1994): Restrictions on Quantifier Domains. - Doctoral dissertation, Amherst. Fodor, Jerry A. (1970): "Three Reasons for not Deriving 'kill' from 'cause to die'", - In: Linguistic Inquiry 1, 429-448.
- 54. 44 Manfred Bierwisch Higginbotham, James (1985): "On Semantics." - In: Linguistic Inquiry 16, 547-593. Kamp, Hans (2001): "The importance of Presupposition." - In: Ch. Rohrer, A. Roßdeutscher & H. Kamp (eds.): Linguistic Form and its Computation. 207-254. Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information. Kamp, Hans & Uwe Reyle (1993): From Discourse to Logic. Introduction to Modeltheoretic Seman- tics of Natural Language, Formal Logic and Discourse Representation Theory. Dordrecht: Klu- wer. Kamp, Hans & Antje Roßdeutscher (1994): "Remarks on Lexical Structure and DRS-Construction." - In: Theoretical Linguistics 20, 97-164. Maienborn, Claudia (2003): Die logische Form von Kopula-Sätzen. - Berlin: Akademie Verlag. McCawley, James D. (1973): "Syntactic and Logical Arguments for Semantic Structures" - In: Osamu Farjimura (ed.): Three Dimensions in Linguistic Theory. 259-376. Tokyo: TEC Corpora- tion. Parsons, Terence (1990): Events in the Semantics of English: A Study in Subatomic Semantics. - Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Pustejovsky, James (1995): The Generative Lexicon. - Cambridge Mass.: MIT Press. Reichenbach, Hans (1947): Elements of Symbolic Logic. - New York: The Free Press. Stechow, Arnim von (1996): "The Different Readings of wieder 'again': A Structural Account." - In: Journal of Semantics 13, 87-138. Vendler, Zeno (1967): Linguistics in Philosophy. - Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. Williams, Edwin (1981): "Argument Structure and Morphology." - In: The Linguistic Review 1,81- 114. Wunderlich, Dieter (2000): "Predicate composition and argument extension as general options." - In: B. Stiebeis & D. Wunderlich (eds.): Lexicon in Focus. 247-270. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.
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- 56. meadow and shining streams. Its tasty, luscious pippins are widely known to lovers of the apple. Some stately old residences, the "great houses" of large estates of the early Virginia families, are still to be seen; but alas! the ravages of war and its bitter results have left such properties but as so many reminders of an opulent past. It was this delightful resting place of a few days that we were now to leave for the great campaign of the Wilderness and its subsequent battles. In April, 1864, the Confederacy had reached a point of great financial embarrassment, as shown by the depreciation of its paper currency. The pay of the officers was in reality a pittance, and those without other resources were often in straits. Many boxes and hampers, however, came to the camps from home and were of some help to all. A petition from officers in the field had gone to the War Department, asking that rations might be issued to them as to the private soldiers. It had attached a scale of prices charged the officers by the army commissaries, presumably the average cost price, and not the price of retail market. The officers paid for bacon, $2.20 per pound; beef, 75 cents; lard, $2.20 per pound; molasses, $6 per gallon; sugar, $1.50 per pound. A coat cost $350; boots, $250; trousers, $125; hat, $80 to $125; shirt, $50; socks, $10 per pair. General Johnston in approving and verifying the petition said that at existing prices the pay of company officers was worth less than that of a private soldier. The shrinkage of the value of our paper currency continued with the progress of the war until, near the close, it almost ceased to have any purchasing power whatever.
- 58. CHAPTER XXX Battle of the Wilderness, May 6, 1864. General Grant in command of all the Union forces—Takes station with Army of the Potomac—His career—His successes—Later kind feelings of Southern people toward him—His dinner party at Savannah—His plan of campaign —The policy of attrition—Grant moves his army—The Wilderness—Disparity of numbers—Courier service an example of our economy in men—Kershaw promoted major-general, commanding McLaws's division—Sketch— Lee decides to strike—Grant on the march—They meet on May 5th—An indecisive partial contest—Early on May 6 Longstreet comes up—Finds situation serious—Hancock's successful attack on Third Corps—It is checked—Our flank attack on Hancock's left—He is rolled up and sent back— General Lee wants to lead troops—Longstreet wounded and Jenkins killed by fire of our own men—Major-General Wadsworth, U. S. A., killed—Attack resumed later—Not successful—Night ends long day's fighting. The Army of Northern Virginia was now to deal with a new force—a general with the great prestige of repeated victories in the West, and of undeniable ability. Lieutenant-General U. S. Grant had been made Commander-in-Chief of all the Federal armies in the field, and realizing the extraordinary achievements of Lee's army, left the scene of his operations, and retaining Meade in command of the Army of the Potomac, took his station by that army for the supreme direction of military affairs. Grant's career was wonderful; were it not a fact, it would be thought a fairy tale. A West Point graduate of mediocrity, serving well in Mexico, but so given over to drink that his retirement from the Army may be said to have been compulsory.
- 59. This was followed by hard-working attempts to make a living for his family, in humble occupations, until the stirring events of 1861 brought him forward, as they did every one who had enjoyed the opportunity of a soldier's education. Obtaining command of an Illinois regiment, his field service began, and was followed up with much success; until, placed in command of important armies in Tennessee and Kentucky, he was able to break up the Confederate plans, and finally, by his crushing defeat of Bragg at Missionary Ridge, prepared the way for Hood's destruction at Franklin and Nashville, and Sherman's "march to the sea." Now came his work in Virginia, which is to be touched on, and then his Presidency for two terms. During much of this time he was said to be intemperate, but if true it made no difference in the results accomplished. Mr. Lincoln was thought to be looking up Grant's brand of whiskey for some of his other generals. This General's character made him very dear to his friends. He was always true and helpful to them, and possessed a certain directness and simplicity of action that was in itself most attractive. General Grant's conduct toward our leader in the closing scenes at Appomattox and his vigorous defense of Lee when threatened by unprincipled and powerful Northern politicians are not likely to be forgotten by the Southern people. With the passing of time his fame as a great commander appears to be growing, and will probably still grow after careful study of his campaigns. Only once did I have the opportunity of meeting this remarkable man. It was during the "third term" plans of the Republican party that his friends were carrying him on visits to various parts of the country. He was in Savannah with Sheridan and others for a few days and was entertained at a handsome dinner-party, of some dozen or more leading gentlemen of the city, by General Henry R. Jackson, a wealthy and prominent Democratic citizen. He was himself a marked personality—a lawyer of eminence; had been Minister to Austria under Buchanan; was to be Minister to Mexico under Cleveland; was a poet and an orator, besides of the highest character, attainments, and social attractions. The dinner was a great success, served lavishly in the old Southern
- 60. fashion, with various courses of wine, which the rough Sheridan brusquely put aside. "He wanted champagne, must have it at once." And he did have it from start to finish. Grant was in excellent form, looked well and talked well; his glass was not touched. Fresh from his tour around the world he had much to say. He had been deeply interested in Japan and talked incisively of that wonderful country, really a monologue of a full hour, the table intent and absorbed in the fresh observations that fell from him. Then it became time for his departure to meet a public appointment, and we rose to bow him out. Resuming our seats and attention to the old Madeiras, we agreed that for a silent man Grant was about the most interesting one we had recently found. His talk was clean- cut, simple, direct, and clear. The General-in-Chief made his headquarters near Culpeper. The Army of the Potomac was about 130,000 strong in aggregate, and consisted of Hancock's Second Corps, Warren's Fifth, and Sedgwick's Sixth; besides Burnside's Ninth, held apart near Rappahannock railroad bridge. Lee's army lay west of the Rapidan, R. H. Anderson's division facing Madison Court House; the Second and Third Corps (Ewell's and Hill's), two divisions of the First and Alexander's artillery were at Mechanicsville; Pickett's division of the First was south of the James. Our strength is stated by Colonel Taylor to have been 63,998. We were at no loss to understand Grant's intention. The Northern papers, as well as himself, had boldly and brutally announced the purpose of "attrition"—that is, the Federals could stand the loss of four or five men to the Confederate's one, and threw nice strategy into the background. It was known that we were almost past recruiting our thin ranks, and the small figures of the army as it now stood; while the double numbers of the Federals could be reproduced from the immense resources in population, not to speak of their foreign field of supplies under inducement of liberal bounties.
- 61. Grant started his march the night of May 3d, via Germanna and Elys Fords, Wilson's and Gregg's cavalry leading. Burnside was also ordered to him. The Wilderness was a wild, tangled forest of stunted trees, with in places impassable undergrowth, lying between Fredericksburg and Orange Court House, probably sixteen or seventeen miles square. Some farm clearings and a shanty or two for a few poor inhabitants might occasionally be seen. Two principal roads penetrated this repulsive district, the Orange Plank Road and the turnpike. The ground generally lay flat and level. And now was to begin the last and greatest of the campaigns of the Army of Northern Virginia. The campaign of attrition on one side met and foiled by the fine flower of the ablest strategy on the other. It was Grant's stubborn perseverance, indifferent to the loss of life, against Lee's clear insight and incessant watchfulness. Our army always ready, ever fighting, was to hold the Federal forces from the Wilderness to the final break at Petersburg, from May to March, ten months of supreme effort, most exhaustive to a commander. Marshall Marmont says, "The attacking general has, to a large extent, command of the mind of his defensive opponents." It is doubtless true, but Lee often gave his mind necessary relief and chanced success by a sudden initiative against Grant. The latter would unexpectedly find part of his army attacked with swift energy and would get something for his mind to work on besides the control of Lee's. Referring to the disparity of numbers, we did in truth want men. A little detail will show how we had to economize them. Until recently there had been small cavalry details at general headquarters and with corps and division chiefs. These, however, were all sent back to serve with the regimental colors, and the courier service they had been doing taken up by assignments of men from the infantry ranks who could keep themselves mounted. Six were allowed for corps headquarters, four for divisions, and two for brigades. Being picked men, the service was well performed; but
- 62. the time was not far off when these able men had again to take up their muskets by their colors. Disabled fellows who could ride but did no marching were put at the important courier duties and did well! The enemy said we were robbing the cradle and the grave, and it was more or less true. Maj.-Gen. J. B. Kershaw, a lawyer from South Carolina, was one of the most distinguished and efficient officers of the Virginia army. His service had been long and uninterrupted. Coming out with a fine South Carolina regiment among the first to be sent to Virginia, his abilities soon made him its colonel. He served long in that rank, his steady courage and military aptitude invariably showing handsomely in the arduous service of his regiment. It was one of those forming the South Carolina Brigade of McLaws's division. Longstreet was quick to perceive Kershaw's merit and recommended him for promotion. It was sometime coming. But when he was brigadier-general and placed in command of the brigade he maintained his high reputation fully. In 1864 he was promoted to be major-general, and continuing his service with Longstreet's corps, his conduct and abilities were conspicuous until the very end of hostilities. General Kershaw was of most attractive appearance, soldierly and handsome, of medium size, well set up, light hair and moustache, with clean-cut, high-bred features. Grant's movement was soon made known to Lee, and the latter prepared to strike. It was his way, he waited not for the blow; better give it, was a large part of his strategy. It was thought Grant could best be met by a stroke as he marched. The Second and Third Corps were ordered forward by the Plank Road. Our own two divisions, Field's and Kershaw's, the latter commanding in McLaws's place, and Alexander's batteries were near Gordonsville and ordered to move by the Plank Road to Parker's Store. The route was changed at General Longstreet's request, and he found a good guide in James Robinson, well known to our Quartermaster Taylor, who lived at Orange Court House. We were at Richard's shop at 5 p. m. on May 5th, Rosser's cavalry then being engaged at that point with part of Sheridan's; the
- 63. latter moving off when we came up. The march had been twenty- eight miles, and there orders from the Commanding General were received for changing direction so as to unite with other troops on the Plank Road. Directions conforming were issued to resume march at midnight. Both armies being now in quick motion, the collision was soon to come; indeed, had already come with Heth's and Wilcox's divisions, ending late that night after fierce battle. I make no attempt at detail of all Confederate and Union movements, but the great battle of the Wilderness is now to be fought and the important part in it taken by the First Army Corps briefly sketched. Strange to say, the two divisions of our Third Corps, Heth's and Wilcox's, after their severe battle made no attempt at defensive field work or trenching when firing ceased that night. In explanation, it is said they expected to be withdrawn and consequently did no work nor replenished their ammunition. But Hancock, accomplished general that he was, suffered himself to fall into no such pit. He had his men at work all night strengthening his position, and was thus enjoying the soldier's high feeling of confidence; and then with the sun he let fly at the troops in front of him, apparently inviting attack with no ground defenses whatever. It was distressing to realize such failure in the field work, and the result came near a great disaster. Longstreet had moved at 1 a. m., the march being difficult and slow in the dense forest by side tracks and deep furrowed roadways. At daylight he was on the Plank Road and in close touch with Lee when Hancock struck the two unprepared divisions. The situation when we came on the scene, that of May 6th, was appalling. Fugitives from the broken lines of the Third Corps were pouring back in disorder and it looked as if things were past mending. But not so to James Longstreet; never did his great qualities as a tenacious, fighting soldier shine forth in better light. He instantly took charge of the battle, and threw his two divisions across the Plank Road, Kershaw on the right, Field on the left. None but seasoned soldiers like the First Corps could have done even that much. I have always thought
- 64. that in its entire splendid history the simple act of forming line in that dense undergrowth, under heavy fire and with the Third Corps men pushing to the rear through the ranks, was perhaps its greatest performance for steadiness and inflexible courage and discipline. Hill's men were prompt to collect and reform in our rear and soon were ready for better work. General Lee was under great excitement immediately on the left. He wanted to lead some of our troops into action, but the Texas brigade was about him and swore they would do nothing unless he retired. A confident message from Longstreet through Colonel Venable that his line would be restored within an hour also helped him to regain his calm; and then at it we went in earnest, on both sides of the road. Hancock's success had loosened his ranks somewhat, which helped us when we fell on him. It was a hard shock of battle by six of our brigades, three on each side of the road. No artillery came into play, the ground not being fit for it. The enemy's advance was checked, then wavered, and finally relinquished; our troops pushing forward into the recovered lines. Longstreet had redeemed his promise to his commander. Meantime sharp work had also been going on at the left by Lieutenant-General Ewell—the never sleeping Ewell—and the prospects were bright. R. H. Anderson, with Hill's corps, had come up and reported to Longstreet, who posted part of it on the right. Latrobe, of our staff, had received painful wounds in the thigh and hand, in this fight, while pushing the men forward. It had taken several hours to achieve this and a slight pause in the activities of the armies occurred. Gen. M. L. Smith, an engineer from General Headquarters, had reported to Longstreet and examined the situation on our right, where he discovered the enemy's left somewhat exposed and inviting attack; and now came our turn. General Longstreet, calling me, said: "Colonel, there is a fine chance of a great attack by our right. If you will quickly get into those woods, some brigades will be found much scattered from the fight. Collect them and take charge. Form a good line and then move, your right pushed forward and turning as much as possible to the left. Hit hard when you start, but
- 65. don't start until you have everything ready. I shall be waiting for your gun fire, and be on hand with fresh troops for further advance." No greater opportunity could be given to an aspiring young staff officer, and I was quickly at work. The brigades of Anderson, Mahone, and Wofford were lined up in fair order and in touch with each other. It was difficult to assemble them in that horrid Wilderness, but in an hour we were ready. The word was given, and then with heavy firing and ringing yells we were upon Hancock's exposed left, the brigades being ably commanded by their respective officers. It was rolled back line after line. I was well mounted, and despite the tangled growth could keep with our troops in conspicuous sight of them, riding most of the charge with Mahone's men and the Eighteenth Virginia. Some correspondence will be found in the Appendix about it. A stand was attempted by a reserve line of Hancock's, but it was swept off its feet in the tumultuous rush of our troops, and finally we struck the Plank Road lower down. On the other side of it was Wadsworth's corps in disorder. (I had last seen him under flag of truce at Fredericksburg.) Though the old General was,doing all possible to fight it, his men would not stay. A volley from our pursuing troops brought down the gallant New Yorker, killing both rider and horse. There was still some life left in the General, and every care was given him by our surgeon. Before they could get to him, however, some of his valuables—watch, sword, glasses, etc.—had disappeared among the troops. One of the men came up with, "Here, Colonel, here's his map." It was a good general map of Virginia, and of use afterwards. We were then so disorganized by the chase through the woods that a halt was necessary to reform, and I hastened back to General Longstreet to press for fresh troops. There was no need with him. He had heard our guns, knew what was up, and was already marching, happy at the success, to finish it with the eager men at his heels. There was quite a party of mounted officers and men riding with him —Generals Kershaw and Jenkins, the staff, and orderlies. Jenkins,
- 66. always enthusiastic, had thrown his arm about my shoulder, with, "Sorrel, it was splendid; we shall smash them now." And turning back I was riding by Longstreet's side, my horse's head at his crupper, when firing broke out from our own men on the roadside in the dense tangle. The Lieutenant-General was struck. He was a heavy man, with a very firm seat in the saddle, but he was actually lifted straight up and came down hard. Then the lead-torn coat, the orifice close to the right shoulder pointed to the passage of the heavy bullet of those days. His staff immediately dismounted him, at the foot of a branching tree, bleeding profusely. The shot had entered near the throat and he was almost choked with blood. Doctor Cullen, his medical director, was quickly on the spot. Even then the battle was in the leader's mind, and he sent word to Major-General Field to go straight on. He directed me to hasten to General Lee, report what had been accomplished, and urge him to continue the movement he was engaged on; the troops being all ready, success would surely follow, and Grant, he firmly believed, be driven back across the Rapidan. I rode immediately to General Lee, and did not again see my chief until his return to duty in October. The fatal firing that brought him down also killed Captain Jenkins, Captain Foley, and several orderlies. Jenkins was a loss to the army—brave, ardent, experienced and highly trained, there was much to expect of him. The firing began among some of the Virginia troops that had rushed the attack. Our detour was such that it was quite possible to expect the capture of prisoners, and when Longstreet's party was seen, followed by Jenkins's brigade and part of Kershaw's command, in the shaded light of the dense tangle, a shot or two went off, then more, and finally a strong fusilade. The officers of our party acted splendidly in the effort to avert confusion and stop the deadly firing. General Kershaw was conspicuous about it, and our signal officer, Captain J. H. Manning, deliberately, calmly rode through the fire up to the Virginians, holding up his hands and making signs that we
- 67. were friends. This happened between twelve and one o'clock. My report to General Lee was, as instructed, immediate. I found him greatly concerned by the wounding of Longstreet and his loss to the army. He was most minute in his inquiries and was pleased to praise the handling of the flank attack. Longstreet's message was given, but the General was not in sufficient touch with the actual position of the troops to proceed with it as our fallen chief would have been able to do; at least, I received that impression, because activity came to a stop for the moment. A new attack with stronger forces was settled on. It was to be made direct on the enemy's works, lower down the Plank Road, in the hope of dislodging him. But meantime the foe was not idle. He had used the intervening hours in strengthening his position and making really formidable works across the road. When the Confederate troops assaulted them late in the afternoon they met with a costly repulse, and with this the principal operations on our part of the field ceased for the day; it was coming on dark.
- 69. CHAPTER XXXI Coincidences—Longstreet's Successor Longstreet borne from the field—His letter to Lee from Lynchburg—Return of General Wadsworth's map to his son—Coincidence in the wounding of Jackson and Longstreet—General Lee summons me—Talks of assignment to command of First Corps—He decides on General Richard H. Anderson. General Longstreet was first taken to the house of his quartermaster, Major Taylor, near by, and thence, when he could be moved, to Lynchburg. From there he wrote to General Lee of this attack on Hancock's left as conducted by myself, and I trust it may not be considered out of place to insert that letter here. General Longstreet's book has caused to be brought forth quite a number of incidents of the late war which that distinguished Confederate necessarily passed over briefly in his narrative. In the battle of the Wilderness, May 6, 1864, Longstreet's corps moved to the support of A. P. Hill's corps early in the morning and checked the onward movement of the enemy. In this attack General G. M. Sorrel (then lieutenant-colonel and chief of staff of General Longstreet), under the orders of his chief, took Mahone's, Wofford's and G. T. Anderson's brigades, and, swinging around to the right, the Confederates carried everything before them. For his gallantry on that occasion, Colonel Sorrel was made a brigadier-general on the recommendation of General Longstreet, in the subjoined letter: Lynchburg, Va., May 19, 1864. General R. E. Lee, Commanding, etc.
- 70. Sir: The peculiar character of the position occupied by the enemy in my front on the 6th inst. was such as to render a direct assault impracticable. After a brief consultation with the commanding general, a move was agreed upon, turning and attacking the enemy's left flank. Lieutenant- Colonel Sorrel, my chief of staff, was assigned to represent me in this flank movement, with instructions as to the execution of it. The flank attack, made by three brigades, was to be followed by a corresponding movement of the other brigades of the command. This attack, made under the supervision of Lieutenant-Colonel Sorrel, was executed with much skill, promptness, and address, and the enemy was driven from his position in haste and some confusion. It occurs to me that this is one of the instances of skill, ability and gallantry on the battle-field which should commend itself to the high approval of the Executive. I, therefore, take great pleasure in recommending Lieutenant-Colonel Sorrel's promotion to brigadier-general for distinguished conduct on this occasion. I should have reported this case much earlier and asked for promotion upon the spot, but that I was struck down by a painful wound a few moments after the execution of the movement. I am still unable to write and hence must ask the privilege of signing this by my aide-de-camp. I am, General, very respectfully, your obedient servant, (Signed.) J. Longstreet, Lieutenant-General. (Signed.) By T. J. Goree, Aide-de-Camp.
- 71. Hancock said long after to Longstreet, "You rolled me up like a wet blanket and it was some hours before I could reorganize for battle." Many years after this great struggle opportunity was given me of placing with Hon. James Wadsworth, M. C., son of the general, the map before referred to as taken from his father when he fell. In making his acknowledgments it was gratifying to learn that nearly all the other belongings of this gallant officer had gradually, by kindness of friends, found their way back into the family possessions. Some coincidences in the fall of Jackson and Longstreet are not without interest. On May 3, 1863, Lieutenant-General Jackson, great corps commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, was struck down by the fire of his own men while executing a successful flank movement in the Wilderness at the battle of Chancellorsville. On May 6, 1864, just one year later, Lieutenant-General Longstreet, the other great corps commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, was also struck down by the fire of his own men while conducting a successful flank movement, and this on almost the same ground. While one fell (unhappily mortally wounded) at Chancellorsville and the other at Wilderness, both names apply to that singular district, and the two points were not very wide apart. At sunrise, on the 7th, I was summoned to the Commander-in-Chief and promptly reported. General Lee received me most kindly and at once withdrew under a neighboring tree. "I must speak to you, Colonel," he opened, "about the command of the First Corps." He then in substance went on to say that the two major-generals of the corps present were too recent for the command (Pickett does not appear to have been thought of) and an officer must be assigned. He had three in mind: Major-Generals Early, Edward Johnson, and Richard H. Anderson, and did me the honor to invite my opinion. "You have," he said, "been with the corps since it started as a brigade, and should be able to help me."
- 72. At once I saw the need of giving all the assistance possible and that I must use every care in judgment. Thanking the General for his unprecedented confidence, I said that probably Early would be the ablest commander of the three named, but would also be the most unpopular in our corps. His flings and irritable disposition had left their marks, and there had been one or two occasions when some ugly feelings had been aroused while operating in concert. I feared he would be objectionable to both officers and men. "And now, Colonel, for my friend Ed. Johnson; he is a splendid fellow." "All say so, General," was my answer—and I fully believed it—"but he is quite unknown to the corps. His reputation is so high that perhaps he would prove all that could be wished, but I think that some one personally known to the corps would be preferred." This brought the commander to Gen. Richard H. Anderson, and I was led to say, without presuming to criticize him or point out his merits or demerits (there are probably plenty of both), "We know him and shall be satisfied with him." He was long a brigadier with us, tried and experienced; then a major-general until withdrawn to make up the Third Corps. "Thank you, Colonel," said General Lee. "I have been interested, but Early would make a fine corps commander." Being dismissed, I hastened back to camp, full of thoughts as to who was to command us. It looked from the General's closing words as if it would be Early (I am sure he preferred him), but no, Anderson was the man. Later, the same day, came the order assigning chivalrous, deliberate "Dick" Anderson to the command of the First Army Corps and it was not very long before he was made lieutenant-general.
- 74. CHAPTER XXXII Battles of Spottsylvania C. H., May 10 and 12, and Cold Harbor, June 3, 1864 The night's horrors—The forest on fire—Sufferings of the wounded—On same ground May 7th—Anderson in command of First Corps—Characteristics—The great strategic contest between Grant and Lee—Grant moves for Spottsylvania Court House—Lee follows in time—Both sides entrench—Union attack of 10th checked—Not so on the 12th—Edward Johnson's division suddenly assailed—Is captured with guns and colors—A serious loss keenly felt— Salient was exposed—New line established—Terrific fire for its possession by Gordon's fresh troops—We hold the new ground after heavy losses—Sedgwick killed on 10th— Stuart, our cavalry leader, shot on May 12—General Lee not in good health—Attack by Grant at Cold Harbor—Great slaughter of Union soldiers—Assaults abandoned—Grant asks for truce to bury dead—Lee in doubt as to enemy's movements—Grant stole a march and nearly had Petersburg—Saved by Beauregard—Reinforcements and losses—An accident by falling chimney—Death of Colonel Edward Willis—General Hampton assigned to command of cavalry—Sketch. The night was hideous. The brush and undergrowth had taken fire from the musketry and flames and smoke were obscuring everything. The numerous parties out for burying the dead and gathering the wounded were much impeded and many wounded must have perished, hidden from sight of man in that awful burnt tangle. These duties and close search continued all next day.
- 75. Our new commander, General Anderson, took the corps early on the 7th, during which the armies lay quiet after the battle. Grant was not aggressive, nor were we. The Federal commander's reflections may have been sombre. Expecting only a march, he had found bloody battles, for the Army of Northern Virginia was always in front of him. On the other hand, Lee was doubtless in the full gravity of the immense responsibilities before him and his severe losses. It was from now until June 14th, when Grant reached his pontoon bridge over the James on his way to the new scene of action at Petersburg, a game to the death for the possession of Richmond. His able and powerful movements were to throw his army between Lee and our capital. He found Lee always, not the capital, and the movements, which shall not be detailed too much, were steadily on that line. Our General invariably penetrated his adversary's design and objective and was there—perhaps in a hurry and breathless, but there; and enough of us were ready to make necessary another march of the Union left. Following then his original plan, Grant, on the night of the 7th, made a rapid flank movement to secure Spottsylvania Court House. Immediately part of our corps moved with General Anderson and arrived at the Court House contemporaneously with the Northerners. The march through the scorched and smoking Wilderness was most painful. The Union men, a little advance, had seized the best strategic point, but were driven off by our arrival, and on the 9th we found each other in line of battle, both sides entrenching wherever they might stand. On the 10th the enemy made a handsome dash at Ewell's left and dislodged it, taking two guns. General Lee wanted to lead for recovery, but was dissuaded. The enemy being attacked was made to give up the line and the guns. It was in this affair that Maj.-Gen. John Sedgwick, commander of Grant's Sixth Corps, was killed. A bullet pierced his head from a
- 76. great distance. He and Lee had been warm friends, and the latter expressed many regrets. There was a salient on Ewell's line, occupied by Edward Johnson's division, that Lee rightly considered dangerous to our security. Another line across the base was ordered constructed and the exposed artillery transferred to it. Before arrangements could be completed and before the artillery could be pushed forward again, Johnson was fiercely assailed at sunrise on the 12th by a heavy column massed for the purpose during the night. Most of the division was captured, including Major-General Johnson and Brigadier-General Stewart. Lee's position instantly became perilous. He was cut in twain and fully realized it. Good work was done in repairing the break and strong bodies of troops moved from right and left to check the enemy's further advance. General Lee was under intense anxiety, plainly evinced, and was quite on the point of leading his fresh troops for restoring the line. Gen. J. B. Gordon, however, came on the scene, got the General back in his right place, and after a short, impassioned address to the troops, attacked most vigorously with the other generals. Truly it was the center of a fire from hell itself! The Federals lining the two sides of the captured salient and the Confederates at the base poured forth a fusilade that could not be exceeded. Nothing uncovered could live in such a fire—trees were felled, trunks cut by small-arm bullets! The Union advance was checked, but we failed to recover our first lines and rested with a new one better drawn. The army felt keenly the loss of Johnson's division and guns, but our lines were not again forced in the field. Reinforcements poured into the Union army, Grant waiting quietly until the 18th for assembling them from Washington, occasionally also doing some maneuvering. Our own army was likewise in quiet inaction, but unhappily receiving no such reinforcements. General Anderson, as already stated, was well known to us, and fell easily into position as corps commander. During the events just
- 77. sketched he had shown commendable prudence and an intelligent comprehension of the work in hand. He was a very brave man, but of a rather inert, indolent manner for commanding troops in the field, and by no means pushing or aggressive. My relations with him were uniformly pleasant. He seemed to leave the corps much to his staff, while his own meditative disposition was constantly soothed by whiffs from a noble, cherished meerschaum pipe in process of rich coloring. He was a short, thick, stocky figure, with good features and agreeable expression. I sometimes found myself sleeping in the same tent with him. He had a way on waking of sitting on his bed and proceeding to mend and patch his belongings out of a well-filled tailor's "necessaire" he always carried—clothing, hats, boots, bridles, saddles, everything came handy to him. He caught me once watching this work, and said, smiling: "You are wondering, I see; so did my wife when first married. She thought she should do the mending, but I told her I ought to have a little recreation occasionally." We heard of Stewart's death near the Yellow Tavern on May 12th. It caused indescribable feeling in the army. The great cavalry leader was so known to us all, officers and men; had passed through so much without hurt; his devotion to Lee was so thoroughly appreciated, and our sense of security against surprise so confident with him in the saddle that deep was our grief. His disposition so happy and sunny, his enterprise so untiring, his soul so valiant, all sprang to our memories. It was really after the battle that he fell, by an outpost bullet, when he should have been safe. Long years after, on a glorious day in May, Confederate veterans thronged Richmond to dedicate the statue of their beloved commander. The flower-strewn city—grim war having long since given way to gentle peace—was gay with lovely women and their happy smiles; while bright bunting, our own starry cross and the stars and stripes, conspicuous with flags of all nations, made the streets a mass of flaming color.
- 78. It was as one of the marshals that I was assisting on the memorable occasion, and dear friends at the fine old Virginia estate, the Stewart's hospitable "Brook Hill," near the city, had made me their guest. The gracious hostess, growing if possible more lovely with advancing years, recalled from far back that historic toast and beauty of old Virginia, Evelyn Byrd, from whose family she descended; there this pictured chatelaine of Brook Hill, encompassed by accomplished daughters, dispensed a charming hospitality. On one of those days Miss Stewart drove me to the spot where Stewart fell, about half way between their residence and the old Yellow Tavern. A small stone shaft by the roadside marked it. There we feelingly recalled his deeds and fame, and placed upon it our flower tokens. It was pleasant to see, too, the young people and children of the countryside tenderly placing their own remembrances on the hero's column. The valiant rider was not forgotten! On the 18th we sustained on our lines another attack. It was easily resisted, and then Grant, two days after, started toward Bowling Green. Lee was quick to move for Hanover Junction and offered battle there. Grant declining, moved about May 25th on a detour to the east—Lee always parallel and Richmond behind him. Our Commander-in-Chief was far from well physically. Colonel Taylor, his adjutant-general, says the indisposition was more serious than generally supposed. Those near him were very apprehensive lest he should be compelled to give up. General Early writes: "One of his three corps commanders had been disabled by wounds at Wilderness. Another was too ill to command his corps, while he himself was suffering from a most annoying and weakening disease." Only his indomitable will and devotion could keep him in the field. To them we owe his patriotic adherence to the command of his unexampled army. About the 30th the Confederate army was in battle order near Atlee's Station, but General Grant continued his flank movement, Lee by him, in an easterly direction, and on June 3d the two armies
- 79. confronted each other at Cold Harbor, the Confederates hastily entrenching, as usual. It was historic ground. We had fought on part of it on the eventful days of June 26, 27, 28, 1862. Here the Federal commander, weary of Lee and the oft-repeated march, made up his mind evidently to finish things. He attacked us with the utmost ferocity, but in vain. The assaults were delivered repeatedly but always repulsed with frightful carnage, and finally men could do no more. The officers with drawn swords pointed the way, but the men stood motionless in their ranks, a silent, effective protest against further "attrition." Our men were steady in their field works and suffered but little loss. A section of a Savannah battery, commanded by Lieutenant Robert Faligant, was on our line and conspicuous for its brilliant work. Swinton, the historian, says, "The loss on the Union side in this sanguinary action was over 13,000, while on the part of the Confederates it is doubtful if it reached that many hundreds." General Grant was late in asking for a truce to bury his dead, but finally did so. The sight in our front was sickening, heartrending to the stoutest soldier. Nothing like it was seen during the war, and that awful mortality was inflicted in but little more than an hour! The Union commander afterwards announced in general orders that no more assaults on entrenched lines should be made. He then continued his movement eastward. Lee was for a short time in painful doubt whether Grant would cross the river or hold his route up the north side. It was solved by Grant's bridge and rapid crossing, Lee having barely time to throw his van into Petersburg. Grant had nearly stolen the march on him. The latter had expected to capture the town by surprise, a coup de main. He was foiled by Beauregard and Wise and some brave militia and home guards. They defended the position until succor came, by the head of Lee's column hastening to the rescue. Beauregard's conduct on this occasion was admirable, and much was owing to him, for which I doubt if full acknowledgment has been made.
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