PERFECTIVE AND IMPERFECTIVE ASPECT AND THE THEORY OF EVENTS AND STATES

Starting from an examination of the semantic properties of perfective and imperfective sentences, from which the logical properties of their subject matters on the level of their conceptual interpretation, namely situations of the sorts ‘event’ and ‘state’ are determined, a formal theory of states, events, and event types is developed. This theory, which gives the conceptual foundations for the semantics of aspect, accords events the logical status of individuals characterized by heterogeneous type predicates but treats states as homogeneous properties of times. This analysis of states reflects the fact that states are not individuals from a logical point of view. A system of operators which map states onto event types and vice versa establishes the connection between the two domains. The discussion of various linguistic applications serves to illustrate the formal theory. © Walter de Gruyter