The Semantics of English Progressive and the Imperfective ParadoxThe Semantics of English Progressive and the Imperfective Paradox
- Other Titles
- The Semantics of English Progressive and the Imperfective Paradox
- Authors
- 염재일
- Issue Date
- 2003
- Publisher
- 한국언어정보학회
- Keywords
- progressive; imperfective paradox; contributive; threshold level
- Citation
- 언어와 정보, v.7, no.2, pp.140 - 162
- Journal Title
- 언어와 정보
- Volume
- 7
- Number
- 2
- Start Page
- 140
- End Page
- 162
- URI
- https://scholarworks.bwise.kr/hongik/handle/2020.sw.hongik/26511
- ISSN
- 1226-7430
- Abstract
- The progressive in English is taken to be an operator which takes a
non-stative predicate and returns a predicate which denotes a process
with a temporal frame around some definite time or event. When it is
combined with a predicate which has a culmination in the event, the
sentence means that the culmination has not come yet. So the event
denoted by the base predicate is not true at the current time. On the
other hand, when it is combined with a predicate which has no
culmination in the event, the event denoted by the base predicate is
taken to be true. In this paper, this is explained by the semantics of
the progressive based on the notion of contributiveness. I propose
that a progressive sentence is verified by some subevents which are
contributive to the current situation and the progress of the event
beyond the threshold level of the event denoted by the base
predicate. A sub-situation is contributive if the addition of it to
the previous situation is more likely to lead to the whole situation
than the previous situation.
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