On the Compositional Nature of States: (188 Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today)

This monograph pursues a structural analogy between the availability of an existential interpretation in states and the telicity of events. Focusing on evidence from both verbal and adjectival predicates, it argues that quantization forms the basis of a unified theory of aktionsart and provides a theory in which the availability of an existential interpretation in states is, like the telicity of events, determined compositionally by the predicate and the quantization of its internal argument. Quantization is further argued to reflect the internal temporal constitution of the stages of an individual which is tied to the generation of an existential interpretation. This monograph will be of interest to syntacticians and semanticists who are specifically concerned with compositional approaches to eventualities, and to those who have a more general interest in the role linguistic theory can play in determining core properties of the mind.

Table of Contents:
1. Acknowledgements; 2. Preface; 3. List of tables; 4. List of figures; 5. Chapter 1. Introduction; 6. Chapter 2. States and compositionality; 7. Chapter 3. The arguments of statives; 8. Chapter 4. Adjectival predicates and scale structures; 9. Chapter 5. Conclusions and speculations; 10. Bibliography; 11. Index

Review :
I have always treated statives as belonging to the aspectual ‘garbage can’ alongside other forms of aspectual durativity by considering them as primitives. Husband belies this claim showing convincingly that there is real gold in that can: statives turn out to be as compositional as terminative constructions. By doing this he opens a beautiful domain of research. The best way for me to express this is perhaps by exclaiming: “Why the hell didn't I see that myself, stupid?” It is really fascinating and joyful to see what Husband has digged up. In the past few decades, meticulous semantic and syntactic research has greatly contributed to our understanding of event structure. However, more often not, the focus of that research has been the properties of eventive rather than stative eventualities. Matthew Husband's book is an important contribution to the closing of this gap. Taking as its starting point, on the one hand, the distinction between individual level predicates and stage level predicates, and on the other hand, the results of research into the syntax and semantics of eventive eventualities and in particular the quantization approach to telicity, Husband's model integrates into an intriguing whole notions such as telicity and quantization, scalarity, and voice, to give rise to an insightful and thought provoking work that is sure to become a cornerstone in our understanding of event structure in general, and the eventive/stative dividing line in particular. A must-read for any scholar who is interested in the impact which the syntax-semantic interface has had on the study of events and their properties.