Events as Grammatical Objects: The Converging Perspectives of Lexical Semantics and Syntax

Carol L. Tenny and James Pustejovsky

Research in lexical semantics, logical semantics, and syntax has demonstrated a growing recognition that the grammars of natural languages structure and refer to events in particular ways. This convergence on events as grammatical objects across these disciplines is the motivation for this volume, which brings together researchers from the areas of lexical semantics, logical semantics, and syntax specifically to address the topic of event structure. Lexical semantics and logical semantics are two enterprises that use different tools and address different questions. The focus on events in the work of lexical and logical semanticists has brought the two approaches closer together, since lexical semanticists must look outward from the verb to the sentence in order to characterize the effects of a verb's event structure; and logical semanticists have had to look inward from the sentence to the verb to represent semantic facts that depend on particular types of verbs. Meanwhile syntacticians have discovered a growing body of phenomena in which the semantics of events can be seen to interact with syntactic structures, and have had to turn to semanticists for representations of the properties associated with events. The mapping between syntax and event structure has also emerged as an important area of research. Despite the different tools, approaches, and questions with which lexical semantics, logical semantics, and syntax are concerned, there is now enough convergence on events that productive dialogue between these areas can advance our understanding of event structure in grammar. This volume specifically focuses on topics relating to events in grammar, where the work of lexical semanticists, logical semanticists, and syntacticians intersect. Carol Tenny is Visiting Scholar at University of Massachusetts, Amherst. James Pustejovsky is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science and the Center for Complex Systems at Brandeis University. He directs the Laboratory for Linguistics and Computation.

10/15/2000

ISBN (Paperback): 1575862069

ISBN (Cloth): 1575862050

Subject: Linguistics; Grammar--Syntax; Semantics