In this lecture We shift our focus to events, and ask: How
should we think of events in natural language? How do we treat
semantic issues related to events, specifically: The nature of
events and event modification Time and tense Aspect and event
structure Modality and possibility
Slide 3
What is an event? So far, weve thought of verbs (transitive and
intransitive) as predicates and relations: [[sleep]] = [[eat]] =
This puts them on a par with nouns: [[man]] =
Slide 4
Predicates of what? But notice: The argument of the semantic
representation of the noun is an individual (an entity) This is
evident in a typical predicative construction: Sam is a man And if
we add premodifiers, we assume theyre, >, i.e. Take a noun
predicate and return a complex noun predicate: Sam is a tall
man
Slide 5
Predicates of what? But what about events? With Sam eats, it
seems to be similar to the nominal case: eat(s) But what about Sam
eats quickly? What is the argument of quickly? Do we want eat(s)
& quick(s)? Many semanticists argue that verbs actually denote
an implicit event argument. I ate a meat pie roughly means: There
is an event, and this event is an eating event, and the event
involves me as agent, and a meat pie as patient In other words,
rather than a relation between two things (an eater and an eatee),
we might think of this as a relation between three things (an
event, and the eater and eatee involved in it)
Slide 6
A preliminary example Strange goings on! Jones did it slowly,
deliberately, in the bathroom, with a knife, at midnight. What he
did was butter a piece of toast. Davidson, 1980 [1967], p. 105 Some
questions/observations: What does it refer to in that sentence?
(The buttering event?) We have the intuition that slowly,
deliberately, in the bathroom etc modify the same buttering event
involving Jones and the toast. There is a difference between:
Adverbs like slowly, which actually modify the event itself Phrases
like in the bathroom, with a knife etc, which seem to add arguments
to the event in addition to Jones and the toast.
Slide 7
The phenomena we want to look at Strange goings on! Jones did
it slowly, deliberately, in the bathroom, with a knife, at
midnight. What he did was butter a piece of toast. Davidson, 1980
[1967], p. 105 Were going to consider three classes of phenomena:
1. Thematic roles 2. Event modifiers and their relationship to
nominal modifiers 3. Event reference and nominalisation
Slide 8
Part 1 Evidence from thematic roles
Slide 9
Thematic roles Weve encountered thematic roles before...
Roughly, these are semantic categories that specify the roles of
arguments of events: Agent, patient, location, instrument etc Their
main theoretical function is to allow us to: Categorise the
arguments of verbs (and of some other predicates) Make
generalisations about how they combine with predicates
Slide 10
An example John buttered the toast. The toast was buttered by
John. John = the agent The toast = the patient The roles stay the
same whether its active or passive. Notice that we dont have a verb
(say, sbuttered) which would be synonymous with
buttered-in-the-passive and would reverse the roles: The toast
sbutttered John (=the toast was buttered by John). Why?
Slide 11
Generalisations The apparent non-existence of verbs like
sbuttered, with reversed agent/patient roles, suggests that
language: is biased towards having specific properties for agents
and patients (John is a more likely agent of a buttering event)
maintains these roles even if the event is conceptualised in terms
of the reverse relation (as with the passive) Typically: 1. Agent
maps to subject 2. If there is no agent, but there is a patient,
then patient maps to subject 3. If there is both an agent and a
patient, then (1) applies, and patient maps to object.
Slide 12
An aside on Maltese and related languages Superficially, we do
seem to find languages that allow the equivalent of sbuttered,
i.e.: Take a verb with Agent and Patient Add something to it to
morphologically to reverse the roles. Pawlu qatel ra el Ra el
inqatel minn Pawlu But note: The roles are not being reversed
(Pawlu is still agent) The verb nqatel is arguably marked with
respect to the base form qatel. This suggests that the passive is
not the basic form.
Slide 13
Agent and patient of what? John buttered the toast. The toast
was buttered by John. Notice that we have the same event viewed in
different ways: Its the same action in both cases (a buttering) It
involves an agent and a patient in both cases. We might take this
as prima facie evidence for the argument that: There is a single
event underlying these two sentences (call it e) The agent and
patient roles are relations between the event and an individual.
E.g. AGENT(e) = John PATIENT(e) = the toast
Slide 14
Things to note If we adopt this view, then we no longer think
of butter as a 2-place predicate involving 2 arguments. We would
think of butter as also involving an implicit event argument.
Semantically, it might look like this: In other words, we think of
event sentences as: Implicitly involving an event argument Relating
the explicit arguments directly to the event itself So we no longer
analyse this as a 2-place predicate along the lines of
butter(j,t).
Slide 15
Some further evidence John buttered the toast. John buttered
the toast with a knife. Here, we seem to have introduced additional
arguments! If we assume that [[butter]] is a two-place predicate in
the first example, what happens in the second case? Do we want to
have to say that butter is ambiguous? 2-place butter: agent,
patient 3-place butter: agent, patient, instrument...
Slide 16
Some further evidence John buttered the toast. John buttered
the toast with a knife. Our event-based analysis would allow us to
avoid this kind of argument. In the second sentence, all weve done
is introduce a third role (instrument), but its still the same
butter predicate (only weve added an optional argument):
Slide 17
A complication (1) Sam hit the table with a hammer (2) Sam hit
the hammer against the table. Do we have the same event here?
Intuitively, perhaps, we do. Given an actual event in a
world/model, could we describe it in either of these two ways? But
the thematic roles seem different in the two cases: Sam does
something to the table in (1), but to the hammer in (2). By our
earlier generalisations, table is the patient in (1), but hammer is
patient in (2). If we we want to keep the traditional thematic role
analysis, wed be forced to conclude that hit takes different
arguments in (1) and (2). But then, we cant really say its the same
event! The two have different participants. Two different entries
for hit?
Slide 18
Dowtys (1990) theory Sam hit the table with a hammer Sam hit
the hammer against the table. Perhaps we should instead think of
these as prototypes: Proto-agent entailments: volitional, sentient,
causer, moves, exists independently Proto-patient entailments:
undergoes change, changes portion by portion, causally affected,
stationary, doesnt exist independently. Under this view: Sam is
more agent-like Both hammer and table are roughly equally
patient-like; hence we have a choice about which becomes the
object. Hit is the same in the two cases; its just that we have an
option about which argument to map to the patient role.
Slide 19
Interim summary Weve adduced some evidence for events involving
an implicit event argument: The same events can be conceptualised
in different ways (e.g. active/passive) but retain the same
thematic roles The thematic roles relate the event to its arguments
Additional roles can be introduced (often through PPs) and these
are just conjoined to the whole interpretation. Weve also seen some
reasons for thinking of roles as being prototypical. This helps in
maintaining the event analysis, and dealing with variable mappings
to the syntax.
Slide 20
Interim summary cont/d Things to note about the analysis: There
is an implicit event argument Thematic roles are relations between
the event and its arguments The event argument is existentially
bound (there is an event...)
Slide 21
Part 2 Event modifiers
Slide 22
Our original example Jones buttered the toast slowly, in the
bathroom, with a knife, at midnight. Here we have: Prepositional
phrases introducing extra or optional arguments (instrument,
location) Manner adverb (slowly) Time adverbial (at midnight) These
are all event modifiers they add some more information to the basic
event of John buttering the toast.
Slide 23
Questions How should event modifiers be analysed? Do verb
modifiers have anything in common with adjective modifiers? Can we
have a single, unified theory?
Slide 24
Some observations Event modifiers exhibit two interesting
phenomena, which, following Landman (2000), well call permute and
drop Permute: 1. John buttered the toast slowly, in the bathroom,
with a knife. 2. John buttered the toast in the bathroom, slowly,
with a knife. We can permute the order of modifiers, and this seems
to make no difference to the interpretation. (One entails the
other) Drop: 1. John buttered the toast slowly, in the bathroom,
with a knife. 2. John buttered the toast in the bathroom with a
knife. If (1) is true, then it entails (2). In a sentence S with n
modifiers, if we form a new sentence S from S by dropping one or
more of these modifiers, then S S.
Slide 25
The parallel with adjectives Adjectival premodifiers of nouns
seem to exhibit the same properties. Permute: John is a dark,
thirty-something, Maltese man Therefore, John is a
thirty-something, dark, Maltese man. Drop: John is a dark,
thirty-something, Maltese man Therefore, John is a
thirty-something, Maltese man
Slide 26
More parallels with adjectives Adjectives: If we set things up
so that were talking about the same individual, then inferences of
the following sort seem to be ok: John is a dark man. John is a
basketball player. Therefore, John is a dark basketball player. But
weve noted that some adjectives are exceptions to this (so- called
intensional adjectives): John is a former president. John is a
basketball player. *Therefore, John is a former basketball
player.
Slide 27
More parallels with adjectives Adverbs: If we set things up so
that were talking about the same event, then inferences of the
following sort seem to be ok: Caesar stabbed Brutus with a knife.
Caesar killed Brutus. Therefore, if the event here is the same one:
Caesar killed Brutus with a knife. But some adverbs resist this
(those related to belief, state of mind etc): Caesar stabbed Brutus
intentionally. Caesar killed Brutus. *Therefore, if the event here
is the same one: Caesar killed Brutus intentionally. NB: it is
crucial that we assume that the event is the same one! (Just as its
crucial in the adjective examples that were talking about the same
individual)
Slide 28
Can we exploit the parallels? Except for a particular class of
adjectives, we find remarkable flexibility in premodification of
nouns, given permute and drop. Recall that, in our earlier
analysis, we distinguished between: Predicative adjectives (John is
tall) which are just properties: tall(j). Type: Attributive
adjectives (John is a tall man) which take a noun predicate ( ) and
return a complex noun predicate (also of type ). So the
attributives have type, >
Slide 29
Attributives Attributive adjectives (John is a tall man) are of
type, >, so theyre not simple predicates. What is their
relationship to their predicative counterparts (John is tall)?
These have simpler types ( ) and so seem more basic. Let A be an
attributive adjective, and A p be its predicative counterpart. We
might analyse the attributive as: This says: the attributive
adjective takes a noun meaning and applies this to x. It also
applies the basic adjectival meaning corresponding to A, to the
same individual x. Crucially, the adjectival meaning is conjoined
to the nominal meaning
Slide 30
Attributives Now, if attributives take a noun predicate and
return a new complex predicate, we know that this can be done
recursively: If we apply the above function to man we get dark man
(which is itself of type ) To get fat dark man, we combine the
above with the entry for fat:
Slide 31
Permute and drop with adjectives The crucial observation is
that the semantic analysis of complex NPs with multiple
attributives views these as conjunctions. The predicates are
applied to the same argument (the same individual is a man, dark
and fat) Logically, if we have P & Q, then: This implies P
(i.e. From P & Q we can drop Q to get P) This is logically
equivalent to Q & P (i.e. We can permute P&Q) This seems to
be exactly what we want...
Slide 32
Adverbs Brutus ate quickly with a fork We want to capture the
same permute/drop phenomena with verb modifiers. So, we might say
that the above involves conjunction. Just like dark fat N is
something like [dark(x) & fat(x) and N(x)] Lets think of this
example as something like: [quick(x) & with-a-fork(x)] Problem:
With John is a dark fat man, we know what x is (namely, John) But
what is the x with quick and with a fork?
Slide 33
Take 1: subject modification Brutus ate quickly with a fork
Heres a suggestion: Maybe quickly modifies the subject (Brutus),
which is also the argument of the verb. eat(b) & quick(b) &
with-a-fork(b) (Simplifying the analysis of with a fork for the
moment) Problem: It doesnt seem natural to say that quickly is a
property of Brutus himself (its a property of what he does)
Consider: Kim tapped Susumo lightly (after Landman, 2000) Kim is a
Sumo wrestler. Hes anything but light. We dont want to say that
lightly(x) involves predicating light of Kim.
Slide 34
Take 2: the event argument Brutus ate the toast quickly with a
fork We can resolve this problem if we take up our earlier
suggestion: Events involve an implicit event argument The modifiers
modify this argument directly.
Slide 35
Compositional interpretation Takes two arguments, but also
introduces an implicit event e Just like an attributive adjective,
requires a verb predicate V to return a complex verb.
Slide 36
Compositional interpretation Brutus ate the toast quickly To
get the full interpretation, we first apply this to the
toast:...and then to Brutus:
Slide 37
Adding modifiers Brutus ate the toast quickly with a knife To
get the permute and drop phenomena, we want to have simple logical
conjunction of quickly and with a knife: Observe that our logical
form says: Quickly is a property of the event (as are the thematic
roles) The thematic roles are relations between the event and
individuals. We get the right entailments: Brutus ate the toast
quickly (drop with a knife) Brutus ate the toast with a knife (drop
quickly) Brutus ate the toast (drop both) Brutus ate the toast with
a knife quickly (permute)
Slide 38
Part 3 Event reference
Slide 39
We are often able to refer back to an event, as though it were
a thing. Compare: John met Sally. She was very pretty. She clearly
refers back to the individual Sally. This suggests that we have
some mental representation of the individual to refer back to.
Usually, we think of these NPs as introducing a variable. So she
can then hook on to the variable introduced by Sally. John met
Sally. It was really traumatic. It refers back to the event. This
suggests that we have some mental representation of the event to
refer back to. Where does it come from? Just as Sally introduces an
individual variable in the discourse, perhaps meet introduces an
event variable.
Slide 40
Event reference Language allows us to nominalise events, i.e.
To take verbs and turn them into nouns (or nouny things, like
gerunds). In fact, we are able to quantify over events the way we
quantify over individuals: Every farmer eats meat. Every burning
consumes oxygen. We could think of these events as predicates. The
noun farmer is semantically a predicate of individuals (the
property of things which are farmers). The noun theft is
semantically a predicate of... What? The things which are thefts
are events. This would also capture the relationship between verbs
and their nominalisations quite straightforwardly.
Slide 41
Summary Weve proposed (following Davidson) that events can be
viewed as introducing an implicit event argument. Under this
theory, we are able to: Deal quite flexibly with events having
different numbers of participants in different contexts (eat, eat
with a knife etc) Deal with event modification in much the same way
that we deal with adjectival modification Account semantically for
permute and drop phenomena