Maienborn (2005)

Maienborn builds an ontology of eventuality types distinguishing between Davidsonian eventualities and Kimian states. Kimian states (11) are found in statives such as love or hate and copular constructions, that is, those predicates in combination with a copular verb such as be in English or ser and estar in Spanish. Davidsonian eventualities (12), in contrast, are typically process verbs such as play, flicker, flap, and the class of Davidsonian-states, or what Dowty called interval predicates, along with other predicates such as sleep, gleam, wait.

(11) Kimian states

“K-states are abstract objects for the exemplification of a property P at a holder x and a time t”.

(Maienborn 2005:303, (47))

(12) Davidsonian eventualities

“Eventualities are particular spatiotemporal entities with functionally integrated participants”.

(Maienborn 2005:279, (1))

Building on the definition of Davisonian eventuality, Maienborn devises a list of ontological properties and diagnostics to test for the presence of this type of eventuality in predicates. First, since Davidsonian eventualities are perceptible they should be acceptable as infinitival complements of perception verbs. Second, they can be located in space and time, therefore, they should be compatible with locative and temporal modifiers. Finally, since they can appear with argument participants, they are expected to be compatible with manner adverbials, instrumentals and the like. The application of these diagnostics shows that posture verbs pattern together with process verbs and differ from statives, which in this proposal are all subsumed under the Kimian state category. As an example, consider the contrasts with perception reports in (13-16), which set apart stative predicates from eventive ones.

(13) a. Ich sah Carol am Fenster stehen (German) I saw Carol at.the window stand D-states b. Ich sah Carol warten / schlafen

I saw Carol wait / sleep

c. Die spanischen Eroberer sahen überall Gold glänzen The Spanish conquerers saw everywhere gold gleam

(Maienborn 2005:284, (10))

(14) a. *Ich sah Carol müde sein copula+SLP

I saw Carol tired be b. *Ich hörte das Radio laut sein I heard the radio loud be

c. *Renate sah Eva auf der Treppe sein Renate saw Eva on the stairs be

(Maienborn 2005:283, (7))

(15) a. *Ich sah Carol blond sein copula+ILP

I saw Carol blond be b. *Ich sah Carol intelligent sein I saw Carol intelligent be

c. *Ich sah Carol Französin sein I saw Carol French be

(Maienborn 2005:283-4, (8))

(16) a. *Ich sah die Tomate 1 Kg wiegen states I saw the tomates 1 Kg weigh

b. *Ich hörte Carol die Antword wissen I heard Carol the answer know

c. *Ich sah meine Tante Romy Schneider ähneln I saw my aunt Romy Schneider resemble

(Maienborn 2005:284, (9))

Nevertheless, even though posture verbs pattern with process verbs in perception reports, in the end Maienborn classifies them as Davidsonian states in view of the fact that they cannot be embedded in the phrase “what happened was …” (17-19), which only accepts eventive predicates as shown below.

(17) Das geschah während … / This happened while …

a. Eva spielte Klavier process verbs

Eva played piano

b. Die Wäsche flatterte in Wind The clothes flapped in.the wind c. Die Kerze flackerte

The candle flickered

(Maienborn 2005:285, (11)

(18) *Das geschah während … / This happened while …

a. Eva stand am Fenster D-states

Eva sood at.the window b. Heidi schlief

Heidi slept

c. Die Schuhe glänzten The shoes gleamed

d. Eva wartete auf den Bus Eva waited for the bus

(Maienborn 2005:285, (12))

(19) *Das geschah während … / This happened while …

a. Eva besaβ ein Haus states

Eva owned a house b. Eva kannte die Adresse Eva knew the address c. Eva ähnelte ihrer Mutter Eva resembled her mother

d. Eva hasste Mozart-Arien Eva hated Mozart arias

(Maienborn 2005:286, (13))

To distinguish posture verbs from other aspectual classes, Maienborn claims that this special type of state counts with a Davidsonian-eventuality, that is, a spatio-temporal unit in their denotation, in contrast to statives and copular constructions, which count with a different sort of eventuality, a Kimian-state. On the other hand, posture verbs share with process verbs the same type of eventuality, the Davidsonian one; however, the size of the interval of which they are true is not alike:

(20) “The D-state verbs […] differ from process verbs in their sub-interval properties:

while processes involve a lower bound on the size of subintervals that are of the same type, states have no such lower bound. That is, states also hold at atomic times […]. If or a certain time interval I it is true that, for example, Eva is standing at the window, sleeping, or the like, this is also true for every subinterval of I. In this respect D-state verbs pattern with statives.”

(Maeinborn 2005:285)

Notice that the view advocated for by Maienborn opposes Dowty’s account of these verbs, for whom they required an interval to be truthfully predicated. I won’t dwell on this matter, but I would like to call attention to the fact that the equivalent Spanish

stative construction with posture verbs uses the copula estar ‘be’ and a participle, that is, sit in its stative meaning would be equivalent to estar sentado ‘be sat’. If Maienborn’s proposal were correct, these predicates in Spanish, and other Romance languages, should be an instance of a Kimian state, that is, a property predicated of an object instead of a spatio-temporal unit, while English and German posture verbs would be an instance of a Davidsonian event. Furthermore, predicates such as estar sentado ‘be sat’

and estar enfermo ‘be ill’ would contain different types of events: a Davidsonian event and a Kimian state, respectively, even though they both require the same copula (see Silvagni 2017 for further discussion of Maienborn’s proposal).