The Time and Conceptual Basis of Aktionsart

Abstract

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the time and conceptual basis of aktionsart. It is now commonly assumed that aktionsart is the basis on which linguistic explanation must be built. Under such assumption it is necessary to have a very good understanding of aktionsart. According to Jackendoff, there coexist two semantic traditions in linguistics: the fregean tradition and the conceptual tradition. The interest in situations is different for each perspective. Vendler proposed a classification of situations. His classification has often been used by linguists in syntactic studies. To understand adequately aktionsart, two different problems must be studied separately: the conceptual interpretation of situations, and the logical properties of situations. The chapter presents some basic concepts, and summarizes Vendler's and Dowty's situations classifications. It reviews situations separately from logical and conceptual perspectives, and proves that logical and conceptual classifications of situations have independent applications for the study of different linguistic phenomena.