Only states can be gradable

Bibliographic Data

ID20344361
AuthorsZoltan Zato (0000-0002-9674-8261, Centro de Estudios de la RAE y de la ASALE 2020–2023 , Madrid , Spain, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume41
Issue2
Pages247-286
Publication date2024-06-25
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Linguistic Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0167-6318 • E-ISSN: 1613-3676
PublisherWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1515/tlr-2024-2009
OpenAlexW4396660269
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited58

In this paper I study Spanish sound emission verbs ( sonar ‘to ring’) and degree achievements ( enfriar ‘to cool’), which are intriguing insofar as they turn out to express gradable events, and argue that they are not gradable, although they can trigger quantity readings whereby there is a degree whose value changes throughout the event. Thus, my analysis aligns with other works on different languages (Japanese, German, Catalan and English) that have already pointed out that stativity is necessary to license gradability in certain syntactic constructions. However, my proposal goes a step forward insofar as it explicitly formulates that events cannot be gradable and explains in precise terms why gradability requires stativity. Assuming that activities are divisible into intervals and states into subintervals, I argue that gradability is only possible for the latter because it consists in measuring subintervals in intensity

Acoustics · German · License · Linguistics · Physics · Computer Science · Linguistics and Discourse Analysis · Mathematics · Natural Language Processing Techniques · Philosophy · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation

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