Subject: aspect , eventuality types and nominal semantics ; filip , hana

filip , hana ; aspect , eventuality types and nominal semantics ; 0-8153 - 3271 - 8 , cloth ; 321 pages , $ 71 ; garland publishing ; outstanding dissertations in linguistics this book examines the interplay between the semantics of noun phrases and verbal predicates , with an emphasis on data drawn from czech and english , and comparisons to german and finnish . the primary focus is on shifts in readings assigned to verbal predicates between event-readings and process-readings , often called ' aspect shift ' or ' coercion ' , and how these shifts are related to the semantics of constituent noun phrases . the book examines quantificational and definite interpretations of determinerless noun phrases in czech that are induced by the semantics of grammatical aspect ( perfective and imperfective ) , and by semantic properties of verbal affixes . three main these are defended in this book . the first is that grammatical aspect and eventuality types ( state , event , and process ) are related in so far as some of their semantic properties can be modeled in terms of mereological ' part-of ' relation ( her , as a complete join semilattice ) , and this is what accounts for their systematic interactions . a second thesis is that the thematic structure of verbs governs the seemingly disparate ways in which the interactions between verbal predicates and nominal arguments are manifested . and third , we can provide a unified analysis for the various interactions between verbal predicates and nominal arguments within a constraint-based ( or unification-based ) approach to natural language description . the book also gives a detailed analysis of certain verbal affixes ( chiefly prefixes ) in slavic languages , arguing that they have the semantic properties of quantifiers , with the variable ( event or individual ) they bind also determined by the thematic structure of verbs . this book will be of interest to a wide range of linguists concerned with aspect and how it interacts with lexical semantics , morphology , syntax and quantification . available for review e - mail : infor @ garland . com
