Timeline for What is the difference between a copula and a transitive verb?
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24 events
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| Apr 13, 2017 at 12:38 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
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| Mar 21, 2012 at 17:55 | comment | added | Cerberus | @AlexB.: Okay, but I think the ordinary stative v. non-stative distinction is not the one Ale wanted to use with copulae. I know there are other aspects, like durative, perfective, terminative... | |
| Mar 21, 2012 at 15:02 | comment | added | Alex B. | @Cerberus, I wasn't talking about copulas vs. act(ion), I was talking about state vs. act (and by the way, there are other types of events, too, see Frawley or any other textbook on semantics). | |
| Mar 21, 2012 at 4:09 | comment | added | Cerberus | @AlexB.: How is live an action, then, since it is not a copula? She lived the life of a rock star. I understand Matt's point that maybe action v. state is not the most unambiguous criterion. It only serves to distinguish stative verbs from non-stative verbs. And how about suddenly, she became violent (she started to hit people). Here became is a copula; but can it be easily determined whether it describes an action or a state? And is that even relevant? See my answer for another attempt at possible criteria. | |
| Mar 20, 2012 at 21:32 | comment | added | Matt Ellen | Any more talk can carry on in this chat room: chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/2848/action-vs-state | |
| Mar 20, 2012 at 21:27 | comment | added | Matt Ellen | @AlexB. That's fine - as I said if this is how linguists categorise things, I accept that. | |
| Mar 20, 2012 at 21:25 | comment | added | Matt Ellen | @Alenanno With John is a Doctor vs John ate an apple - I don't think John is doctoring, just as much as I don't think John is an appling, I think john is in the same way john ate | |
| Mar 20, 2012 at 21:24 | comment | added | Alex B. | Maybe the following quote from Frawley would help. An act is "an event that is controlled, executed, or carried out with a distinct effect on the participants", and it appears to be heterogeneous and internally structured, whereas a state is a "condition of existence or an attribute" which is internally uniform. | |
| Mar 20, 2012 at 21:04 | comment | added | Alenanno | @MattEllen You're not describing an action being performed by the hospital. You're defining the hospital itself. This is the difference. I am not sure about how else to say this. :D | |
| Mar 20, 2012 at 21:02 | comment | added | Matt Ellen | @AlexB. (sorry for the delay, I didn't realise I wasn't logged in at home) the action is the hospital is existing. | |
| Mar 20, 2012 at 17:39 | comment | added | Alex B. | For those who don't go to the library, Frawley's textbook can be (partly) accessed online here books.google.com/… | |
| Mar 20, 2012 at 17:31 | comment | added | Alex B. | @jlawler, That's one of my favorite textbooks on semantics! I didn't mention those terms on purpose since I thought it might create more confusion (for a non-linguist). | |
| Mar 20, 2012 at 17:01 | comment | added | jlawler | Frawley's table of contents: 1. Semantics and Linguistic Semantics: Toward Grammatical Meaning; 2. Five Approaches to Meaning; 3. Entities [e.g, Nouns]; 4. Events [e.g, Verbs]; 5. Thematic Roles [e.g, "Agent", "Patient", "Receiver", etc.]; 6. Space; 7. Aspect; 8. Tense and Time; 9. Modality and Negation; 10. Modification. | |
| Mar 20, 2012 at 16:58 | comment | added | jlawler | Different terms are being used in different conventional ways here. I suggest using the terms in Frawley "Linguistic Semantics" (Erlbaum 1992) as a nice median set; Frawley provides act/state/event/entity subcategorizations, and tests for them that are better than Pure Logic, or even Received Wisdom. | |
| Mar 20, 2012 at 16:07 | comment | added | Alex B. | I'm afraid I don't quite understand you. Will you be more specific? What action is in "Where is the hospital?" | |
| Mar 20, 2012 at 16:03 | comment | added | Matt Ellen | @Alex B. Because being is an action. | |
| Mar 20, 2012 at 16:00 | comment | added | Alex B. | @MattEllen, well, I slightly simplified it. A stative verb describes/represents a situation as one with no internal phases or changes ("a steady state"), and there is no overt focus on the beginning or end of the state (Saeed 2011). Basically, a stative verb assigns some property to its arguments. Why do you disagree from a philosophical point of view? | |
| Mar 20, 2012 at 15:09 | comment | added | Matt Ellen | @Alex B. Is this linguistic terminology? I don't agree with it from a philosophical point of view is all. If that's how linguists categorise things, that's fine. | |
| Mar 20, 2012 at 15:04 | comment | added | Alex B. | @MattEllen, think of an action as a change from one state to another; the question is "What happened?". As for states, there is no change. For example, John ate an apple, before it happened we can't say that John ate an apple is true, whereas John is a student is always true. | |
| Mar 20, 2012 at 14:39 | history | edited | Alenanno | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 721 characters in body
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| Mar 20, 2012 at 12:52 | history | edited | Alenanno | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
Improved answer
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| Mar 20, 2012 at 12:34 | comment | added | Alenanno | @MattEllen Well, I'd say because it's not. :D But I understand this is not a sufficient explanation. I'll address that. | |
| Mar 20, 2012 at 12:12 | comment | added | Matt Ellen | Thanks, Alenanno. I don't understand why the state of being something is not considered an action. | |
| Mar 20, 2012 at 12:07 | history | answered | Alenanno | CC BY-SA 3.0 |