For my semantics homework we are asked to test different verb phrases in different environments. I am asked to categorize the different verb phrases (on the basis of their distributions. I am not entirely sure what to do?
So some sample test items would be like:
X climb a mountain
X know French
X see a thing
And some possible environments would be:
will, episodic
present, episodic
present, habitual
present, progressive, episodic
So I have gathered that something like: present, progressive, episodic (X is knowing French) doesn't seem to work. While saying: (X is climbing a mountain) is fine. How exactly am I supposed to figure out what the distributions of the verb phrases are? Not exactly sure what it means for verb phrases to have a certain distribution means, as well.