Aspect in Ancient Greek - Nijmegen Centre for Semantics

70 Chapter 3. Aspect in formal semantics(93) a. #John has played the sonata.b. John has gone to the pub.A final remark on aspectual classifications. In most classifications the classof telic predicates (predicates with which a poststate is associated) and theclass of bounded predicates (predicates that introduce inherent boundaries foreventualities) are considered to be co-extensive. Egg (1994, 1995) argues thatin fact they are not: the whole class of bounded predicates is compatible withfor-adverbials, but only some of them (the telic ones) combine readily withthe perfect. It is important to note that Egg uses the word boundedness forwhat Krifka calls telicity. As I said, I will follow Egg’s terminology, and fromnow on use boundedness even in the context of Krifka’s account.3.3.2 Moens and Steedman’s Aspectual NetworkMoens and Steedman (Moens 1987, Moens and Steedman 1986, 1988) proposean aspectual classification which they consider to be flexible rather than fixed,allowing transitions between aspectual classes. The classes and the transitionsconstitute an Aspectual Network, cf. Figure 3.7, where the permissible shiftsare indicated with arcs.+punctualE V E N T S−punctualS T A T E S+consequence−consequenceCULMINATIONPOINT+prep. processiteration−culminative −eventCULMINATEDPROCESS+culminativeeventPROCESSin progressCONSEQUENTSTATEPROGRESSIVESTATELEXICALSTATEHABITUALSTATEFigure 3.7: Moens and Steedman’s Aspectual NetworkSome of these transitions are the result of input restrictions of temporaladverbials or grammatical aspects. Moens and Steedman were the first to usetheir analysis the perfect is restricted to culminated process predicates, that is punctualtelic predicates.