PART 1THE COGNITIVE FRAMEWORK

CHAPTER 1Categories in thought and language

CATEGORIES
What are categories?“A category is the conceptualisation of a collection of similar experiences
that are meaningful and relevant to us”categories are formed for things that matter in a
community
“Categories are conceptual in nature, and many, but not means all, of our conceptual categories
are also laid down in language as linguistic categories”NOT 100% TRUE: categories = what we do
and experience, what we see, what we hear, read and say
Categories formed on the basis of your own individual experiencesPRIVATE CONCEPTUAL
CATEGORIES
Linguistic categories shared by the members of a speech communityPUBLIC CATEGORIES
Any category is part of an overall system of categories: language is sometimes seen as an
ecological systemin it, linguistic categories occupy an “ecological niche” like livings beings in
nature
Special meaning of a linguistic category: defined relative to its neighbouring categories and the
system at largethe introduction of a new category affects other categories EX. ecological niches
originated as a result of the introduction of a new lexical category
Grammar of a language: also an ecological system whose constructions occupy ecological niches

LANGUAGE, CATEGORIES AND “ECOLOGY”

ASSIMILATIONusing existing categories (=ways of thinking) to deal with a new object or situation
ACCOMMODATIONadjusting categories sometimes creating new ones to deal with a new object
or situation
EQUILIBRATIONwhen existing categories are sufficient
(Piaget, 1952)

CATEGORISATION
The process of establishing categories within an ecological system is known as categorisation
Categorisation = drawing “conceptual boundaries” and giving structure to an unstructured world
Categories are perceptual and linguisticperception is individual, but influenced by our social
interactions (we learn to speak about and think about things in a way that others accept and
understand) + language reflects a particular view of reality, but is neither objective nor universal
Different cultures often categorise the world differently and lay this down in their linguistic
categoriesthese linguistic categories influence our perceptual categoriesa language imposes
its own conceptual grid upon our world of experience
Culture-specific lexical categoriesEX. in the Celtic languages (Gaelic, Welsh, Cornish, Breton),
there is a colour-word “glas” which refers to the full blue-green spectrum
Like lexical categories, grammatical categories are based on meaningful experience of the world
Categories do not describe objective reality but are based on a community’s experience and
conception of realitywe can only see reality in relation to us as part of it

INTERNAL STRUCTURE OF CATEGORIES

Prototype and periphery
Category: composed of various similar memberssome of these types fit the idea of the category
better than otherseasy to see with things
Prototypesthe “best example” of their categoryprototypical members
Less typical examplesperipheral members
Also true of abstract categories as nouns and verbs (grammatical categories display different
degrees of membership)a really “nouny” noun is a thing (a concrete object, not too big and not
too small, not a part of something else, etc.) like book, pen, table + a really “verby” verb is an
action (rather than a state) and it is probably used transitively and in the active voice like do,
make, give

GROUPING CONCEPTS INTO CATEGORIES: -onomies, frames, domains

Conceptual groupings of categories
Categories form part of larger groupings of categories. In particular, categories:
1. Are included in a hierarchy, or taxonomy, of categories
2. May be a part of another categorymay be included in a partonomy
3. Form part of a coherent area of conceptualisation, especially frames and domains

Taxonomies
Taxonomies are a type of conceptual hierarchythey are “higher-order” (superordinate)
categories which contain members of lower-order categories
The members of a higher category are prototypically structured
Taxonomies express the concept “X is a type of Y”
Taxonomies are purely conceptual in naturethere is no such hierarchical order of categories in
reality
Taxonomic hierarchies also apply to words and are known as hyponymiesthe superordinate
word is described as a hyperonym, the subordinate word as a hyponym
The type of category that come to our mind most readily in our everyday interactions belong to
the middle or basic levelterms which denote basic-level categories, basic-level terms, have
special properties: are simple in form, are used frequently, evoke rich images
The basic-level category – train, car, plane, etc. – has the simplest wordsthese are the words
that children and foreign-language learners acquire first + they are the words that people are most
likely to use in spontaneous speech

Partonomies
Partonomies (or meronymies) are another type of conceptual hierarchythey also consist of
superordinate categories which contain members of lower-order categories
Taxonomic hierarchies have to be distinguished from part-whole hierarchies, in which categories
are interrelated by part of-relationspart-whole hierarchies are known as partonomies
Partonomies express this concept: “X is a part/component of Y” or “Y has (an) X”
Here, the relationship is not of type but of belonging to, being a component part of, etc. the
different parts each have a distinct identity and functionall of these main parts consist of further
parts
As with taxonomies, the basic-level terms are the simplest words and have the more general
meaningthe other terms are specialised, focusing on one particular element and/or
functionthe more specialised the function, the more technical the term
Partonomies refer to whole entities and parts of them in the real world as we conceive of
themeach part is unique in that it has its own place and function within the total structure

FRAMES AND DOMAINS

Frames
The parts of a thing are conceptually integrated within a structured whole
The coherent “package of knowledge” that surrounds a category and is activated when we use or
hear a word is known as a conceptual frameall our coherent bits of knowledge are structured in
conceptual frames
Our coherent knowledge is structured in framesframes let us understand the nature of
thingseach component part has a place and function within the global structureEX. if your car
won’t start, you check the fuel first, then the battery, etc., because of your knowledge of the “car”
frame: these are the components that make it start
It is normal to refer to the whole even when we really mean just a part of itwe use the basic-
level term when we really mean something more specific EX. a part of the whole, or a specific type
of something
Such parts of a whole are known as an entity’s active zonespeaking of the whole thing but
meaning its active zone is very commonthis way of speaking comes to us so naturally that we
have to think twice before we realize that we are not using the words at their face value
Recognising an active zone is a major cognitive achievement by the hearer
Our knowledge of the world, structured into frames, helps us to identify what the relevant parts or
features arethis can result in “getting our wires crossed” or “getting the wrong end of the stick”,
or humour/ironyequally, if we always use specific/technical vocabulary, people think we’re
strange
Our shared knowledge of frames also governs communicationwe always understand acts of
communication with respect to our knowledge of frames

Domains
Categories relate not only to taxonomies, partonomies and frames, but also to conceptual
domains
A conceptual domain is the general field to which a category or frame belongs in a given
situationEX. a knife belongs to the domain of “eating/food preparation” when used for cutting
bread on the breakfast table, but to the domain of “fighting” when used as a weapon
Although we may use the basic-level term, we are probably thinking of different kinds of knives for
these different domains
Of course, a murderer could use a kitchen knife, and you could use a dagger to cut food with, but
these are not prototypical for the frame associated with the domain
Whereas frames are specific knowledge structures surrounding categories, conceptual domains
are very general areas of conceptualisation
Conceptual domains crosscut with frames and allow us to link frames to one anotherthe
possible links of categories and frames by means of domains are myriad

CATEGORY EXTENSION: METAPHOR and METONYMY

Conceptual shifts
Ability to evoke frames and domains allow to extend inventory of conceptual and linguistic
categories
We are constantly being confronted with innovations and changes in the worldwe need to
categorise these conceptually and linguistically
There are several ways to create new words and concepts:
– New words
• Compounds (new phrasal verbs, compound nouns)
• Borrowings from other languages
• Use of “productive affixes” (-oholic, -gate, -meister)
– Extended (stretched, or “loose”) meanings
• Metonymyoperates within the same frame or domain (involves contiguity)
• Metaphoroperates across two different domains (involves similarity)

Conceptual shifts: metonymy

Metonymy is the use of a word to “stand for” things that are associated with it
• “the White House” = American President + American political power in general
• “the whole room fell silent” = “everybody in the room”
• “text me!” = send me information via text message
• “They’re looking for new blood” = new people (with ‘fresh’ ideas, a new ‘gene pool’ to promote
‘healthy growth’
Metonymy is so common and typical that we often do not notice it
Many people would simply consider these examples as specific meanings of the wordsthe word
and its intended meaning belong to the same conceptual frame
Sometimes it is a part of a wholein this case the proper term is ‘synecdoche’

Conceptual shifts: metaphor

The traditional view of metaphor (Aristotle!) is as a kind of ‘implicit comparison’, but more
recently, metaphor is NOT a type of comparison…
Metaphor is, instead, a form of MAPPINGprojection of one set of conceptual entities onto
another set of conceptual entities
• A wave of protest
• The fight against crime
• A healthy bank balance
Metaphors have 3 essential components:
– The source domain, or ‘vehicle term’
– The target domain, or ‘topic’
– The ‘grounds’, i.e. the underlying rationale
• visual similarity
• functional equivalence

Conceptual metonymy and metaphor

Metaphor and metonymy operate at the level of the word but also at a higher, cognitive level

Conceptual metaphor
“Orientational metaphors” are based on our bodily experience of the world
– They activate an image schema, which makes us visualise entities (like our bodies) in space
• up–down schema
– happy is up, more is up, heavy weight is down, etc.
• contact schema
– Communication is connection, understanding is holding
• front–back schema
– The future is in front; things to forget are behind (and unseen)
• container schema
– Our emotions fill us up, memory is a place, time is a container
• motion schema
– Life is a journey, progress is movement forward

CHAPTER 2Cognitive operations in thought and language

CONSTRUALS
9 dimensions of construal:
“Ways of seeing things”
1. Viewing frame
2. Generality vs specificity
3. Viewpoint
4. Objectivity vs subjectivity
5. Mental scanning
6. Fictive motion
These six are also collectively known as “viewing operations”
Types of “prominence”
7. Windowing of attention
8. Figure and ground
9. Profiling

1. Viewing frame
In viewing a scene I may take a more distant or a closer position
– This gives me a wider or narrower viewing frame.
• Imagine the scene of a train travelling from Civitanova Marche to Macerata:
– Seen from a ‘birds-eye’ view, i.e. from the air, via satellite or on a map, we have the whole train
route view, including its termini in the two towns and the surroundings
– When travelling on the train, however, the view from the window only lets us see that part of
the route which we are passing at any given moment

Maximal viewing frame

“The train goes from Civitanova to Macerata”

Restricted viewing frame

“The train is going from Civitanova to Macerata”

2. Generality vs specificity
Generality / specificity relate to the precision with which a scene is viewed or conceived
– Distant viewgeneral impression
– Close-up/ magnified viewdetails
This idea often interacts with viewing frames
We often use the term granularity to refer to generality and specificitythis is a metaphor from
photography: a grainy photograph is not in sharp focus – the grains (pixels) are too big
Taxonomies reflect levels of generality and specificity.
– Higher-level categories/wordsgeneral construal
– Lower-level categoriesspecific construal
Newspaper reportthe text starts with the superordinate (vehicle) in the headline + then uses
basic terms (taxi) + later, hyponyms are introduced (Ford Cortina sedan, Corsa hatchback) + once
we know the details, we generalise (Ford, Corsa)

3. Viewpoint
In visual perception, all scenes are viewed from somebody’s viewpoint or vantage point,
– i.e. from the point where the observer is positioned.
In cognition we may also adopt another’s point of view.
– For example, the same newly released CD may be announced as a new release (“newly out”) or a
new arrival (“newly in”).
• New release = record company’s point of view
• New arrival = record store’s point of view.
• When we look at the world, each one of us tends to describe it from our viewpoint.
– The ‘facts’ are the same, but we all look on them from different angles.
Some expressions have a built-in viewpoint on a situation, e.g.
– Come / go
– Bring /take
• These deictic verbs inherently adopt the speaker’s viewpoint
– If the motion is directed towards the speaker, the speaker’s viewpoint is typically described by
using come, bring
– If the motion is directed away from the speaker’s location, go / take are used.
In dialogue, we have two options:
1. The speaker (in dialogue: each of the speakers) keeps their own viewpoint relative to the
hearer.
– This construal may appear neutral, but it is not.
• It is uncooperative (see later in chapter 2)
2. One of the speakers ‘accommodates’ to the other’s viewpoint
– This construal may appear strange, but it is normal.
• It is cooperative; it changes the status of the speakers to “we” rather than “you and/or me”

4. Objectivity vs subjectivity
• We like to think that we see the world objectively.
– But we are part of the world that we perceive, so we see the world in terms of our relation to it
• Objectivity = the scene is detached from the speaker
• Subjectivity = the scene involves the speaker
• These are not absolute stances
– A speaker may construe a scene more objectively or more subjectively.
• Occasionally, s/he refers to him/herself using the 3rd person, which can give an air of objectivity
– Clearly how objective it seems depends on the rest of the context

• A statement can also be made with no reference to the person who knows/ believes/ thinks the
information
– “It is a statement of fact rather than a statement of preference. [Assad] has barrel-bombed his
own population and slaughtered so many of his own countrymen. It is for them rather than for us
that he cannot play a long-term role in running the country”
• This also gives an air of objectivity
– But note that modal verbs and metaphorical language indicate opinions (i.e. subjectivity).

5. Mental scanning
• Mental scanning refers to phasing in time and in language can be sequential or summary
– Sequential scanning is manifested in the use of tense
• i.e. any situation that is described by a conjugated verb form involves sequential scanning
• N.b. the chronological sequence may be reported event-byevent or in a different order: the
tenses let you reconstruct the unfolding of events
– Summary scanning is manifested in the lack of tense
• i.e. non-finite verbs and participles; nominalised verbs.
• The situation is seen as timeless, and all the phases of a situation are activated simultaneously.
• (i.e. the situation is viewed as a THING)

6. Fictive motion
• Fictive motion is a special kind of mental scanning involving directionality.
– It is the construal of a static scene in terms of motion.
• It is also known as abstract, mental, virtual, or subjective motion
• In physical motion, the moving object continually changes its location in time
• In fictive motion, our eyes mentally scan an imaginary path.
– Fictive motion is common in literature (of course!), but also in some specialised genres, including
travel writing, and architecture.

7. Windowing of attention
• Our brain subconsciously selects those stimuli for our attention that are salient or important to
us.
• A well-known case is the so-called “party phenomenon”.
– At a party there may be several conversations going on around you at the same time;
nevertheless you understand what the person you are talking to is saying or you might hear your
name spoken by another person who you were not listening to.
• This is because you mentally filter out all the irrelevant bits of conversations.
• You may become aware of this when you listen to a tape-recording of such a conversation:
– all you hear is garbled snatches of conversation
– you can no longer focus on any one speaker.
• Focusing one’s attention is a cognitive operation which “windows” our attention on selected
elements of a scene and downplays other elements.
– In brief: we focus on some elements and ignore, or filter out, other elements (these ignored
elements are present, and we know that they are present, but we pay no attention to them)
– In our linguistic construal of a scene we also window our attention on selected elements.
• A single scene may often be described in different ways by windowing our attention on particular
elements of it.
• A well-known example which nicely illustrates this point is a commercial transaction.
– The ‘commercial event’ frame comprises the following elements: a buyer, a seller, goods,
money, and the exchange of the goods and money.
– When a speaker wants to describe a commercial transaction, she can bring any of these
elements into focus by using different verbs: buy, sell, pay, spend, charge, and cost.
• Each of these verbs evokes the ‘commercial event’ frame, but does so in different ways.
• By choosing a given verb, attention is focused on some of the elements of the frame, while
others are downplayed, i.e. they are not mentioned at all or their inclusion is optional.
8. Figure and ground
• When we look out of the window, we may see trees or buildings silhouetted against the sky.
– Here, what we notice first are the trees/buildings: they are salient. We call the object of our
focus the figure.
– The sky serves as the non-salient background. We call this the ground
• When a bird comes flying by and perches on the treetop, the bird becomes the new figure
because our attention is fixed on it
– As a result, the tree recedes into the background together with the sky.
• This psychological principle also applies to language.
• In English, this means that we first mention the figure (as subject of the sentence) and place the
ground in the later part of the sentence
• This is why we say “The bird is on the treetop” rather than “The treetop is under the bird”
• If the two entities are of equal size and prominence, we can alternate between figure and
(back)ground.
– They must alternate – just like in the Rubin vase image where we may see a white vase or two
faces in profile, but never both at the same time.
– Likewise, in language, we can speak of either the cinema near the supermarket or the
supermarket near the cinema.
• The ground gives us the context that we need to correctly identify and understand the figure.
– It is sometimes referred to as “given” information, in contrast to the “topic” expressed by the
figure
• English expresses the ground using prepositional phrases.

9. Profiling
• Profiling refers to a special kind of figure/ground relation is when there is an inherent relation
between the two.
– E.g. Sunday is one of the seven days of the week
• When we use the word Sunday, we profile this day relative to its conceptual base, i.e. week.
– The base is the larger conceptual area which acts as a reference point
– The profiled word is the one we are focusing on
• We can test if a conceptual unit is a base (or not) by applying the test for kind of- or part of-
relations.
MENTAL SPACES
Building mental spaces
• When we speak about things in the world we constantly evoke all kinds of knowledge that we
associate with these conceptual units.
– These temporary packages of knowledge (Chapter 1) are evoked on-line in communication and
are known as mental spaces
• We typically evoke mental spaces in communication using space-builders
– Base space (or reality space) represents our shared knowledge of the real world, here and now
– A built space may be factual or imagined/hypothetical
• it is constructed in communication to convey/interpret meaning
• The base space and built spaces contain elements that map onto each other (similar to
metaphor).
– e.g. " I want to buy a book".
• The built space is my desire space.
• In reality space, a book refers to any book in general
• In my desire space, it can be a general or a specific book.
• Space-builders are expressions or structures which allow us to interpret meaning with reference
to alternative time and space.
– They let us move away from ‘here and now’ to an alternative time and place
• “Alternative time” means:
– Past, future, and/or hypothetical time (unreal, impossible, possible)
• “Alternative places” include:
– Physical location in space
– Physical location in time, including imaginary locations
– Other people’s viewpoints and feelings
• Space-builders allow us to temporarily construct
– Potentiality space, e.g. I think..., it might...
– Time space, e.g. when..., recently..., last year...
– Counterfactual space, e.g. If I were you..., if we had known...
– Desire space, e.g. I wish..., what I’d really like is...
– etc.
• They are typically expressed in language by
– Prepositional phrases (manner/ place/ time complementation)
– Adverbs (manner complementation)
– Connectives (sequentials, causatives)
– Modal verbs (“subjectifiers”)
– Some lexical-semantic features of nouns and verbs
• e.g. ‘want’ or ‘wish’ express desire (I= don’t have it now but imagine having it)
a. On April 15, 1912, the “Titanic” sank on her maiden voyage.
• The prepositional phrase on April 15, 1912, seen from the present time, builds up the factual
historical space
b. If the ship had slowed down, it would not have sunk.
• The conditional conjunction if and the past perfect prompt a counterfactual space, i.e. the
opposite of what actually happened
– Conditionals are built on a foundation space (the condition, “if”) and an expansion space (the
hypothesis resulting from the condition, “then”)
c. Such catastrophes could also happen in our times.
• The modal verb could opens a potentiality space
– “possible” conditions, i.e. possible future events
• When we talk about real things, we do not need to use “reality space-builders”, because reality
is the ‘default’ view

Conceptual blending
• The integration of two or more spaces into a “blended space” is known as conceptual blending.
– A blended space is a combination of the features present in two (or more) mental spaces
– It is considered to be a new, single, (usually) temporary space in its own right
• Blending is well-known as a word formation process.
– Brunch is morphologically composed of breakfast and lunch.
– Semantically, certain elements of the input spaces ‘breakfast’ and ‘lunch’ are projected into the
blended space and some additional meanings emerge
• An example of conceptual blending is the “desktop” interface on your computer
– The user...
• moves icons around on a simulated desktop
• gives alphanumeric commands
• makes selections by pointing at options on menus.
– Users make reference to their knowledge of
• office work
• interpersonal commands
• pointing
• choosing from lists
• All of these are “inputs” to the imaginative invention of a blended scenario.
“In France, a sexual affair would not have harmed Clinton.”
– France: affairs are ‘harmless’
– America: affairs are ‘unacceptable’ and damaging
If Clinton were a French president AND if he had a sexual affair THEN it would not be damaging
(counterfactual space)
BUT he was an American president so it was damaging (reality space)

• Fictive motion and blending

“The road runs northwest through the city, through Kelvinside, Anniesland, Blairdardie, Clydebank
and Dumbarton, before turning north to head up the western shore of Loch Lomond. At Tarbet,
Argyll and Bute, the A83 branches off west to Campbeltown.”
– the verbs run, turn, head up, and branch off evoke a motion space (using “fictive motion”) while
the situation described evokes a static space
– The incompatibility of the two input spaces is resolved in the blended space, in which the static
scene is motional.

INFERENCES
• Focusing on cognition raises some problems for linguistics, because there are other aspects of
meaning that cognition does not account for, namely
– contextual meaning
– interaction and co-creation of meaning
– inferred meaning
– Intended meaning
• These are all aspects of pragmatics – a massive area of linguistics and psychology
• Hearer’s mental contribution in comprehension.
What happens when we listen?
– Most people assume that the hearer simply “decodes” the message sent to him by the speaker.
• i.e. the hearer extracts the meaning of the words transmitted by the speaker.
– But speakers in everyday discourse usually “mean more than they actually say”
• the words express less than the full intended meaning in context
• sometimes the words and the intended meaning do even match!
– In both cases the hearer has to “infer” the information which the speaker intended to convey.

Conversational implicatures
• In everyday communication, the inferences drawn by the hearer are not necessarily valid
conclusions, but only plausible guesses.
• They normally add to the literal information expressed directly
e.g. a. Have you read The Times?
b. Have you read Pride and Prejudice?
– It is normal to interpret (a) as asking whether I have read The Times today, and (b) as asking
whether I have ever read Pride and Prejudice.
• The enriched are based on our encyclopaedic knowledge
– This knowledge allows the listener to draw further inferences,
• e.g. newspapers are read to be informed about current events;
• novels are read for pleasure (or exams!)
• The “plausible inferences” are known as conversational implicatures and are part of H.P. Grice’s
important work on the Cooperative Principle, i.e. the way in which language is used with
maximum efficiency and effect to achieve rational communication
• The Cooperative principle states that in normal conversation, people really do try to
communicate with each other and in doing so they:
– Say things that they believe to be true
– Give just as much information as necessary (no more, no less)
– Say things that are relevant to the meaning in the context of utterance
– Try to be clear and to the point, using logical sequences and avoiding ambiguity

CHAPTER 3From thought to language

CONCEPTUAL AND LINGUISTIC STRUCTURE
Things and relations
At the level of thought, we need no more than two basic types of conceptual units: things and
relations.
– Things are autonomous conceptual units
• Things are typically expressed as nouns
– Relations are dependent conceptual units
• Relations are typically expressed using verbs and adjectives.
– A relation and one or more thing(s) combine to form a conceptual core and, ultimately, a
situation.
• The linguistic counterpart of a conceptual situation is the sentence, the basic independent unit
of grammar.
• The term thing stands (loosely) for a noun.
• Things are conceptual units which are
– Independent
– Stable over time
• Physical things are the most prototypical.
– e.g. cows; computers.
• Abstract things are less prototypical
– E.g. illnesses; joy.
• Things are usually related to other conceptual units.
– E.g. “bicycle” =
• the vehicle that I am riding
• an object that needs to be fixed
• a possession that has been stolen from me
• Situations such as these are held together by relations
– RIDE
• the vehicle that I am riding
– FIX
• an object that needs to be fixed by my mechanic
– STEAL
• a possession that somebody has stolen from me
• Relations link things
• They are dependent conceptual units
– Compared to things, they are less stable over time
– The relation changes subtly depending on the things it pulls together… so verbs actually change
their meaning slightly every time they are used with a different subject and object
• Relations are expressed as verbs
– They are also expressed by other parts of speech (except nouns and determiners), i.e.
• Adjectives
• Adverbs
• Prepositions
• Conjunctions
• We can conceptually switch from things to relations and from relations to things.
– We can convert nouns into verbs, or verbs into nouns, adjectives into nouns, etc.
• This is not just a grammar change.
– When we express a relation as a noun (thing) we make it more stable over time and place.
• cut  (a) cut
• explode  (an) explosion
– This stability comes from excluding the subject and object, i.e. the variable things that the
original relation pulled together.
• Relations that are expressed as nouns, i.e. as things, can also be quantified and qualified
– e.g. many explosions, a gigantic explosion
• Conversely, we can convert things into relations
• When we do this, we create new relational categories
– The conceptual stability of the thing is weakened because it is now a relation which serves to
pull together (other) things
• to press clothes with a hot iron -> to iron clothes
• to heat food in a microwave oven -> to microwave food

Conceptual cores
• The conceptual core is a conceptual unit consisting of a relation and the things related by it,
(=the things that are participating in the relation) e.g.
a. I went to the cinema.
b. The Minister made a statement.
c.(i) There are two goldfish in the pond
c.(ii) There are two goldfish in the pond
d. John invited Jane because he likes her.
• These examples illustrate different kinds of relations
– a. intransitive verb, b. transitive verb, c.(i) link verb [copula],
c.(ii) prepositional phrase, d. conjunction + dependent clause
• The different structures are conceptually similar

Conceptual cores; figure & ground

– The relational expressions (verbs, prepositions, conjunctions) describe conceptual relations that
hold between conceptual entities within a conceptual core.
• The structure of the conceptual core is not random, but is based on the principle of figure and
ground
– One entity in a conceptual core is the figure
• =object of interest
– The other serves as the ground
• =reference point
• The sequencing of figure and ground is determined by the nature of the relation.
– “the cat is in the garden”
• cat is the figure entity and garden is the ground entity.
– “the bar is just opposite the university”
• bar is the figure and university is the ground

Conceptual cores; figure & ground; and transitivity

The conceptual structure underlying the main different grammatical constructions is illustrated in
the examples.
a. I went to the cinema
b. The Minister made a statement
c. (i) There are two goldfish
c. (ii) two goldfish in the pond
d. John invited Jane because he likes her
• The relations here clearly involve two conceptual entities.
– The relations require two linguistic entities (figure and ground).
– If a second conceptual entity, i.e. the ground, is not expressed, the linguistic structure often
becomes ungrammatical:
• *I went [where? how?]; *The minister made [what?]; *are two goldfish; *the
goldfish in [what?]; *John invited Jane because [why?]

Conceptual cores; figure & ground; and (in)transitivity

• There are thousands of examples in which only one conceptual entity, the figure of a conceptual
core, is explicitated in the structure of language, e.g.
– Copula constructions (noun + BE + adj)
• “Sylvia is tall”
– Intransitive verbs (noun + verb)
• “The baby is sleeping”
• Yet a conceptual core consists of a relation with two or more conceptual entities participating in
it…
– So what is the second entity (the ground) here? and why can it remain implicit?

Implicit ground entities + adjective

• In “Sylvia is tall.”, ‘Sylvia’ is the figure, and ‘is’ is the relation ... but what is the ground that
relates to the adjective tall?
• Here we can find the ground in the domain of height relative to a certain type of people, i.e.
relative to specific frames.
– We can make such a frame explicit, e.g.
• Our daughter Sylvia is tall for a young girl
• Sylvia is tall for her age.
• Sylvia is tall compared to her other friends.
– Or we can leave it out
• Because thanks to our ‘human person’ frame, we all know approximately how tall people tend to
be (at a certain age, depending on whether they are male or female, etc.). Somebody who is
described as tall must be taller than this ‘norm’.
Height-age is part of the ‘young girl’ frameit is conceptually present and invoked as a ground in
our understanding of the meaning of the property tall.
• Think of superlative adjectives
– In particular, think of some prototypical superlative adjectives
• e.g. BEST, WORST
– How do you use these adjectives?
• The best/worst [noun] + GROUND
– Harry had just had the best birthday of his life.
– He had been the owner of the best broom in the world for a few short hours.
– Moody was the best Auror the Ministry ever had

Implicit ground entities + V-int

• Intransitive verbs do not require a ground to be explicitly mentioned.
– This is especially true when the verb can be used both transitively and intransitively
• Consider the verb drink. (transitive/intransitive)
1. Martin drank a glass of water. [past event]
2. Martin drank. [past habit]
3. Martin used to drink. [past habit]
4. Martin drinks. [present habit]
5. Martin is drinking [present event]
6. Martin is drinking a beer [present event]
• The grounds are implicit: if none are stated, we assume it is an alcoholic drink, because if we
bother talking somebody drinking regularly, it can’t be just in order to survive!
Not all (in)transive verbs allow us to do this, e.g. bite:
– Conceptually, the event of biting requires an object that is bitten
1. Our dog bit the postman. [past event]
2. *Our dog bit [past event]
3. Our dog used to bite. [past habit]
4. Our dog bites. [present habit]
5. *Our dog bites the postman. [present habit (?!)]
– There are many possible objects a dog may bite, each relating to a particular domain:
• biting bones ->‘eating’ domain
• biting a cat -> ‘fighting’ domain
• biting a burglar -> ‘guarding’ domain
• biting of people ->‘aggression’ domain
In examples 1-5, the domain is “aggression” (or perhaps “guarding”)
• When we are talking about habits, we can omit the object
– Our dog bites.
– The sentence is understood to mean ‘our dog bites people’.
• This meaning is determined by the principle of relevance
– If we talk about a dog biting, the only relevant meaning is that the dog is ‘aggressive towards
humans’.
– Saying things like *Our dog bites people would not be very informative and may even sound
strange – threatening, or humorous, perhaps.
– And if we say *Our dog bites the postman, we are reporting its peculiar habit.... Poor old
postman! – our dog thinks you are a burglar!
• Our dog bit (eliminate the paragraph on p.45!)
• Some verbs are inherently intransitive (i.e. never transitive)
– e.g. swim, go
• Intransitive verbs do not take a direct object
– They still require a ground entity.
– Although they do not have a direct object, they commonly have one or more obligatory
complements
• We say GO+place / GO+manner, not just “I went.”
– “Manner” adjuncts include speed, means of transport, manner of movement, companions, etc.
a. Peggy swam across the lake. [past event]
b. Peggy swam. [past habit/ (past event) ]
c. Peggy swims. [present habit]
d. Peggy is/was swimming. [present/past event in progress]
• We can easily provide the implicit grounds with Peggy’s habit of swimming vs. event of
swimming
– She swims, or used to swim, in water
• i.e. water that people normally swim in, e.g. swimming pool, sea.
– We assume that she probably swims, or used to swim, for fun or for sport.
– Peggy swam across the lake, therefore, is marked
• Swimming competition?, Act of bravery/to save someone?
• We can also omit the second conceptual entity when we use the progressive aspect, as in Peggy
is swimming or Peggy was swimming
– The progressive sentences do not describe habits – they express specific events of swimming.
– Because the grounds are not specified, we “know” (i.e., we infer) that she is/was swimming in
the sea or a pool, and not in a giant bath tub or in a beer tank!
• The second conceptual entity can be ‘suppressed’ (not explicitly mentioned)
– Only if it is routinely associated with the event described by the verb,
• With habits this is possible because they recur and gain the status of a property
– With the progressive aspect this is possible because its restricted viewing frame makes us focus
on the progression of an event, and “defocus” other parts of the scene

SITUATIONS: SENTENCES
Conceptual core: Grammatical core
• The grammatical core consists of a relation (verb, etc.) and its obligatory conceptual entities
=participants i.e. subject, plus obligatory direct and indirect objects
• In more simple terms, it consists of
1. The subject
2. The verb
3. Any obligatory objects or complements
• This is why we use “SVO” to refer to the core grammatical components of a sentence
• Just referring to SVO makes things seem simpler than they usually are...
– There are some key terms that you need to know
• (your book lists these in a different sequence)
1. noun phrase (or nominal)
• a grammatical unit that denotes an instance of a thing or other entity in a situation.
• determiner+ adjective(s) + noun(s)
2. verb phrase (or predicate)
• the part of a sentence that includes the predicate and complements
• verb + objects / complements
3. grammatical core: the skeletal part of the sentence that combines subject, predicate and
complement(s) (if present)
4. subject: the noun (phrase) that indicates the main participant (the figure) and from whose
perspective it is viewed
• The subject is a noun, or a noun phrase (see #1)
5. predicate: denotes a relation and states something about the subject participant
• The predicate is a verb or verb phrase (see #2)
6. object: the noun (phrase) within a verb phrase that denotes the secondary participant, or
ground, in a situation;
7. complement(s): the obligatory grammatical units of a sentence other than the subject and
predicate;
8. adjunct: an optional grammatical unit within the structure of a sentence
• More about adjuncts(and adverbials in general)
– English syntax prefers S-V-O, then adverbials of...
Manner
Place
Time
– Place and Time are not complicated to understand
– Manner is a lot more complicated
• It includes many different things

Grounding elements
• Grounding refers to the way we “anchor” a situation and its participants in the speech situation.
– The situation described and its participants = figures
– The speech situation (time and place of speaking) = ground
• Grounding a situation means providing information about...
– who or what s/he is talking about (=participants)
– when the situation happened in relation to the present moment of speaking (=tense/ time)
– whether or not it really happened (=reality status)
My fiancé bought the wedding rings and may also buy a necklace.
– By using the possessive pronoun my, the speaker enables the hearer to identify the participant
fiancé.
– By choosing the definite article the with wedding rings, the speaker assumes that the hearer
knows the ‘marriage’ frame including the custom of buying rings before the wedding day.
– In choosing the indefinite article a with necklace, the speaker reveals that neither she herself nor
the hearer can identify the necklace at the moment.
– My, the and a are determiners (=grounding elements which indicate whether things talked about
are identifiable or not)
My fiancé bought the wedding rings and may also buy a necklace.
– In using the simple past bought, the speaker locates the situation in past time (before the
moment of speaking).
• This conveys to the hearer that the speaker assesses the situation as a real one, not a
hypothetical one.
– By using the modal verb may, the speaker communicates to the hearer that the situation is a
potential one.
• Not using a modal verb indicates fact!
– The grounding elements of tense and modality provide information about the reality status of a
situation.
• Grounding elements have two important characteristics which link them to the grammatical core
1. subjectivity
• Is the situation described real or potential?
• Can the hearer identify the participants talked about?
2. nucleus status
• Grounding elements are obligatory grammatical forms linked to and inseparable from the
noun(s) and the verb in the sentence
• Nucleus = grammatical core + grounding elements

Setting elements (adjuncts)

• Setting refers to the background against which a situation is set
– Setting elements are not obligatory
• Grounding elements are obligatory, setting elements are not
– Setting elements provide information such as...
• where and when the event happened
• why it happened
• the conditions under which it happened, etc.
– Setting elements do not give the speaker’s subjective assessment of the situation
After ten years of engagement my fiancé bought the wedding rings at Tiffany’s last night.
• The setting elements in a sentence are expressed as adjuncts.
– The adjunct after ten years of engagement expresses a temporal setting. It additionally expresses
a circumstance.
– The adjunct at Tiffany’s specifies the spatial setting
– The adjunct last night provides specific information about the temporal setting, i.e. the specific
time when the event occurred relative to the moment of speaking.
• At a very general level, the time of the event is indicated by the grounding element of tense.
– Time adjuncts therefore add detail
• Once the setting of a situation has been set up, it need not be repeated (speaker and hearer
keep it in mind unless it is changed).

Situations: Sentences
• The situation underlying a sentence contains a conceptual core and a setting.
– The conceptual core consists of...
• the relation and the participants
– The setting specifies
• the place, the time, the circumstances
• The linguistic counterpart of a situation is the sentence
– The situation described by a sentence is grounded in time
– The participants are grounded as definite referents

COMBINING SITUATIONS
Independent and complex sentences
• Complex sentences may consist of either:-
– Two main clauses, or
– A main clause and one or more subordinate clauses.
• Clauses contain a grammatical core, but do not necessarily contain grounding elements
(tense/modals)
– Main clauses are always temporal, i.e. have a tensed verb
– Subordinate clauses may be temporal or atemporal (i.e. no tensed verb, e.g. participial clauses)
– Juxtaposition (parataxis), co-ordination, subordination, and complementation are the main ways
in which clauses are combined to form complex sentences.
– How a speaker chooses to talk about a sequence of situations is governed by three general
cognitive principles:
1. the iconic principle of proximity/distance
2. the iconic principle of sequential order
3. the cognitive principle of figure and ground

1. The iconic principle of proximity/distance

– Conceptual units that belong together conceptually tend to belong together in the structure of
language;
– Conversely, conceptual units that do not belong together tend to be distanced in language.
2. The iconic principle of sequential order
– The temporal order of events in the conceptual world is typically mirrored in the order of
linguistic clauses describing them.
3. The perceptual principle of figure and ground
– This applies when two or more units of different salience are related.
• The subject is a figure relative to the object
• The conceptual core is a figure relative to the ground and the setting
• The situation or setting is a figure relative to the overall speech situation
– Where two situations are combined, the more salient situation will stand out as the figure
relative to the other situation, which will function as its ground.
PART 2THINGS: NOUNS AND NOUN PHRASES
CHAPTER 4Types of things: Nouns
THINGS: NOUNS AND NOUN PHRASES
Things and their function in our conceptual world
– In Cognitive Grammar, things are types of entities that have an autonomous and stable existence
in the world as we see it.
• In language, things correspond to nouns.
– Things things may be...
• referred to
• quantified
• qualified (by specifying or assigning properties)

TYPES OF THINGS: NOUNS

• There are two main classes of things: objects (things) and substances (stuff)
• However, the distinction between objects and substances can blur
– Objects may shade into substances
– Substances may shade into objects
• The distinction between objects and substances is reflected in count nouns and mass nouns
• An additional type of noun is the abstract noun
– Here, relational concepts e.g. ‘be married’ are construed as things, e.g. ‘marriage’.
• This is the result of a conceptual shift known as reification

CLASSES OF THINGS: CLASSES OF NOUNS

Things and instances of things
• The main characteristic of things is their autonomy.
– Things are conceptually stable over space and time
• But abstract things may not be (they are non-core ‘things’)
– Things are defined relative to a conceptual domain.
• They extend over a certain region within this domain.
– father, mother, uncle = ‘regions’ in the ‘kinship’ domain
• Abstract nouns also denote things extending over a region in some domain
– explosion denotes a thing within a domain which may be called ‘rapid expansion’, and the region
it extends over contrasts with those of blast and detonation.
• Things are expressed as nouns
• All the nouns listed in a dictionary denote types of things.
– A type is a generic category, and it is an abstraction
– An actual occurrence (instance) of a type is called a token
• eg. tree [in general; in a dictionary] = a type of the thing ‘tree’.
– But when I’m talking about the tree, I am not thinking of any old tree (type), but of a particular
tree (instance/ token) e.g. the one out there in the courtyard.

Objects VS substances
• Things can be objects or substances
– These are coded in English as count and mass nouns.
• Examples of objects are ‘car’, ‘lake’, ‘gold nugget’
• Examples of substances are ‘traffic’, ‘water’, ‘gold dust’.
• We can distinguish objects from substances on the basis of three inter-related criteria:
(i) Boundedness
– Does it have an outline? Can you delimit it?
(ii) Internal composition
– What is it made of? Is every bit the same as the rest, or are there different component parts?
(iii) Countability
– Can you count it?

Boundedness
• To recognise something as an object, we normally need to see it as a whole.
– Adopting a maximal viewing frame, we can see the object’s boundaries.
• The criterion of boundedness is an essential characteristic of objects and their expression as
count nouns.
– e.g. ‘car’ has clear perceptual outlines , so it appears to us as a discrete, individuated object

(Un)boundedness
• Substances have no inherent boundaries
– They are continuous, not discrete and individuated.
• This impression comes from a restricted viewing frame of a thing
– We can’t delimit the extent of the substance.
• e.g. water seems to be an unbounded, shapeless liquid.
– If we can delimit its boundaries, we can call it a lake, a puddle, a drop, etc. – i.e. it becomes an
object/count noun

Internal composition
• We can divide objects into their component parts
– Each part is different from the others
• We cannot divide objects into identical portions.
– *a piece of car is not identifiable as a component;
– a piece of a car is.
• In English, things that are internally heterogeneous are considered to be objects and coded as
count nouns.
– A car is composed of many different parts.
• These are arranged so that they function in an integrated way.
• If the car is taken to a salvage-yard and dismantled, its structure as a car is destroyed — it is no
longer a car, but scrap,
• i.e. it becomes a substance (scrap is a mass noun)
• Substances do not have component parts
– The only way we can divide them is into (identical) portions.
• e.g. a drop of water, a puddle of water, a lot of water, and a bit of water
• In English, things with homogeneous internal composition are seen as substances and coded as
mass nouns. e.g. water, dust, scrap.
– In our daily experience of water, dust or scrap we do not discern separate particles with the
naked eye,
• if we do, they are not relevant to us
– i.e. one portion of a substance is made up of the same kind of material as any other portion of it.
– Water, dust or scrap can therefore be expanded, contracted or divided without destroying or
changing their identities

Countability
• Entities which are similar in appearance / function may be subsumed under the same category
and be counted.
– E.g. The type ‘book’ comprises all sorts of different kinds of books (size, shape, colour, content),
but they are recognisably similar.
• Countability means being able to recognise different entities as members of the same category
(type)
– If there is only one entity e.g. a tree, it is described as a uniplex entity.
– If there are several equivalent entities, e.g. three trees, or forest (=a whole consisting of many
trees), we have a multiplex entity.
• Most substances are non-individuated.
– They cannot be separated into components, but only into portions...
...so there is nothing to count.

Distinguishing objects from substances

Count nouns and mass nouns

• Count nouns and mass nouns differ with respect to a number of grammatical phenomena
1. possibility of taking a numeral
2. possibility of forming a plural
3. use of quantifiers
4. use of articles / absence of article
• The first three criteria distinguishing count nouns from mass nouns relate to countability, the
last to reference.
Numerals, plurals and quantifiers relate to countability,
(i) Numerals and (ii) plural:
– Since objects are either uniplex or multiplex entities, it follows that count nouns can be
combined with numerals and are marked for number (singular and plural).
• Mass nouns cannot be combined with a numeral, so that they typically only appear in the
singular. They are therefore also described as singularia tantum, i.e. ‘singulars only’.
(iii) Quantifiers
– Objects are quantified by adding up a number of individuated items.
• Many cars / few cars describe an unspecified number of cars
– Substances are quantified by extracting a larger or smaller amount of the same homogeneous
substance.
• Not much traffic /little traffic describe an unspecified amount of ‘traffic’
Use / absence of articles relate to reference (iv) Use and (v) absence of articles
– We use determiners to refer to a single instance of an object (a car /the car).
• The indefinite article a(n) and the numeral one have the same etymological root (ān in Old
English). Both require their nouns to be countable.
– Since substances are not countable, they cannot be referred to with the indefinite article a(n),
i.e. we do not speak of *a traffic.
– The definite article the can be used with both count and mass nouns
• Definite article + count noun = one definite instance of an object.
• Definite article + mass noun = one defined portion of a substance.
• There is a conceptual affinity between multiplex objects (plural count nouns) and homogeneous
substances (mass nouns), which we also find in perception.
– When we look at a group of people or objects from a distance they tend to appear as a mass.
• A crowd (mass noun), a sea of faces (metaphorical quantity)
– When hundreds of cars are rushing by on the motorway, we no longer see the outlines of each
individual car but have the impression of an unbounded, homogeneous flow of traffic.
• Traffic (mass noun)
• Plural count nouns and mass nouns have a conceptual affinity
– Similar sorts of things may therefore be expressed as either plural count nouns or a as mass
nouns:
• Strips of pasta can be called noodles (countable) or spaghetti (uncountable)
• Small stones may be called pebbles (objects) or gravel (substance)
• This also applies to cross-linguistic differences
– Some English mass nouns are plural count nouns in Italian: advice, cutlery, hair, information,
luggage, money, news, spaghetti
– Some Italian mass nouns are plural count nouns in English: gente, grandine, ...
OBJECTS VS SUBSTANCES
• When we categorise things as objects or substances primarily on the basis of their appearance
and relevance to us.
– Sometimes it is not clear to us whether they are objects or substances.
• eg, sunflower seeds, coffee beans and peppercorns are usually too many to count, and yet they
are plural count nouns
• Sand, salt, rice and wheat are too many to count, but are mass nouns
– Why this discrepancy?
• If the phenomenon seems entirely homogeneous (e.g. salt, rice), it is likely to be viewed as a
mass noun.
– The same is true of a phenomenon which is viewed as a derivative (e.g. wheat usually appears as
flour, not as separate grains)
• If it appears to be heterogeneous, it is likely to be pluralised
• If you can pick up a single piece, this is even more likely.
• Prototypical physical substances are unbounded, homogeneous and uncountable.
– Good examples of substances are fluids, gases, fabrics and materials
– More peripheral substances would be wild plants and some plants that are cultivated in
vegetable gardens
• Although the individual plants may be counted (on the basis of their root systems), they grow
exuberantly and proliferate in the vegetable beds so that their (surface) boundaries become
obscured
• They are seen as substances and thus expressed as mass nouns
• Note that food and drink are peculiar.
– Foods are typically perceived as substances even when they derive from objects.
– Drinks are unbounded (mass nouns) yet usually packaged into containers (count nouns)

BLENDING OF OBJECTS AND SUBSTANCES: HYBRID NOUNS

• Hybrid nouns are nouns in which aspects of objects and substances are blended.
– They are best described along two clines
• The object-substance continuum of things
– Objects which can be viewed as substances, and vice versa
– e.g. foodstuffs
• The uniplex-multiplex continuum of objects
– Nouns which are singular in form but describe a multiplex entity,
– e.g. a group of people: family, government, board (of directors), police

The object-substance continuum

• A thing which is usually understood as a substance may be viewed as an object and expressed as
a count noun
– Instead of a thing expressed as a mass noun
• e.g. Beer is a substance, but when we experience beer in the real world it is usually in portions
such as bottles or glasses
– i.e. it has a bounded shape
• Such portions are typically expressed by a partitive construction (a/the
[form/container/measure] of substance).
• Once a substance is construed as an object, it is expressed as a count noun
– It can therefore be pluralised.
• If we order three whiskies, we expect to get ‘three glasses of whisky’.
• We may also understand a substance construed as an object in the sense of a variety, sort or
brand
– These usages involve a different metonymic shift:
• A bounded and individuated substance (a whisky/whiskies) stands for a variety of the substance
(brand of whisky).
– Any mass noun can be used as a count noun  ‘variety’.
• cheeses (=cheddar, brie, gouda)
• wines (=chablis, montepulciano, dolcetto d’Alba)
– They are not bounded by their limits in space but by their different qualities
• It is less common to view an object as a substance
• Because we usually make changes to meaning to increase detail and specificity
– When we construe an object as a substance, we restrict its essence as a thing to one particular
domain
• We had octopus for lunch. [domain: food]
• We did Shakespeare today. [domain: reading]
• You get a lot of miles for your money. [domain: fuel economy]
• This is a lot of garden for one man. [domain: work]
• Removing the conceptual boundaries of an object changes the viewing frame.
– The restricted viewing frame destroys (or moves the focus away from), its wholeness and its
heterogeneous internal composition.
• Uniplex things consist of one element and should ideally be expressed by a singular noun
• Multiplex things consist of more than one element and should ideally be expressed by a plural
noun.
– Often, however, a multiplex thing may be seen as uniplex, e.g. football team
• (multiplex with respect to its individual players and uniplex with respect to the team as a whole).
– Equally, a uniplex thing may be seen multiplex, e.g. scissors, trousers.
• (uniplex as a single object and multiplex with respect to their two halves)
• Collective nouns such as football team or jury denote groups of individual members composed
as a set.
– We mentally group together individuals as members of a composed set if the set is seen as a
distinct entity of its own within a certain domain.
• The players of a football team form a group because they follow a common goal in the domain
of sports.
• Collective nouns describe multiplex objects which can be seen in two ways (c.f. figure/ground)
1. We may foreground the group as a whole and background its members (noun + singular verb),
or
2. Foreground its individual members and background the group (noun + plural verb).
• In British English, these two perspectives lead to two possible grammatical construals, as
illustrated in the following pair of sentences:
– The jury which has been selected in the murder trial is likely to be unanimous in its verdict.
• (Jury= the group as a whole)
– The jury, who are meeting today, are still undecided about their verdict.
• (jury= individuals acting autonomously)
• In American English, the individual construal is not used, i.e. the grammar of American English
forces its speakers to see collections in their totality only.
• Some objects are in English viewed as multiplex and expressed as plural nouns
– eg. measles, glasses.
• Unlike count nouns, these plural nouns are not counted using numerals.
– e.g. *ten measles ten cases of measles,
– three glasses = (not three pairs of glasses)
• Inherently-plural nouns are called pluralia tantum.
• The most obvious motivation for conceiving of a single thing as multiplex is its composition of
many discrete elements.
– Measles and mumps: infectious diseases showing as spots
– Billiards, draughts: games played with several balls or pieces
– The United States, the Netherlands. the Balkans: names of countries / geographical areas
composed of separate states
– The news: composed of many items of new information
• Words ending in -ics describe fields of study which subsume many branches
– They are plural: gymnastics, politics, linguistics, mathematics
• This group of pluralia tantum tend to be seen as uniplex.
• Another group of pluralia tantum leans toward the multiplex end of the continuum
– It tends to have plural verb agreement
• This group includes:
– Names of dual objects (glasses, scissors, pants, lungs)
n.b. the two identical parts must be prominent.
– Multiple objects (belongings, groceries, wages)
• The individual elements of “multiple objects” can normally be quantified, are distinct and
different from each other, and can sometimes also be counted.

REIFIED THINGS: ABSTRACT NOUNS

Reification and nominalisation
• Reification involves a metaphorical shift from a relational entity into a thing.
– It makes us see a relation something that “is”
– e.g . We are married (relation)  our marriage (thing)
• The conceptual shift from relation to thing, or reification, has its linguistic counterpart in what is
called nominalisation.
– This is the process of deriving abstract nouns from other word classes, e.g. verbs, adjectives,
(concrete) nouns
• e.g. marriage derives from the verb marry or be married
• happiness derives from the adjective happy,
• friendship derives from the (concrete) noun friend.
• When you find reifications (and nominalisations in general) in texts, be aware that removing the
relation means ...
– Removing the conceptual entities in the relation
• who is involved?
– Removing the grounding elements from the verb: tense, number and person
• when did it happen? – by whom?
– Removing the setting elements: position and directionality
• (to) where?

Abstract objects and substances

• Like concrete things, abstract things may be construed as objects or substances
– i.e. They can be expressed as count nouns or mass nouns.
• Abstract things lack distinct physical properties.
• They are often bounded in time, i.e. as states (unbounded) or actions (bounded), rather than
being bounded in space
– Both war and peace (mass nouns) describe an unbounded state
• War can be a count noun because it
– lasts for a limited period of time,
– involves many different actions
– in different geographical locations
• i.e. it is seen as bounded and non-homogeneous
• Peace is viewed as the normal state (unbounded + homogeneous)

Types of reification
• Most reified things can be expressed as count nouns or mass nouns.
• The main distinguishing factor is permanence
– Is it an event/action, or is it a state?
• The abstract nouns war, attack, protest, problem, doubt and desire are generally used as count
nouns.
– Episodic situations (limited duration, discrete episodes)
• In contrast, the abstract nouns peace, knowledge, happiness, information, help and advice are
mostly used as mass nouns.
– Steady situations (lasting indefinitely/ always true/ timeless)

CHAPTER 5Grounding things: Reference

• How can the things a speaker is thinking and talking about be made accessible to the hearer?
– We normally talk about particular instances of a thing
• We need to make sure the hearer can identify them.
– The particular instance of a thing we have in mind has to be grounded in the current discourse.
• We do this by using referring expressions, especially determiners.

REFERENCE, REFERENTS AND REFERRING EXPRESSIONS

How we refer
• When we think (and when we talk to people), we have various things in our minds
– Usually, these are particular instances of a thing, and we need make sure that our interlocutor
recognises what it is
• my friend Claire
• the perfume I have just bought
• the cup of coffee I am dying to drink.
• We use referring expressions to “anchor” (=ground) a referent in the current discourse situation.
– Referring expressions are noun phrases consisting of
• a grounding element (e.g. a determiner, a possessive adjective)
• a noun
• We are rarely aware of how complex referring is.
– We notice it when it fails:
e.g. Marco says to Arianna:
“I’ll meet you at the bar in Piazza della Libertà.”
– Marco goes to the Caffè centrale…
– Arianna goes to Maga Cacao...
• The instruction to meet at “the bar” was not precise enough for Arianna to call up the same pub
that Marco had in mind.
– But what exactly went wrong?
• Marco clearly thought that the bar he had in mind was the only bar in the Piazza:-
– He used the definite article the in the referring expression the bar
– He provided the name of the category, ‘bar’
• Annalisa only has to look for a bar and not a gelateria
– He specified the bar’s location.
• Annalisa will only look for a bar in Piazza della Libertà
• Because for him it is “the bar” he assumes that Annalisa knows it’s the one he’s talking about
• But the same assumption leads to them getting their wires crossed:
– The use of the definite referring expression “the bar” also confirmed Annalisa in her belief that
that Marco meant ‘Maga Cacao’ ...
• In referring, a speaker normally has to perform four tasks:
1. Specify the type of thing to which the particular referent belongs.
• In our example, the relevant type is the thing ‘bar’.
2. Direct the hearer’s attention to the particular token (instance) of the thing he has in mind.
• This becomes the referent (it normally remains unspecified, i.e. not “Caffé Centrale” but just
“bar”)
3. Assess the instance with respect to its reality status,
• Does it belong to the world of reality or non-reality?
• Does the hearer already know of it?
4. Decide on the appropriate referring expression to ground the referent in the speech situation.
• In traditional grammar, referring expressions are usually believed to identify a referent, but…
– Not all types of reference involve identifying a specific referent
• Some refer to generic phenomena, not specific ones
– Referring expressions do not only identify
• They also say if something is defined or undefined
• Cognitive grammar sees reference as a cognitive phenomenon rather than a logical one
– Referring expressions primarily invoke conceptual entities in our minds
– This allows us to imagine the things being talked about (we don’t have to actually see them in
front of us)
• Referring expressions set up knowledge structures in an ongoing discourse
– These are short-lived packages of knowledge (mental spaces)
Types of reference
Not all types of reference involve identifying a specific referent
– Individuative reference does involve identifying a specific referent (a particular instance of a
thing)
• Individuative reference is the most common type of reference.
– It may be used with both singular and plural instances
» e.g. “the students in our year [at Macerata]...” (not just “students”)
– It can be definite or indefinite
– Generic reference does not involve identifying a specific referent.
• Generic reference is used in making generalizations about a class as a whole
– It may be used with both singular and plural instances, e.g. “all students…”
» Generic reference with singular/mass nouns is strongly associated with formal registers
(academic, legal, medical…)
– Like individuative reference, it can be definite or indefinite
• Individuative reference involves ‘fixing’ particular instances:
A man found a monkey and asked an RSPCA officer what he should do with it. The RSPCA officer
told him to take the animal to the zoo. The next day, the RSPCA officer saw the man walking along
the road, holding hands with the monkey. “Didn’t I tell you to take the monkey to the zoo?” he
asked. “Oh yes,” said the man, “We went to the zoo yesterday. Today we’re going to the cinema.”
• Individuative reference involves ‘fixing’ particular instances:
A man found a monkey and asked an RSPCA officer what he should do with it. The RSPCA officer
told him to take the animal to the zoo. The next day, the RSPCA officer saw the man walking along
the road, holding hands with the monkey. “Didn’t I tell you to take the monkey to the zoo?” he
asked. “Oh yes,” said the man, “We went to the zoo yesterday. Today we’re going to the cinema.”
– Notice the functions of indefinite and definite reference
• Narratives typically start out by introducing instances of things.
– Here, three participants in a situation are introduced in the first sentence
• Man
• Monkey
• RSPCA officer
– These instances are not previously known to the hearer (i.e. they are not accessible), so the
speaker has to open a mental space for them in the hearer’s mind.
• i.e. S/he uses the indefinite article a in their referring expressions.
• This type of reference is called indefinite reference.
• The speaker switches to definite reference once s/he can assume that the hearer has a mental
space available for an instance.
e.g. After hearing the first words...
“A man found a monkey and asked an RSPCA officer...” ... the hearer has opened a mental space
for each of the three instances introduced there.
The hearer can therefore decode the pronouns in the second half of the sentence “... what he
should do with it...”
• Once the speaker and hearer share the same instances, definite referring expressions can be
used “The RSPCA officer told him to take the animal to the zoo.”
• In generic reference, definiteness and indefiniteness have a different function compared to
individuative reference.
– A generic individual is a typical instance representing all instances
• It evokes a type to refer to all tokens, e.g.
• “A tiger has a life-span of about 11 years”
– A generic mass refers to all instances, regardless of their individual characteristics
• It refers to the entirety of tokens, e.g.
• “The tiger hunts by night”

INDEFINITE REFERENCE
• Indefinite reference involves singling out a particular element from a reference mass, or a set.
– Indefinite reference is exclusive
• It means “any member of the set, but nothing outside it”
– A set is all existing elements of a particular type.
• Defined pragmatically, a set is all visible or relevant elements of a particular type.
– e.g. in the monkey joke, the indefinite referent “a man” indicates that one particular man is
singled out from the set of all men.
– e.g., when we ask someone, “Can you open a window?”, we are thinking of the set of windows
of the place where we both are (we would like to have (any) one of the windows opened).
(If there is only one window, we can only say “Can you open the window?”)
The indefinite determiners are:
• a, an, any [generic]
• numbers and some [specific (even if unidentified)]
In questions and negatives (non-affirmatives), the choice between some[specific] and any[generic]
is determined by positive /negative expectations...

Affirmative context
Compare:
“They’re having a friend round to dinner.” [singular]
“They’re having some friend round to dinner.” [singular]
• The indefinite article a(n) + singular count noun = indefiniteness
• The determiner some + singular count noun is an alternative, marked form. It suggests
indeterminacy and vagueness
– It may be dismissive (negative connotation)
“They’re having friends/some friends round to dinner.” [plural]
“They’re having fun/some fun.” [mass]
• Zero article + plural count nouns or mass nouns = indefiniteness
– The determiner some can be used in affirmative sentences
• some + count noun = “not all, but more than one”.
• some + abstract nouns = “an undefined amount of” (usually a limited amount: “only a few”/
“only a bit”)

Non-affirmative / non-positive contexts

• Non-affirmative contexts include everything that is not explicitly positive, including negatives
and questions
– They are typically evoked by grammatical constructions but can also be coded in the semantics
(meaning), e.g.
a. Did you have any problems with your paper? [yes-no question]
b. No, I didn’t finish any of my assignments. [negated sentence]
c. If there is anything you need please let me know. [conditional]
d. I like smoked salmon more than anything else. [comparative]
e. I’ve hardly got any work done this year.
f. I doubt that I can do any work with this noise.
g. It is difficult to do any serious work at all.
h. I can live off my savings without doing any work.

Non-affirmative contexts, non-positive

• Non-affirmative contexts can have negative / neutral (non-positive) expectations.
– This means that the speaker expects that the reality status referred to is negative or absent
• If there is anything you need please let me know.
– (I’m not really expecting you to need or ask me for anything)
• Did you have any problems with your paper?
– (I don’t expect you had problems; I’m just asking to be polite)
• I doubt that I can do any work with this noise.
– (I don’t expect to get any work completed)
– The determiner for non-positive contexts is any.
• Like a(n), any derives from the numeral ‘one’,
• Any is typically stressed; it can also be reinforced (emphasised) by adding “at all”.

Non-affirmatives: positive expectation

• n.b. Non-affirmative contexts can also have positive expectation
– The speaker expects that the reality status referred to is positive (identifiable, present)
• The determiner for positive contexts is some.
– Look more closely now at “any” for questions vs. “some” for offers
“Would you like any cake?” [question with neutral/non-positive expectation]
(=I don’t know if you want any; you might say no)
– By using any, the speaker does not make any assumption about the hearer’s wishes
“Would you like some cake?” [offer with positive expectation]
(=We have cake on the menu: would you like to order some [of it]?)
(=I only want coffee but if you want the cake, have some!)
– By using some, the speaker is guided by positive assumptions
Two types of indefinite reference
• English grammar does not distinguish between specific and nonspecific referring expressions
– You have to infer and interpret which is used in a given context
• Indefinite specific and non-specific referring expressions indicate things that may have factual
reality or non-reality.
“I want to marry an Italian man who’s tall, dark and handsome”
• If the Italian man is a factually existing person in the speaker’s mind, “a” is a form of specific
reference.
• If the Italian man is a hypothetically-existing person (not known to speaker), “a” has non-specific
value.
– If the sentence were expressed differently, the ambiguity would disappear:
“I want to marry an Italian. He lives in Rome.” (reality  specific)
“I want to marry an Italian. He should be tall, dark and handsome.” (hypothetical  non-specific)

Specific reference
• Specific reference signals that the speaker has a referent in mind
– The hearer has to open a mental space for this referent.
• A specific referent may be entirely new, or it may be inferable from elements of a given cultural
frame, e.g.
“This book is brand-new, but look: there’s a page missing”
– Here, the specific referents can easily be inferred thanks to our knowledge of the ‘book’ frame
– In colloquial speech, especially in stories and anecdotes, specific referents are sometimes
introduced with this, e.g.:
“Like, there was this man I know in Ireland, yeah, who swears this story is true...”
– The demonstrative determiner this does not point to a definite referent but to a referent that
needs special highlighting in the story.

Non-specific reference
• Non-specific referents belong to imaginary, or virtual, reality.
– A space of virtual reality for non-specific referents has to be opened up
– This is done by using space-builders such as:
• yes-no questions
• negations
• imperatives
• conditionals
• modal verb constructions
• volition verbs (want, need, desire, etc.)
– By using these space-builders, the speaker signals that s/he only sees a referent as having virtual
existence
• (S/he makes no any claims about its factual existence)
• Notice how, in the following examples, the drinks talked about are only virtual entities:
Would you like a cup of tea?
– No, thank you. I don’t fancy tea so early in the morning. So do have something else. Have a
milkshake instead.
– Sorry, if I drink a milkshake now, it will upset my stomach.
– All the highlighted entities are non-specific referents which can be referred back to provided we
remain in hypothetical space
• A possible answer to Would you like a cup of tea? could be Yes, make it sweet (the pronoun it
refers back to the virtual instance of a cup of tea.)
– It is also possible to switch from the hypothetical world to that of reality (i.e. from generic / non-
specific to specific)
• A shift from the hypothetical world to that of reality is illustrated in this example:
I needed a new computer[non-specific]. So I went to Media World and bought one[specific].
It’s[definite] amazing.
– The non-specific referent a computer becomes a specific referent “one”
– Once a specific referent has been set up, we assume that all further information refers to it
• i.e. We do not alternate between specific and non-specific referents – we hold onto specificity
once we find it.

DEFINITE REFERENCE
• While indefinite reference was shown to be exclusive...
• e.g. “Can you open a window?” ... definite reference is inclusive
– it includes all the elements that form its set, excluding none.
• e.g. “Can you open the window(s)?”
• The set has to be mentally shared by speaker and hearer, otherwise it is impossible to refer to all
of its elements.
– Ways of making a set accessible to both speaker and hearer:
• Deictic reference (“pointers” found in the present speech situation)
• Discourse reference (elements evoked in the current discourse)
• Unique reference (part of the social and cultural world shared by speaker and hearer)
– These forms of reference allow the referent to be made definite.

Deictic reference
• Some referents can be “pointed to” the speech situation.
– This is called deictic reference, or deixis
• In order to point to something, there must be a place from which somebody is pointing.
– This is the deictic centre of the speech situation.
• Returning to the “zoo story”...
“I thought I told you to take the monkey to the zoo.”
– The deictic centre in this example is the speaker (I)
– The secondary deictic centre is the hearer (you)
• How important is deictic information in establishing reference?
– Suppose you find this post-it on the floor near the staff offices.
I’ll be back in ten minutes: wait for me outside
• This example illustrates the three basic types of deixis:
• person deixis (I, me)
• place deixis (outside)
• time deixis (in ten minutes).
– The message is incomprehensible except to its intended addressee.
• The deictic referring expressions can only be interpreted in the context of the speech situation.
Since the note is lying on the floor, we can’t even identify the writer, which is the most important
clue.
• The three types of deixis each distinguish between central and distant regions of reference.
1. Person deixis has the speaker I at the centre
• A bit less central is the hearer you
• Outside this central region are persons who do not participate in the ongoing conversation: he,
she or they.
2. Place deixis has a central region here and a distant region there
3. Time deixis has present (speech) time now as its central region
• More distant times (past/future) are described as then
• With days, we have complex expressions in both directions
– for the past: yesterday and the day before yesterday
– for the future: tomorrow and the day after tomorrow.

Discourse reference
• Some referents are identified in the progress of discourse
– This type of reference is dependent on the ongoing discourse and is therefore described as
discourse deixis or discourse reference.
• There are two main types of discourse reference
1. Anaphoric reference [this is very common]
(The speaker refers back to entities introduced in the preceding discourse)
2. Cataphoric reference [quite unusual]
(The speaker refers forward to a referent which is still to be introduced in the discourse.)
• Anaphoric reference is typically expressed by 3rd person pronouns.
– 3rd person pronouns serve to refer back to an antecedent referent while keeping track of
minimal information about the referent(s), eg.
• number (he, she, it vs. they),
• animacy status (he, she vs. it)
• sex (he vs. she).
– Let us go back to the zoo joke:
“A man found a monkey and asked an RSPCA officer what he should do with it. The RSPCA officer
told him to take the animal to the zoo.”
• The referents he, it, The RSPCA Officer, him and the animal illustrate anaphoric reference.
• Since an anaphoric referent is already known, its second mention carries no new information.
Discourse reference: cataphor
• The main function of cataphoric reference is that of announcing a referent or a situation that the
speaker is going to talk about, e.g. “Let me tell you this....”
– It occurs much more rarely than anaphoric reference
– The following fragment of a conversation illustrates cataphoric reference.
“Have you heard the one about the police officer and the driver?”
“No.”
“Well. A police officer pulls a man over for speeding...”
– The police officer and the driver are cataphorically referred to as definite referents before they
are introduced as indefinite referents in the following discourse.

Unique reference
• Some categories have only one instance (no type, just one token)
• Reference to them is known as unique reference
– Unique entities are usually presented as definite referents even if they have not been introduced
earlier in the discourse.
• Speaker and hearer of the same speech community share knowledge of their immediate
environment, their culture, and the world at large.
• We may distinguish three subtypes of unique reference
1. Inherent uniqueness (there is only one in the world), e.g. “Last summer we went hiking in
Yosemite Park.”
2. Qualified uniqueness (there is only one of this type), e.g. “Let’s watch the fireworks from
Jennifer’s apartment.”
3. Framed uniqueness (there is only one in the frame of reference), e.g. “On Sunday afternoons, I
take the children to the park.”

Unique reference: Proper nouns

• Proper nouns denoting persons do not involve a category but only a single instance
– They are inherently definite, so do not normally require grounding via a definite determiner.
– There are some exceptions…
• The definite article is used in its unstressed form with proper nouns that are defined in relative
clauses e.g. I meant the Bill Gates who lives down the road, not the famous one!
• We use a stressed definite article when the person is famous and/or when we doubt his identity
in spite of knowing his name e.g. Is that THE Chris Brookmyre you’re talking about? [author]
• The situation is different with geographical names, or toponyms
– The names of most countries take zero article
– Countries or geographical areas that are seen as collections of political units take a plural proper
name with the definite article
• e.g. the United States, the Netherlands, and the Baltics.
– The main factor that tends to determine the use of articles with proper names is boundedness
(and, in the case of complex toponyms, internal homogeneity).
• A nation state is a bounded (political) entity
– It may also be bounded geographically, but this is not necessary
• Nation states and geographical areas which are composed of several distinct parts are multiplex
units. To identify the boundaries of the unit, as opposed to its components, the definite article is
needed. It additionally marks the uniqueness of the “collection”.
• Boundedness and proper nouns
– States are clearly bounded political entities
• Zero article
– Ohio, Mississippi, Amazonia
– Rivers are natural phenomena that may stretch for hundreds of miles; we do not have their
overall extension in mind (unbounded).
• Definite article
– The Ohio, The Mississippi, The Amazon
– Natural landscape features, e.g. mountain ranges, forests, deserts, etc., also normally lack clear
boundaries
• Definite article
– the Midwest, the Sahara, the Black Forest, the Grand Canyon, etc.
• Proper names consisting of noun-noun compounds are generally seen as denoting a well-
established unique thing (bounded)
– Zero article
• e.g. London Bridge, Oxford Street, and Buckingham Palace
• Proper names consisting of adjective-noun compounds are normally seen as less unique
(unbounded)
– Definite article
• e.g. the Golden Gate Bridge, the British Museum, the White House.
• Proper names referring to unique institutions need to be distinguished from their corresponding
common nouns. They are therefore Capitalised in the written form and require the article to
delimit their extent.
– Definite article
• e.g. the Church, the Army, the Government

Unique reference: Mass nouns

• In English, zero-article abstract nouns indicate the inherent uniqueness of abstract things.
– They are coded as mass nouns because they perfectly meet the criteria characterizing physical
substances
• They are unbounded, homogeneous and uncountable
a. Life is full of surprises.
b. Silence means approval.
c. Tourism is ruining many beautiful spots.
d. Society is obliged to support all the unemployed people.
e. Two of my best friends are in education.
f. The object of botany is the study of plants.

Qualified uniqueness
• Qualified uniqueness is restrictive descriptive qualification which establishes a referent’s
uniqueness
• To distinguish the intended referent from all other possible ones, the speaker may highlight a
salient qualitative aspect, e.g.
– A property: “No, my coat is the green one.”
– A circumstance: “The umbrella in the umbrella stand is also mine.”
– An event: “This is the cloakroom ticket you gave me.”
• In some deictic situations, there may be too many tokens of the same type. Reference by
qualified uniqueness is needed
– E.g. in the classroom:
a. The boy in the last row, can you read the sentence for us?
b. The girl with the pink sweater, what is your question?
• The best reference points for accessing unique referents are human beings, via possessive
constructions
– E.g. That’s Lily’s car, we mentally access the referent car via the reference point Lily.
• (Lily is inherently unique, so her car is also unique.)
• The “genitivo sassone” is particularly well-suited for expressing qualified uniqueness because the
salient reference point (possessor) is processed before the target referent.

Inferred uniqueness
• The immediate context usually provides clues for activating a conceptual frame.
• Inferring a definite referent from a conceptual frame is even more common.
– For example, “Mind the gap” at a London tube station is understood to refer to the gap between
the platform and the train, not any other gap
– We arrive at this interpretation via the ‘London tube’ frame.

Functional uniqueness
• Sometimes it is the unique role or function within a certain sociocultural frame that interests us
more than the identity of a referent
– In the “zoo joke”, the referents described by the zoo and the cinema illustrate functional
uniqueness: we are interested in the institutions
– Some other examples are:
a. “I read it in the newspaper.” [media frame]
‘the newspaper’ is functionally unique as a type and hence takes the definite article.
b. “We can take the bus.” [public transport frame]
c. The murderer left his fingerprints on the knife. [murder frame]
• Reference to the role function of an entity is expressed by definite singular referring expressions
– It looks similar to reference to a class (generic reference), but it applies instead to a functionally
unique type of thing rather than to functionally equivalent individual instances.

GENERIC REFERENCE
Generic reference and class
• Generic reference is used in generalising about a class
– A class is a collection of similar individual elements that together form a type and have a name
• The collection of all individual tigers in the world forms the class of tigers.
– Class vs set
• Classes are types (collections of tokens); we refer to them by the type name.
• Sets are also collections of tokens but they do not invoke types
– Class vs category
• Classes consist of individual elements, e.g. real-life tigers.
• Categories consist of conceptual entities (subcategories), e.g. subdivision of tigers into
Bengal/Siberian tigers
• Ideally, all members of a class should share particular properties; if so, then the category should
also have these properties
– However, we rarely have detailed knowledge about all members of a class, so we refer to them
by invoking one or more tokens to represent the type

Four types of generic reference

• We can use individual elements to generalise about a class in various ways.
– The dimensions of definiteness and number lead to four possible generic construals.
1. Indefinite singular: Any one element for its class
2. Indefinite plural: Indeterminate elements for their class
3. Definite singular: Prototypical element for the class
4. Definite plural: Many elements for their class

(i) Indefinite singular

• In generalising about a class, one element is singled out from the class in order to refer to the
class as a whole.
– The individual element must share the necessary attributes characterising the class as a whole.
• Attributes that are shared by all elements of a class are felt to be essential attributes (they define
the “essence” of a thing)
• NOTE that groups of humans are usually identified by their individuality (uniqueness), so we tend
not to generalise about humans by using the indefinite singular generic (instance ≠ class).
– Indefinite singulars cannot be used to make statements about a class as a whole, such as extinct,
die out, numerous, or abound.
• Thus, while we can say things like Balinese tigers have been extinct for 50 years or The Balinese
tiger has been extinct for 50 years, we cannot say *A Balinese tiger has been extinct for 50 years,
because it is the species that is extinct, not the individual tiger

(ii) Indefinite plural

• In generic reference, the indefinite plural generalises over large segments of a class, but not all
its elements, e.g. “The vast majority of Italians are Roman Catholics and for centuries, this has
affected their art. Italians are proud of their artistic heritage”
• “The vast majority of Italians” restricts the segment of Italians to a majority proportion
(individuative reference)
• “Italians are proud of their artistic heritage” applies very generally
– it has no quantity restriction.
– People tend to generalise on the basis of relatively few experiences
• The indefinite plural provides the adequate referring expression to do generalise with: it conveys
generalisations based on vague, impressionistic judgments and it allows for exceptions.

(iii) Definite singular

• In generic reference, the definite singular refers to a single instance, which is the class as such
(type).
– With animals, the class is a species, which is implicitly contrasted to other species within the
animal kingdom.
• The notion ‘species’ may also involve physical objects, especially artefacts. (“species” =
“category”)
– For example, in saying The computer has changed our lives, we are thinking of the ‘computer as
such’, which has replaced the typewriter, enabled world-wide communication and eliminated
many traditional office jobs.
– Usually, human beings are viewed as individuals
• It is rare to find definite singular generic reference with groups of people: INSTANCE (person) ≠
SPECIES (human)

(iv) Definite plural

• In generic reference, the definite plural generalizes over a class by referring to many elements,
but not necessarily all its elements.
– People typically generalise on the basis of many individuals that share a salient attribute, e.g.
• “Football is the main national sport and the Italians are well known for their passion for this
sport. Italy has won the World Cup four times”
– Classes of people are normally seen in terms of cultural characteristics
• Humans display idiosyncratic behaviour
• The definite plural allows for exceptions to the norm (unlike the definite singular), so the definite
plural is the appropriate form to choose for generalizations about humans

CHAPTER 6Quantifying things: Quantifiers

TYPES OF QUANTIFICATION
Overview
• As speakers of English we normally combine reference with information about quantity
– Singular/plural/number; quantifiers.
• Quantity is conceived in terms of a set, or of a scale.
– Set quantification refers to the magnitude (size/extent) of a subset relative to a full set
• It is expressed by set quantifiers such as all and most.
– n.b. percentages (%) and fractions (½, ¼, etc.) are set quantifiers
– Scalar quantification refers to a magnitude along a scale
• It is expressed by scalar quantifiers such as many and much.
• Set and scalar quantifiers may interact with referring expressions in partitive constructions and
can be combined with each other.

Types of quantification
• Only a particular instance of a thing (token), not a thing as a type, may have a certain magnitude.
– e.g. Imagine informing your parents that you can’t see them this weekend because you have to
study for three tests
• In conveying this information, you first need to specify the type of thing you are talking about,
(‘test’)
• Then you then mentally single out the particular instance of test, i.e. ‘the midterm tests for three
subjects’ (this is not explicitly mentioned)
• Finally, you indicate its magnitude as ‘three’.
• Notice that an instance of a thing may consist of several individual elements, in this case the
three tests.
– The indication of the quantity of the instance is part of the referring expression three tests.
• Quantity refers to the magnitude of an instance of a thing.
– Quantification = specifying the quantity of an instance
• Uniplex instances are marked by the singular
• Multiplex instances are marked by the plural
• Finer-grained distinctions of quantities make use of quantifiers
– We can distinguish between three types of quantification:
(i) set versus scalar quantification
(ii) non-partitive versus partitive quantification
(iii) number versus amount quantification.
– Quantifiers are linguistic expressions that denote a quantity, e.g. much, most, a large amount of,
three...

Set vs scalar quantification

• The conceptual distinction between set and scalar quantification shows up in their semantic and
syntactic behaviour.
1. Set and scalar quantifiers take different types of adverbs.
2. Set and scalar quantifiers differ with respect to their function
3. Set quantifiers are grounding elements in a noun phrase.
• Like determiners, cannot stand on their own as predicate nominals: they need an entity they can
ground, e.g.
– 10% of interviewees…
– Half the population…
1. Adverbs
– Set quantification invokes the idea of a (nearly) full set, i.e. all / none
• With the absolutes ‘all’ / ‘none’, we can add approximative adverbs such as almost, nearly,
virtually, etc.
– Almost all of Jonathan Coe’s books are fun to read
• Most is already approximate so ‘almost’ would be redundant
– Scalar quantification invokes an open-ended scale, i.e. many / few
• With ‘many’ / ‘few’, we can use intensifying adverbs such as very, quite a, relatively, etc.
– Very many books have been adapted for the screen.
2. Function.
– Set quantifiers have a grounding function (just like determiners)
• The full set that is invoked serves as an external reference point.
– Be careful not to confuse quantifying and determining functions!
• Set quantifiers can only occur with other grounding elements (e.g. determiners) in a noun phrase
when they are quantifying a grounded noun, e.g. all those people
– Here, ‘all’ is quantifying the full (determined) set (‘those people’)
– We can’t say *those all people because ’those’ would be determining an already-determined
quantity (i.e. ‘all people’)
– Scalar quantifiers have a purely quantifying function
• They can occur together with a definite determiner, e.g.
– the many books (I have never found the time to read)
– the little money (I have left after paying my rent and bills)
» (but – of course! – we can’t say ‘many the books’ or ‘little the money’)
3. Grounding (=syntax of adjuncts)
– Set quantifiers (e.g. most/ all/ every) are grounding elements within a noun phrase
• They cannot stand on their own as predicate nominals
– We cannot say things like *The books I still need to read are most/ all/ every.
• Like determiners, they need an entity (noun) which they can ground.
– I still need to read all/ most of the books.
– Scalar quantifiers are not grounding elements
• This means that they can stand on their own
– E.g. The books I still need to read for my exam are not very many/ few/ seven.

Non-partitive vs partitive quantification

• Sometimes we talk about all, sometimes we talk about a portion of ‘all’ e.g. “Most books are fun
to read” evokes an implicit full set, i.e. ‘all the books in the world’
• ‘all the books in the world’ is an example of a universal set.
• It is non-partitive, i.e. refers to all
• More commonly, however, our interest is in more restricted sets and quantities of these. e.g.
“Most of these apples are rotten”
• subset (most of…) relative to the full set (…these apples) “Some of our politicians are corrupt”
• subset (some of…) relative to the full set (…our politicians)
– Such explicit relations between subsets and their respective full sets is called partitive
quantification.
• Non-partitive and partitive quantifications are different in structure:
– a. Most books [in the world] are fun to read. [non-partitive, implicit, universal set]
The quantifier most functions as a determiner of its head noun books, and the reference of most
books is indefinite.
– b. Most of my books are novels. [partitive, explicit, restricted set]
The quantifier most is a pronoun and functions as the head of the prepositional phrase of my
books, which is its complement.
– Notice also that the referent of the full set, here my books, is always definite, i.e. we cannot say
*most of books.

Number vs amount quantification

• We can quantify instances of objects and instances of substances.
– Instances of objects are quantified by adding up the number of individual elements of the same
kind.
• We will describe this as number quantification.
– Instances of substances are quantified by extracting a portion or an amount of the substance:
• We will describe this as amount quantification.
• Most quantifiers are used with one or other type of quantification
– We cannot use number quantifiers with mass nouns *many work , *several work, *three work
– We cannot use amount quantifiers with count nouns *much jobs, *little jobs [n.b. ‘little’ + count
noun means ‘size’ + noun, not ‘quantity’ + noun]
• Having said this, it is also true that native speakers sometimes fail to distinguish between
amounts and numbers, e.g.
– *‘there aren’t much people here’
– Just don’t do this in your English tests!
SET QUANTIFICATION
Sets: The four full-set quantifiers
• We may conceive of a full set in different ways
– We may focus on …
• the collection of its elements
• each individual element
• selected elements that are representative of the full set
– (cf. using ‘a’ as a generic indeterminate article, Chapter 5)
• The full-set quantifiers allow us to adopt these three conceptual strategies.
– The full-set quantifiers are: all, every, each and any
• All[collective] doctors have taken the Hippocratic oath.
• Every[distributive] doctor uses a different method.
• Each[distributive] doctor believes in his or her own method of treatment.
• Any[selective] doctor will confirm that influenza is contagious.
• The particular meaning may be expressed more explicitly by additional adverbs:
– together
• This collective adverb is (only) compatible with the collective quantifier all
– e.g. ‘All the actors arrived together’
– separately
• This distributive adverb is (only) compatible with the distributive quantifiers each and (less so)
every,
– e.g. ‘Each actor arrived separately’
– whatsoever
• This nonspecific adverb is (only) compatible with the selective quantifier any
– e.g. ‘Any actor whatsoever can play this role’
– A rarer alternative, only for people, would be ‘Any actor whomsoever…’

Collective sets: all

• Linguistically, collective sets = all + noun [s./pl.]
– The collective set invoked by the quantifier all is typically multiplex
• It is composed of individual elements in a multiplex collective set.
– e.g. ‘I can’t buy myself a coffee from the machine because I’ve used up all my coins.’
– We may conceive of some uniplex things as collections, i.e. as a uniplex collective set
– e.g. ‘They can’t possibly need all that money.’
– (Here, ‘money’ -> countable coins and notes).

Multiplex collective sets

• A universal set applies to all the individual elements of a thing in the world.
– This is expressed by ‘all’ plus indefinite plural noun, e.g. ‘All cows eat grass’
• This is similar to (but not exactly the same as) indefinite generic use of determiners (cf Chapter
5)
a. Italians speak Italian. [generic reference – 90% true]
b. All Italians speak Italian. [universal quantification – 100% true]
• A restricted set applies to a “restricted universe” (a particular domain, frame, or context).
– This is expressed by ‘all’ plus definite plural noun, e.g. ‘Have you got all the ingredients ready?’
• ‘The’ presents the restricted set as if it were a full set (= as a bounded thing, cf. Chapter 5) and
focuses on its completeness.
• All expresses three ideas about the referent at the same time
– it is definite, collective, and composed of individual elements.

Uniplex collective sets

All + singular noun
• The ‘wholeness of a collective set’ is expressed by all + singular noun
– all + collective noun  the wholeness/unity of collective features;
• ‘We shared our food with all the family’
– all + singular count nouns  uniformity
• ‘I didn’t sleep a wink all night’
– The idea of ‘wholeness’ becomes evident in paraphrases using the word ‘whole’, e.g. the whole
family ; the whole night.
• Notice that although they are uniplex things, substances in particular can be viewed as forming a
set composed of elements
a. Now you have spilled all the milk
b. Stop all that nonsense
c. Philosophy is central to all knowledge

Distributive sets: every & each

• In distributive sets, the set is viewed as a collection of individual elements, with a focus on those
individual elements
– Every and each are distributive, and they are similar: both pick out one representative instance
of a set and in so doing they invoke the full set.
• Every links the individual elements to each other until we ultimately reach the complete,
collective set
– Due to its focus on collectivity, it makes us see abstract things more generally
• Each examines the single element of the set individually
– It makes us see them more specifically.
• Every focuses on collectivity, and makes us see abstract things generally
• Each makes us see them more specifically
– A set invoked by every has a minimum number of 3 elements because every focuses on
collectivity: one (1)  both (2)  every (3+)
– The set invoked by each has a minimum number of 2 elements.
• Thus each can be used in place of both (2) to express complementarity and reciprocity, e.g.
• ‘He kissed her on each cheek’, ‘It takes 45 minutes each way’ (complementary)
• ‘They kissed each other’ (reciprocal)
• Every and each may be combined.
– When this is done, we emphasise both the collective and the individual aspects of the
distributive set, e.g.
‘The epidemic affects each and every one of us’ (compare to one and all: e.g. “Welcome, one and
all!”)

Selective sets: any

• Any refers to a randomly selected element of a set to invoke the set as a whole
– Any focuses on the individual to infer a collective set
• It is largely restricted to non-factual (hypothetical, idealized) situations
– (c.f. generic indefinite determiners, Chapter 5)
– Contrast this to all and each/every, which denote (not infer) a collective set and which focus on
the totality of the members of that set
• Any trespasser(s) / All trespassers will be prosecuted.
• *Any (of the) trespassers were prosecuted./ All ([of] the) trespassers were prosecuted.
– Since any (qualsiasi) and all (ogni) involve different conceptualisations, they can be coordinated.
• Any and all contributions are welcome.
• You hereby waive all and any claims against the company.

Subset quantifiers
• Subset quantifiers describe the size of a subset relative to the full set.
– A subset that is identical to the full set is expressed by one of the set quantifiers, most typically
all
– Decreasing sizes of the subset are described by the quantifiers most, half and some
Most Republicans are conservative. Half the Senate voted for abortion, the other half against it.
Some senators support the President, others don’t.
– An empty set is described by the prenominal quantifier no or the pronoun none.
No senator was pleased with the vote.
None [of them] were [was] pleased with the vote [n.b. sing./pl. distinction unclear]
– There are also many lexical expressions that also fulfil the function of subset quantifiers, e.g.
• a third of, the majority of, the larger part of, etc.
• Most is a “typical” quantifier: it may quantify both count and mass nouns in prenominal position
only.
• All may appear in prenominal or predeterminer position
• Half (of) (and other division/multiplication quantifiers, e.g. twice, three times) denotes a precise
subset and therefore only occurs in a definite context, e.g. half (of) the people or half (of) the
bottle.
• Some is used both as a determiner and quantifier (set and scalar!).
– As a set quantifier, some means ‘a certain number/amount of ’
• It contrasts with most, others, none, etc.
– As a scalar quantifier, some means ‘a few’
• It contrasts with many, several, few, etc.
• No and none characterise a set as being empty.
– They evoke the (absent) set.

SCALAR QUANTIFICATION
• Scalar quantification has two major differences compared to set quantification:
1. Scalar quantification invokes a scale with some implicit norm (set quantification relates to a full
set)
• This means that we are not talking about absolute or definite quantities, but with more/less than
normal
• This also means that we cannot use expressions of proportion, e.g. percentages or fractions, but
we can use numbers (usually with more/less, etc., e.g. ‘five times more’)
2. Scalar quantification applies to both object and substance instances, i.e. to both count and mass
nouns (set quantification typically applies to count nouns only)

Implicit norms in scalar quantification

• To quantify an instance along a scale, we need to have a standard or norm against which to
measure it.
– A few, several, a little, a bit of essentially mean ‘above an implicit norm’
– Few, some, little, a certain amount of essentially mean ‘below an implicit norm’
• The norm is not explicitly expressed
– We implicitly expect a certain magnitude within a given frame.
• 5 rhinos in a zoo / 5 children in an Italian family  ‘many’
• 5 students at my lecture or 5 fans at a concert  ‘few’

Number & amount quantification

• English has two clearly distinguished groups of scalar quantifiers: number quantifiers and
amount quantifiers.
– Number quantification applies to multiplex (plurals)
• Quantifying instances of an object means adding up discrete, individual elements of the same
kind along a scale.
– Thus, many bees describes a number of “added up” individual bees which is higher on a scale of
quantity than, for instance, some bees.
– Amount quantification applies to substances (mass nouns)
• Quantifying an instance of a substance means extending or reducing the same kind of substance
by a given amount along a scale.
– Thus, a lot of garbage specifies an amount of the same, indivisible substance.
• The set of scalar quantifiers includes
– “genuine” quantifier words (many, much, few),
– numerals
– grammaticised quantifiers that also function as lexical words (little)
– quantifiers preceded by the indefinite article a (a few, a great many, a little)
– partitive expressions (a number of)
• Additionally, we can use lexical expressions such as mountains of
– Many of these lexical quantifiers are based on the conceptual metaphor MORE IS UP. Since both
objects and substances can be “piled up”, the same metaphorical quantifiers can be used with
both types of nouns. To make finer-grained distinctions about a scalar quantity, we can use
adverbs such as quite, very, about, rather, fairly, roughly, etc.
• A few vs few; a little vs little
– Why do these pairs of expressions have opposite meanings?
• The secret lies in the presence or absence of the article: a(n) delimits the unbounded referents
as bounded (cf Chapter 5), so a few people is seen as a collective group, and a little bit is seen as a
delimited portion.
– A few and A little tend to be mean ‘enough for a given purpose’
• This happens because the delimitation (a) creates a positive expectation (cf. Chapter 5)
– Few and Little are unbounded and have a neutral expectation
• Why do we normally say not much/not many, and reserve (affirmative) much/many for very
formal registers only?, e.g. ‘I don’t have much time’ [normal] vs. ‘I have much time’ [formal,
archaic]
– Negative indefinite amounts are equivalent to “a very small amount”.
• This means they are similar to numbers and lexical quantifiers.
– Positive indefinite amounts mean “more than usual/ expected”,
• This means they are more like intensifiers than quantifiers.

INTERACTION OF QUANTIFIERS WITH EACH OTHER AND WITH REFERENTS

Partitive quantification
• How does quantification interact with reference?
– The of-construction describes the relationship between a part and a whole (partitive
construction).
• The part-whole schema is applied to a relation between a subset (e.g. many) and a full set (e.g.
the demonstrators).
– The set in a partitive construction is always a restricted set (definite noun phrase).
• This means that the partitive construction can only relate to referents that are accessible by one
of the various referential strategies at our disposal, eg anaphor, deixis, frames, etc.
– The subset in the partitive construction, i.e. many, can only be indefinite
• It introduces a new referent within the set, e.g.
– many of the demonstrators [partitive scalar quantification]
– all of the demonstrators [partitive set quantification]

Ordering of set and scalar quantifiers

• When set and scalar quantifiers co-occur in a phrase in English, the set quantifier comes before
(is less core than) the scalar quantifier.
– all (of) my friends
• The set quantifier all is a predeterminer (it is positioned before the definite determiner my)
– my many friends
• The scalar quantifier many is a postdeterminer (it is positioned after before the definite
determiner my)
• The ordering of the quantifiers and determiners is determined by the iconic principle of
proximity.
– Scalar quantifiers provide essential information about magnitude, so they are positioned closely
to the noun.
– Set quantifiers invoke a full set but they do not add any quantitative information to the definite
noun, so their position is more distant from the noun

SUMMARY
• Quantification is the assignment of a certain magnitude, or quantity, to an instance of a thing.
• There are two major types of quantification
– Set quantification refers to the magnitude of a subset relative to an unnamed full set
• It is expressed by set quantifiers such as all, most, every, each and any, and subset quantifiers
such as half and most
– Scalar quantification refers to a magnitude along a scale and may quantify instances of both
objects (number quantification) and substances (amount quantification).
• It is expressed by scalar quantifiers such as many and few.
• Both set and scalar quantities may, as subsets, be related to a named full set by means of a
partitive construction.

CHAPTER 7Qualifying things: Qualifiers

Overview
• An instance of a thing may need specific qualification
– Qualifications have different functions:
• a restrictive function, as in a feminist writer
– A writer who is a feminist and who writes feminist works
• a non-restrictive function, as in a free gift
– A gift (=any gift) that costs nothing
• Qualifications are expressed as modifiers of nouns
– Qualifying properties are expressed as adjectives
– Qualifying relations are expressed by genitive phrases and prepositional phrases
– Qualifying situations are expressed as relative clauses

QUALIFICATIONS AND MODIFIERS

• In English, we specify (qualify) things using modifiers:
– Adjectives
– Genitive phrases
– Prepositional phrases
– Relative clauses
• Modifiers are grammatically part of a noun phrase.
– They are dependent on their head noun, e.g., in “a sweet girl”, the adjective sweet modifies the
head noun girl.
• Two factors need to be considered in qualification and modification
(i) the function of the qualification
(ii) the type of qualification
Functions of qualification
• Why do we need to provide qualitative information about a thing?
1. In order to add precision to the thing talked about
• This function is restrictive (or defining)
• It restricts the reference mass to a specific, defined referent
– e.g. “Umberto Eco was an influential essayist and novelist”
2. In order to add information about the thing
• This function is non-restrictive
• It does not restrict the reference mass but simply gives extra information about it,
– e.g. “Umberto Eco, who has died aged 84, was a polymath of towering cleverness.”

Restrictive qualification
• Restrictive qualification limits the reference mass
– It establishes a subtype of a thing
– The thing describes a category which includes the subject participant as its member, e.g.
a) “Umberto Eco was an essayist and novelist”
b) “Umberto Eco was an influential essayist and novelist”
c) “Umberto Eco was an influential Italian essayist and novelist”
– Here, the category ‘essayist and novelist’ is increasingly restricted by adding further
specifications:
• ‘influential essayist’ is a subcategory of ‘essayist’,
• ‘influential Italian essayist ’ is a subcategory of ‘influential essayist’
– In English, this situation is expressed by a sentence consisting of a NOUN PHRASE + copula (BE) +
an indefinite predicate nominal
• “UMBERTO ECO + was + an influential essayist”

Non-restrictive qualification
• The term epithet is used for non-restrictive qualification
– This provides additional (non-essential) information about a referent.
• It is often evaluative
• Consider the excerpts from an obituary for Umberto Eco
“Umberto Eco ... was a polymath of towering cleverness.”
“Whatever his merits as a novelist, Eco was an exceptionally shrewd self-promoter...”
• The subject (Umberto Eco) and the referents a polymath and a self-promoter are uniquely
identifiable
– The qualification provided by the modifiers shrewd and cleverness convey purely expressive
information.
• Both modifiers are quantified – by exceptionally (adverb) and towering (adjective) respectively
– Both of these quantifiers are examples of scalar quantification
Types of qualification: Types of modifiers
• The main types of qualification and modification are:
i. Qualifying properties, expressed as adjectives
• Hercule Poirot is a brilliant detective
ii. Qualifying relations, expressed as genitive phrases or as prepositional phrases
• Agatha Christie’s detective Poirot is a legend all over the world
• The detective with the waxed moustache solves the most baffling cases
iii. Qualifying situations are expressed as (atemporal) participial phrases or as (temporal) relative
clauses
• Hercule Poirot is the famous detective created by the English mystery writer Agatha Christie.
• Poirot is a detective who has come to England as a war refugee.
iv. Apposition: the juxtaposition of a noun phrase to a preceding noun phrase
• Non-restrictive qualification ‘Hercule Poirot is a brilliant detective’
• The adjective brilliant modifies the predicate noun detective
– It might possibly be understood in a restrictive sense (?category of brilliant detectives?), but this
is unlikely
• Restrictive qualification – relation of possession ‘Agatha Christie’s detective Poirot is a legend all
over the world’
• detective is modified by the genitive noun phrase Agatha Christie’s ‘Hercule Poirot, the detective
with the waxed moustache...’
• the detective is modified by the prepositional phrase with the waxed moustache
• Non-restrictive qualification ‘Hercule Poirot, [...], solves the most baffling cases’
• This is likely to be understood as non-restrictive (evaluative), i.e. most baffling + cases, not
restrictive (*most + baffling cases)
• Restrictive qualification by (a)temporal relation
– ‘Poirot is a detective who has come to England as a war refugee’
• a detective is modified by a relative clause [temporal – tensed verb]
‘...the detective created by the English mystery writer Agatha Christie, ...’
• the detective is qualified by a participial phrase [atemporal – tenseless past participle]
– n.b. participial phrases are really relative clauses in disguise, but they do not have any auxiliary
verb to provide tense information (so they cannot be classed as temporal situations)
• The meaning of a modifier is determined by three elements:
1. its lexical meaning(s)
2. its grammatical form
3. its syntactic position relative to the head noun
• There are two possible syntactic positions: before or after the noun
– prenominal modifiers (before the noun) typically describe permanent and characteristic qualities
• In English, this is the typical position for adjectives and genitives
– postnominal modifiers (after the noun) typically describe temporary or occasional qualities
• In English, this is the typical position for qualifying relations and situations (prepositional
phrases, relative clauses)
• Each type of qualification has a preferred structural realisation.
– Properties are coded as adjectives
• Participles and participial phrases describe atemporal situations that are recategorised as
properties.
– Relations (to an entity) are expressed as genitive phrases or prepositional phrases
– Situations are rendered as relative or participial clauses

QUALIFICATION BY RELATION: GENITIVE PHRASES & PREPOSITIONAL PHRASES

Possessive relations: Genitive suffix ’s
• Possessive relations link a possessor with the thing possessed.
– In English, the noun phrase expressing the possessor precedes the head noun expressing the
thing possessed, e.g.
• my father’s house.
– This reflects the direction of processing from the salient, unique reference point (the possessor)
to the target (the thing possessed).
• Genitive -’s also has a categorizing function in indefinite noun phrases, e.g. a doctor’s degree; a
summer’s day; a man’s voice
– The possessive relation in indefinite noun phrases designates a kind/ type/subcategory, of the
thing possessed and indicates generic, not unique, reference.

Intrinsic relations: Preposition of

• Of is different to all the other prepositions in English: it has its own peculiar behaviour.
– One of of’s most common uses is to express intrinsic relations
• In these structures, of relates the two noun phrases
– The meaning of the relation is determined by the entities (noun phrases) that are related
1. part-whole relation, e.g. the end of the tunnel
2. relational term, e.g. the father of the bride
3. reified thing, e.g. the review of the book
4. identifying relation, e.g. the issue of unemployment* / a cup of coffee
* ‘the issue of unemployment is ambiguous because it also contains a reification
– All four types of intrinsic relation draw on construals (cf. Chapter
2) for their interpretation
1. Part-whole relation, e.g. the end of the tunnel
– This is the classic view of a partitive construction
– Parts are intrinsically related to a whole
• The profiled part (end, middle, front, etc.) exists only with reference to its base: “the
end/middle/front of what?”
– This construction profiles one area (boundedness), or one element or component (internal
composition) of an object (base)
• It is a concrete relation, particularly relevant to count nouns
• It can only relate to a bounded thing which has parts
2. Relational term, e.g. the father of the bride
– This construction focuses on connectedness and dependency, rather than partition.
• It is typical of kinship terms but also of other nouns, mainly with a human referent
– e.g. president, neighbour, speaker, also: funeral, picture, biography, conversation, history
– The relationship is non-reversible: the profiled term is dependent on its base, but not vice versa
• The human can exist outside the relationship, but the relationship can’t exist without the
human, e.g.
• A photograph of [person] (not *the [person] of the photograph)
• The funeral of [person] (not *a [person] of the funeral)
3. Reified thing, e.g. the review of the book
– Reified things are abstract nouns which express relations as if they were things (c.f. Chapter 4)
• In removing the verb and its subject, object/complement, etc), the grounding elements (tense,
number, definiteness) remain unspecified.
– The relation expressed connects (reconstructs) the participants in a situation
– e.g. in ‘the review of the book’…
• The episodic event is to review – a transitive verb with both a subject (reviewer) and object
(thing reviewed ).
• The reified thing review evokes both participants of the episodic event (the book and the
reviewer).
– Even though the reviewer is not mentioned, s/he is implicitly present and this allows us to
reconstruct the original relation
– In other words, the abstract noun evokes abstract (and absent) participants in order to complete
the frame of reference for the event.
4. Identifying relation, e.g. the issue of unemployment
• Identifying relations are based on the figure/ground construal
– Both nouns have equal prominence and are mutually-dependent
– Their relationship is symmetrical: we can switch our attention between the figure and ground
• In ‘the issue of unemployment’ …
– The head noun (issue) intrinsically requires an entity which specifies/identifies what it refers to
• what kind of issue?  unemployment
– The construction “the issue of employment” can be paraphrased as an “A is B” relation (and can
usually be reversed, i.e. as a “B is A” relation)
– This shows the mutual dependency of the two nouns and the symmetry of the relation:
• the issue is unemployment
• unemployment is the issue
• the employment issue is...
More about identifying relations
It is very common for identifying relations to have as their figure an abstract or metaphorical
expression, and for them to express metaphorical quantities and qualities.
e.g. A cup of coffee
– At first glance, this looks like a part-for-whole, or a relational term
– BUT it an identifying relation between a substance (coffee) and its profiled quantity (cup).
• While it is ‘obvious’ that the coffee relates to and is dependent on the cup (the coffee is in the
cup), the cup is also dependent on the coffee
• The meaning of cup is not literal (object) but metonymic: CONTAINER (cup) FOR CONTAINED
(=the size of the cup is the quantity of coffee)

Schematic relations: Prepositions

• A schematic relation is an abstract relation between two entities
– The relation can be visualised or pictured, i.e. it is an image schema
• Any two entities may be linked in a schematic relation. Different prepositions indicate different
relations (and image schemata), e.g.:
– under and over both evoke the up-down schema (part of the orientation schema)
– behind evokes the front-back schema (part of the orientation schema)
– to, from, and at evoke the orientation schema
– on and off both evoke the contact schema
– in and out both evoke the container schema
– by and with evoke the accompaniment schema
• The schematic meanings conveyed by prepositions are indeterminate, loose, and often
metaphorical
– In most everyday situations, however, we manage, because the relation as a whole evokes a
stereotypical scene within a frame and/or domain.
Concrete spatial relations are viewed via frames
a. the plates on the dinner table [frame: meal]
• We visualise a scene of plates on the table-top, ready for a meal. We may also visualise plates
stacked in the middle of the table (before being arranged, or after the meal has ended). We would
not imagine anything non-prototypical, e.g.an upside-down table
And more abstract relations are viewed via domains
b. a book on Prince Charles [domain: literature]
• We expect to find a biography of Prince Charles covering the most important events of his life,
rather than a short period or selected people and places.
c. a new play by Alan Ayckbourn [domain: drama]
• Knowledge of the author is the only way we can know whether to expect a comedy or a tragedy
(drama)
d. a donation to the church [domain: charity]
• We tacitly assume that our donation will go to a good cause (charity) rather than be spent on
luxury apartments for the clergy.
(i)The meaning of a possessive relation is characterised by a reference point (bold circle) in
providing access (arrow) to the thing possessed.
(ii) The meaning of an intrinsic relation is determined by the nature of the two entities related
(bold circles).
– Here, the preposition of cannot be substituted by another preposition.
(iii) The schematic relation is indicated by the choice of preposition
– (for marks a relation of care and benefaction)

QUALIFICATION BY MEANS OF PROPERTIES: ADJECTIVES

Properties: Adjectives
• Properties are typically expressed as adjectives, e.g.
– ‘new’ or ‘happy’
• Properties are single qualitative features related to a thing but they are not the thing itself
• Compare:
– “Jack is a dishonest person” [adjective + noun]
• The property dishonest singles out (just) one feature of the thing
(Jack): the dimension of honesty
– “Jack is a swindler” [noun]
• Jack = swindler: he is entirely defined by that property
– We assume that someone who is a swindler is dishonest
– Someone who is dishonest is necessarily a swindler[truffatore]
• Nouns and premodifier adjectives range from fully entrenched categories to epithetical
properties.
1. A short story is a compound and represents a fully lexicalised (sub)category. Fully lexicalized
categories are present in dictionaries.
• The adjective of a compound does not behave like a typical ‘free’ adjective: it cannot be graded
(*a shorter story), intensified (*the very short story) or separated from its head noun (*short
interesting story).
2. A long story is not a category, but a property – it is ‘long’ in comparison with other stories, i.e.
according to an implicit scale.
3. A stupid story is a not a category: ‘stupid’ is a comment reflecting the reader’s opinion.
“Sam bought his wife an expensive bracelet.”
• We compare the price Sam paid with the price normally paid for bracelets.
– This serves as its reference point.
• Conceptually, we open two mental spaces
– A reality space, involving the high price paid
• This is marked, i.e. different from expected
– A standard space, involving the price normally charged.
• In blending these two spaces, we arrive at the conclusion that the price paid was higher than the
price normally paid
– People typically react to marked situations, e.g. they might regard Sam’s purchase as a waste of
money or a token of generosity.
“Charles is not just a faithful husband, but also a generous one”
• Faithfulness in marriage is the expected “norm”.
– We compare a faithful husband with its hypothetical opposite, an unfaithful husband.
• Here, we open two mental spaces
– Reality space of ‘faithfulness’ – the unmarked situation
– Counterfactual space of ‘unfaithfulness’ - the marked situation.
• So we interpret faithful against the hypothetical unfaithful, which evokes a much more vivid and
complex scenario
The two endpoints in the representation of faithful (husband) indicate that ‘faithful’ is a
complementary property to ‘unfaithful’

Adjectives: between nouns and verbs

• Adjectives are a grammatical category halfway between nouns and verbs.
– They behave like nouns in the following respects:
• Semantically, the properties adjectives describe tend to be fairly stable.
– Just as a dog is likely to remain a dog, also a big black dog is likely to remain big and black.
• Syntactically, adjectives may appear in predicative position, e.g. Bill is liberal / Bill is a liberal.
• Morphologically, adjectives in many languages (but not in English!) agree with their head nouns
with respect to number and gender
– Additionally, in English, certain adjectives can be used as nouns describing classes of people, e.g.
• ‘the blind’, ‘the sick’ or ‘the unemployed’
– n.b. This use of adjectives turns people into a mere category – it is often interpreted as negative
and somewhat dehumanising
• Adjectives behave like verbs in the following respects:
– Semantically, adjectives designate relations and are dependent conceptual units, e.g.
• big in big dog designates a relation between the entity ‘dog’ and the domain ‘size’.
– Syntactically, most adjectives are intensifiable and gradable, e.g.
• a film can be very good and it can be better than a tv series.
– And many adjectives can be used intransitively and transitively, e.g.
• I am excited [intransitive]
• I am excited about getting married [transitive]
– Morphologically, some English adjectives are identical in form to verbs, or are derived from
verbs (e.g. participles)
• open to open; free to free
• to closeclosed; to amazeamazing; readreadable
– Conversely, many verbs are derived from adjectives
• new to renew; realto realise

Functions of properties [adjectives]

• Most adjectives can be used as in 3 possible positions
– Each position has a different function and imposes different meanings on the adjectives.
1. premodifiers (before the noun)
• These are attributive adjectives and they designate characteristic properties
2. postmodifiers (after the noun):
• These are also attributive adjectives but they designate occasional properties
3. predicatives (after a copula verb):
• Predicative adjectives designate assigned properties
• Attributive adjectives are noun modifiers
– Prenominal attributive adjectives are associated with permanent and characteristic properties,
e.g.
“The North Star is a visible star”
• This star is permanently visible (at night) to the naked eye or by telescope
– Postnominal attributive adjectives are associated with temporary and occasional properties, e.g.
“Jupiter and Saturn are the planets visible (in January)”
• They are not always visible, i.e. only at particular times (of the night or in a particular season of
the year)
• Predicative adjectives are not noun modifiers: they occur after a copular verb to create an “A is
B” relation
– i.e. they assign the noun “A” to the category “B”, e.g.
“Mercury is only marginally visible”
(Here, Mercury and only marginally visible are presented as equivalents)

Characteristic properties: Premodifiers

• Premodifier adjectives present characteristic properties, but different types of premodifier
adjectives display different sorts of ‘characteristic properties’
– Prototypical adjectives
• These relate to a scale and are therefore described as scalar (or gradable) adjectives, e.g.
intelligent in “There may be intelligent beings on Mars”
– De-adverbal and de-nominal adjectives
• These are derived from verbs or nouns respectively. They take the elements of a situation and
re-categorise them as a property, e.g. constant in “There is constant talk of it”
Martian in “Martian invaders may land on Earth”.
• These adjectives cannot be graded or intensified, and predicative use is unusual.
– Determining adjectives
• These specify a category or ground a referent, often for emphasis, e.g. total in “Maybe all this is
total nonsense”
-Scalar properties
• Properties may be placed along a comparison scale or an intensity scale
– The comparison scale consists of three grades:
1. Positive (base forms)
2. Comparative (more/less)
3. Superlative (the most/the least)
– The intensity scale is expressed by intensifying adverbs e.g. pretty, very, extremely, terribly, and
awfully.
• There are also 2 types of non-scalar (extreme) adjectives:
1. Adjectives denoting complementary properties (polar opposites), e.g. excellent/dreadful,
dead/alive, true/false
2. Adjectives of shape, e.g. round, square
– These can usually be made less extreme (i.e., vague or approximate) by adding the productive
suffix –ish.
Recategorised properties
• Denominal adjectives relate to participants of an event and have two possible functions:
categorising or classifying
– In this respect, they behave in a similar way to compound nouns
Compare: legal advice; medical advice; financial advice [adj.-n] with: health advice; careers advice;
consumer advice [n-n]
• The choice between compound nouns and adjective-noun phrases is not predictable, except
when the adjective and noun have different meanings: check a dictionary!
• De-adverbial adjectives relate to the manner of an action or to the setting of a situation, e.g.
• hard worker, early riser, heavy smoker [manner]
• the late Steve Jobs; the former USSR, my ex-boyfriend [setting – temporal information]
• the possible effects; the likely winner [setting: reality status]
• Denominal adjectives relate to participants of an event
– These participants play a “role” in a situation, and are recategorised as characterising properties
• The main ‘participant roles’ that we recognize are:
– “agent” (responsible for carrying out the action)
e.g., in presidential decision, the president makes a decision and thus plays the role of an “agent”
in the event,
– “recipient” (person who the action is aimed at)
e.g., in presidential adviser, the president plays the role of the “recipient” of information,
– “theme” (specifies what the action is for)
e.g., in presidential election, the president plays the role of the “theme” of an election,
– “goal” (specifies the intended outcome of the action)
e.g. in presidential candidate, the president plays the role of the “goal” of his/her candidature.
-Specifying properties
Determining adjectives specify a thing, or ground a referent
– They are used before a noun to emphasise a description of something (or the degree of
something), e.g.
• He made me feel like a complete idiot
– In combination with indefinite predicate nouns denoting a category, they highlight that the
category fully applies, e.g.
• Some of it was absolute rubbish
(iii) Specifying properties: Determining adjectives
• A subclass of determining adjectives, also known as specifying adjectives, (or postdeterminers)
stress the uniqueness of a referent.
– They take a special type of relative clause, i.e. with a to-infinitive.
“Marie and Pierre Curie were the first [people] to discover radioactivity.”
– They come after a determiner and in front of any other adjectives.
“ The prime suspect for the terrorist attacks is Al Qaida”
“He wore his usual old white coat.”
• The following are emphasizing determining adjectives
– absolute
– complete, entire, total
– outright, utter
– perfect, pure
– positive
– real, true
– sheer
(These lists are not exhaustive!)
• The following are specifying determining adjectives
– first, last, next, previous, past, present
– additional, following, further, other, remaining
– same, usual
– certain, existing, only, particular, specific,
– chief, main, principal
– entire, whole
• They are used in the structure
Definite determiner + adj + noun phrase
-Order of premodifier adjectives
• Adjective sequencing follows the “iconic principle of proximity”
– Denominal adjectives subcategorise a thing; they are placed closest to the noun, e.g.
• “the only reliable economic expert”; “the first intelligent diplomatic solution”
– Scalar and de-adverbial adjectives characterise the referent; they are placed further away from
the head noun, e.g. “the only reliable economic expert”; “the first intelligent diplomatic solution”
– Determining adjectives go with the article the, e.g. “the only reliable economic expert”; “the first
intelligent diplomatic solution”

Premodifiers and postmodifiers

• The difference in meaning between premodifier and postmodifier adjectives can be seen below:
– Premodifier adjectives (‘the visible stars’)
• These signal permanent and general properties; the noun phrases in which they occur are
complete in themselves.
– Postmodifier adjectives (‘the stars visible’)
• These describe changeable and more particular properties and need further specification.
• Adjectives rarely follow nouns in English - with 2 main exceptions:-
1. Reduced relative clauses (cf part 4)
• You can put an adjective after a noun if the adjective is followed by a prepositional phrase or a
to-infinitive clause, e.g.
– ...a warning to people eager for a quick cure. (= people who are eager for…)
– ...the sort of weapons likely to be deployed against it. (=weapons which are likely to be…)
2. Formal terminology, especially if derived from Latin, e.g.
– The president elect; The director general Present participles
• These can be pre- or postmodifiers, but are usually postmodifiers, found in reduced relative
clauses, together with their complements or adjuncts, e.g.
*a woman lying on the floor is therefore ungrammatical is interpreted not as “sdraiare” but as
“mentire”, i.e. as a stable attribute.
• When they occur in prenominal position, the complements/ adjuncts cannot be inserted, e.g.
‘the woman lying on the floor’ [postmodifying] = perfectly acceptable.
‘*the lying on the floor woman’ [premodifying] = ungrammatical,
• Bare participles can also be used as premodifiers, e.g. working men, sleeping beauty, annoying
children
– In this usage, they are like all other premodifying adjectives: they describe stable attributes and
have subcategorising function
• Past participles
– Past participles are atemporal (they are non-finite verbs
• However, they do communicate aspect (cf. Chapter 8)
– They refer to situations that are finished or completed, and typically describe a resultant state of
an event.
– Past participal adjectives may occur in pre- or postmodifier position
• In premodifier position, we focus on the stable result, e.g.
– a reviewed book, deposited money, reduced costs
• In postmodifier position, we focus on the temporary event causing the result, e.g.
– a book reviewed, money withdrawn, profits gained.
– Notice, again, that the postmodifier position of these adjectives is really a reduced relative
clause

Assigned properties: Predicatives

• Scalar adjectives in predicative position are in principle ambiguous between a permanent and a
temporary interpretation
– Here, other structures in the context, e.g. verb tenses, usually clarify matters.
• You’re being obnoxious, Howard. [contextually grounded behaviour + present progressive:
temporary state]
• Please, don’t be so noisy. I can’t hear anything. [contextually-grounded request + imperative]
• Try not to be so nervous, will you? [contextually grounded behaviour + imperative]
• He had been very rude and was dismissed. [cause-effect: past perfect  past simple]
• It was very cruel of you to say such things. [action-implicit effect]
• Why were you so nasty to your friend? [action-effect]

QUALIFICATION BY MEANS OF SITUATIONS: RELATIVE CLAUSES

• Relative clauses can be ‘headed’ or ‘headless’
– These two forms communicate different meanings
• Headed relative clauses refer to one instance only
– ‘Show me the thing that you saw’
• Headless relative clauses refer to an indeterminate number of instances.
– ‘Show me what you saw’
• Restrictive relative clauses restrict the referential range of a thing using a whole temporal
situation, not simply a property or relationship
• This makes them more complex conceptually and grammatically than other types of qualification
• Non-restrictive relative clauses function differently: they provide either background information
or expressive evaluation about a referent that is already identified.
(Since it is already identified it needs no more referential specification)
• In both cases, we need to consider
(i) the nature of the head of the relative clause
(ii) the relative pronoun
(iii) the functions of the relative clause.

The head: restrictive relative clauses

• It is very common to use ‘thing’, ‘place’, ‘time’, ‘reason’, ‘way’, ‘person’, ‘people’ as the head of a
restrictive relative clause, e.g.
• He lives in a place where…
• This happened at a time when…
• I never found out the reason why…
• People who…
• Alternatively, we can just use the relative clause, i.e. creating a headless relative clause, except
with the nouns person and people e.g.
• He lives in a place where…  He lives where…
• This happened at a time when…  This happened when…
• I never found out the reason why…  I never found out why…
• People who…  Those who … / Anyone who … /Whoever …

The head: non-restrictive relative clauses

• The head of a non-restrictive relative clause is always a definite referent
– It has either been introduced in the preceding discourse or is known to speaker and hearer, e.g.
• “Umberto Eco, who has died aged 84, was a polymath…”
• Any situation that has been introduced may serve as a referent for a non-restrictive relative
clause
• Each consecutive situation establishes a new discourse referent, so only the immediately
preceding situation usually qualifies as an anaphoric referent.
• “In late 1986, when I visited Eco at Bologna University, where he taught as professor of
semiotics, an abstruse branch of literary theory, he appeared unsettled....”

Pronouns in restrictive relative clauses

• There are different relative pronouns depending on…
i. Semantic features
• English differentiates between human and non-human referents
– who for humans (whom is the direct/indirect object, but is not considered excessively formal)
– which for non-humans
ii. Syntactic position
• If the relative clause is in direct object position, British English insists on using who/which and
not ‘that’, e.g.
– There’s the man who / that wants to talk to you
– In spoken English (and typically in American English), that can substitute all forms
– Often the relative pronoun is omitted (zero-form, Ø)
• This is NOT possible with unique reference, including superlatives, e.g. That’s the best that can
happen.

Pronouns in non-restrictive relative clauses

• That is never used to introduce non-restrictive relative clauses
– Non-restrictive relative clauses require more specific information, i.e. who, which, where , so
that their anaphoric referent is clarified, e.g.
• “In late 1986, when I visited Eco at Bologna University, where he taught as professor of
semiotics, [which is] an abstruse branch of literary theory….”
• How a comma changes the meaning of a relative clause
• Non-restrictive relative clauses are set off by commas
• In speaking, the speaker’s intonation indicates the same information
“Bologna University had been a hotbed of Italian red activism, and the philosophy faculty, where
Eco had his office, was often spray-gunned with political slogans and crude attempts at action
painting.”
(i) no comma: “the philosophy faculty where Eco had his office was often spraygunned with
political slogans
• The philosophy faculty is identified / specified by a situation (where Eco had his office) which
restricts the reference from all philosophy faculties to only the one where Eco had his office
(ii) with comma: “the philosophy faculty, where Eco had his office, was often spray-gunned with
political slogans”, “The philosophy faculty with its graffiti is conceptually detached (“where Eco
had his office”), which is non-restrictive

Functions of relative clauses

• Restrictive relative clauses
– We can use relative clauses to restrict reference whenever two or more referents/things need to
be distinguished from each other, e.g.
• “the philosophy faculty” [unique reference – I only know of only one philosophy faculty/
philosophy faculty building]
vs.
“the philosophy faculty where Eco had his office” [I know of several philosophy faculties or faculty
buildings; I mean the one where Eco had his office]
– In the case of substances (=unbounded and homogeneous), the restriction is typically done with
respect to a portion or a quality, e.g.
• ‘I prefer whisky that comes from the Isle of Skye’ [quality]
• Non-restrictive relative clauses
– Non-restrictive relative clauses are used to add information about a referent which is already
well-identified
• e.g. “Umberto Eco, who has died aged 84, was a polymath…”
– Note again that a restrictive relative clause is a kind of parenthetical comment and is therefore
ALWAYS enclosed by punctuation

SUMMARY
• Qualification refers to the specification of things or instances of things.
– Qualifications are expressed as modifiers of nouns or sentences and have two functions.
• Restrictive qualification mainly has an identifying function
• Non-restrictive qualification has an expressive function.
• Modifiers may occupy different syntactic positions
– Prenominal modifiers tend to provide permanent and characteristic qualification,
– Postnominal modifiers tend to express occasional and temporary qualification.
– Predicative modifiers equate the noun with the quality (A is B)
• Qualifications are mainly achieved via a property, a relation, or a situation.
– Qualifying properties are expressed as adjectives (scalar /complementary)
– Qualifying relations are expressed as
• Possessive relations (genitive phrases)
• Intrinsic relations (prepositional phrases with of)
• Schematic relations (other prepositional phrases)
– Qualifying situations are expressed by restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses

CHAPTER 8Situation types: Aspect

What is aspect?
• Aspect is a viewpoint construal
– It is typically associated with verb tenses
• [base form]: the present simple, the past simple, etc.
• [progressive aspect]: the present progressive, the past progressive, etc.
• [perfective aspect]: the present perfect, the past perfect, etc.
– Aspects interact with the telicity of verbs
• A telic verb has an end, i.e. the action comes to a natural completion
– Not all verbs are telic! Not all verbs have an end. And not all verbs have a start and/or a
duration…
• Telicity informs our use of active and stative verbs, and governs the choice between simple/
progressive aspects
• Telicity also interacts with the transitivity of a verb

SITUATIONS AND BASIC ASPECTUAL CLASSES

• Situations have grounding elements and setting elements (Ch3)
• Situations also have a particular temporal structure which corresponds to a particular type of
situation
• Situation types reflect the following concepts
1. Dynamic or static situations (=active/ stative verbs)
2. Bounded or unbounded situations (=simple / progressive aspect)
3. Internal composition: a start, a duration, and an end.
• Many situations have a start, a duration, and an end. They are bounded in time
– e.g. Grandma baked her favourite cherry pie
• Some situations have no duration, i.e. they start and end at the same time
– e.g. kick [a ball], cough, sneeze
• Some situations only have duration, i.e. they have no start and no end
– e.g. be, believe, know
• Some situations have duration and focus on an end, but have no start
– e.g. win [a football match], finish [a book], open [an umbrella, a window]
– [uses of the present perfect with yet/already/just]
• Some situations have a start and a duration, but no end
– [uses of the present perfect with since/for]

Basic aspectual classes

• What aspect really means/ does is to show a particular view of a situation through a maximal or
a restricted viewing frame (cf. Ch. 2)
– Maximal viewing frame: You see the entire event as if from outside
• You have no perception of the passing of time and in this sense the event is “infinite”
– Restricted viewing frame: You see only one part of the whole event
• You focus on the part of the event that is in progress, even if you “know” that it is part of a
longer process
• English has two aspects:
1. The non-progressive (simple) aspect, characterised by a maximal viewing frame, and
2. The progressive aspect, characterised by a restricted viewing frame.
3. The perfect aspect is a combination of aspectual and temporal meanings
• Events with a beginning and duration (but no end) + anterior time
• Events are dynamic situations
– They involve changes and are heterogeneous (‘things’)
• We can view them through a maximal viewing frame (simple aspect)
– “Ann cuddled her cat”
» External view: we see a bounded event with a beginning and an end
• Or we can view them through a restricted viewing frame (progressive aspect)
– “Ann is cuddling her cat”
» Internal view: we see the event at a certain point in its progression
• States are static situations
– They involve no change and are homogeneous (‘stuff’)
• We can view them through a maximal viewing frame (simple aspect)
– “Ann lives with her parents”
» Infinite view: we see the state as unbounded and homogeneous (lasting).
• Or we can view them through a restricted viewing frame (progressive aspect)
– “Ann is living with her parents”
» Internal view: we see the state as temporary, i.e. having implicit boundaries
• Events can be bounded (simple aspect) or unbounded (progressive aspect)
– If unbounded, the temporal boundaries are defocused (i.e. implicitly present in the background)
• States can be lasting (simple aspect) or temporary, i.e. with implicit boundaries (progressive
aspect)
– If unbounded, the implicit temporal boundaries are imposed (i.e. added: this means that
expressing states in the progressive is unusual and often emphatic)
• The English progressive aspect really communicates the idea of “unbounded but with implicit
boundaries”.
– The notion of boundedness is fundamental
Bounded events are viewed externally and in their entirety
– They are heterogeneous and comprise sequences of subevents
– The focus is on the boundaries of the event, in particular its end
– Bounded events are also described as perfective
Unbounded events are viewed internally and provide a close-up view on the progression of the
event
– The progressive conveys greater immediacy to an event as it unfolds
• Once we focus on the internal progression of an event it is only natural that we lose sight of its
beginning and end.
– Unbounded events are also described as imperfective
States are normally unbounded with no implicit boundaries
Lasting states are seen as infinite, i.e. no beginning or end.
– Uncontrolled states of affairs are thought of as lasting indefinitely so the simple aspect is
expected
e.g. Ann loves her cat, I know my wife.
Unbounded states with implicit boundaries are temporary states
– They last for a limited duration
• Some states are normally thought of as temporary, so usually occur in the progressive
– e.g. She is sleeping; I am waiting; The cushion is lying on the floor, etc.
• Most of the time, however, states expressed in the progressive are emphatically temporary

THE 4 BASIC TYPES OF EVENTS

• Cognitive grammar recognizes four types of events (and three types of state)
1. Accomplishments
2. Activities
3. Achievements
4. Acts
– Each of these can be bounded or unbounded, i.e. can occur in the simple or the progressive
aspect
– The basic types here refer to the bounded form
• The event types are determined by their duration in time and by their telicity (from Greek télos
‘end’)
– Telic events end with a natural conclusion: they can be interrupted, completed, or finished.
– Atelic events have no natural conclusion: they can only be ended or stopped
• i.e. They are not finished in the sense of ‘completed’
1. Accomplishments are telic: they have duration and an end
• They are comprised of a sequence of sub-events from start to finish
2. Activities are atelic: they only have duration
• They are less complex actions which do not comprise sub-events
3. Achievements are telic: they have defocused duration
• They focus on the completion point only
4. Acts are telic but have no duration
• They are over at the same time as they start

More about bounded events

1. Accomplishments
– Bounded telic events that take a certain duration for their completion.
– The focus of accomplishments is on their conclusion.
– They require a (human) energy source to propel the event to its conclusion.
2. Activities
– Durational and atelic events, i.e. without a conclusive end-point,
– They may be bounded or unbounded.
• Bounded activities are typically bounded with respect to the moment they stop.
3. Achievements
– Bounded events focusing on the punctual moment of the event’s termination
– They also invoke a preceding culminating, or “build-up”, phase.
4. Acts
– Punctual, atelic events.
Unbounded events
• The progressive draws our focus onto the activity in progress
– It makes us view the four types of bounded events as unbounded events
• The restricted viewing frame of progressive tenses allows us to see only part of the event
– Its beginning and end are only implicitly there
– The part which we see in an unbounded event necessarily has duration (because it extends
beyond the viewing frame)
• N.b. A punctual event cannot have duration – it can only be repeated
1. Accomplishments seen through a restricted viewing frame are
Accomplishing activities
2. Activities seen through a restricted viewing frame are Unbounded activities
3. Achievements seen through a restricted viewing frame are Culminating activities
4. Acts seen through a restricted viewing frame are Iterative activities (repetitions)
1. Accomplishing activities focus on the durational phase of an accomplishment.
– They do not focus on completion (it need not even occur)
2. Unbounded activities focus on the continuation of the event
– This results in subtle differences in meaning compared to bounded activities.
3. Culminating activities are the unbounded counterparts of achievements.
– These focus on the build-up phase rather than the end point of achievements, e.g. he is winning
• Achievements are punctual events so cannot easily be extended in time.
4. Iterative activities are quick successions of punctual acts, which are conceived of as constituting
a single durational event.

Comparison & summary

• Bounded events
– (Bounded) accomplishments focus on the conclusion of the event
– (Bounded) activities are typically bounded with respect to the moment they stop.
– Achievements focus on the moment of the event’s termination
• They invoke a preceding culminating (build-up) phase.
– Acts are punctual, atelic events.
• Unbounded events
– Accomplishing activities focus on the durational phase of an event.
– Unbounded activities focus on the continuation of the event, not with its end-point or conclusion
– Culminating activities focus on the build-up phase of an achievement
• They are the unbounded counterparts of achievements
– Iterative activities are quick successions of punctual acts
• The succession is viewed as a single durational event.

THREE BASIC TYPES OF STATES

Types of states
• There is a basic aspectual distinction between lasting states and temporary states
– Lasting states
• Maximal viewing frame infinite view (unbounded)
– The class of lasting states includes three subtypes:
1. indefinitely lasting states
2. habitual states
3. everlasting states
» Only the former two may also be construed as temporary states (everlasting is everlasting...).
– Temporary states
• Restricted viewing frame  internal view (bounded.)

Indefinitely lasting states and temporary states

• Indefinitely lasting states last for an indefinite time
– But they may eventually cease to exist.
• They can be located in present, past or future time
– Indefinitely lasting states may only last for a short time
BUT
They are generally seen as being homogeneous and stable for some indefinite time.
• Indefinitely lasting states are expressed by...
– stative verbs (He loves his mother)
– predicative adjectives (He is happy)
– predicative participles (He is shocked)
– prepositional phrases (He is in shock)
– predicate nominals (He is a teacher)
• Predicates typically describing indefinitely lasting states:
– psychological states: want, desire, long for, miss
– emotional states: love, hate, like, detest, be happy
– mental states: know, believe, think, hope, be doubtful
– perceptual states: see, feel, (it) feels, smells, be aware of
– behavioural states: be good to someone, be mean, be a miser
– states of possession: possess, belong, own, have
– states of being: contain, consist, exist, be tall, be a millionaire
– positional states: stand, sit, lie, rest, extend
– relational states: involve, be similar to, be the father of
• Most indefinitely lasting states are seen as being infinite
– Some are typically used in the progressive and describe temporary states because we know that
they are not infinite
• “He’s still sleeping”
• Many states may be described either in the simple present or the present progressive and
convey different meanings
“How do you like / are you liking your new job?”
“I hope / I am hoping we’ll get a discount”
“I feel / I am feeling sick”
– The specific meaning is not only time-related:-
• Simple  infinite  homogeneous, general, factual, objective
• Progressive  internal  heterogeneous, specific, episodic, subjective (often negative)

“Habitual states”
• Habitual states are not really states...
– They are successions of indefinitely recurrent equivalent situations which merge into each other
because they become difficult to differentiate
• i.e. a habitual state is a multiplex situation
• Habitual states that are true at the present time are expressed in the simple present, e.g.
• “Mary smokes a pipe” [personal habit]
• “Germans drink a lot of beer” [social custom]
• “My son-in-law works in London” [occupation]
• “But he now lives in Paris” [residence – ‘now’ =recent beginning]
• Past habitual situations are indicated by used to + INF
• “I used to go to the gym regularly ” [personal habit, no longer true]

“Habitual states” and temporary habitual states

• Like some indefinitely lasting states, habitual states may only last temporarily.
– The use of the progressive makes us see an otherwise timeless habitual state as a temporary
habitual state.
“Mom works at the Ministry of Finance”
“Mom is working at the Ministry of Finance” (for the moment).
• The habitual nature of a state can also be highlighted by means of the frequency adjuncts which
emphasise the repeated occurrences of the event:
– always, all the time, continuously and constantly,
“You constantly get into trouble”
“This car always breaks down”
“I forget people’s names all the time”

Everlasting states
• Everlasting states are phenomena whose existence or truth is timeless and unchangeable.
– We can only express everlasting states in the present
– Everlasting states are characterised by the generic nature of the overall situation
• Typical examples of everlasting states are
1. Physical laws, e.g. What goes up must come down. (law of gravity)
2. Definitions, e.g. A triangle is a two-dimensional figure with three straight sides and three angles.
3. Eternal truths, e.g. Oil floats on water.
4. Generalisations that are claimed to be true e.g. Women are the stronger sex.
5. Proverbial truths, i.e. generalisations that are believed to be true, e.g. Politics makes strange
bedfellows.

EVENTS IN MORE DETAIL

ACCOMPLISHMENTS AND ACCOMPLISHING ACTIVITIES
Accomplishments
• Accomplishments are telic events with duration
– They consist of a series of cumulative phases (sub-events) leading to a conclusive end-point.
• Each of the sub-events contributes to the completion of the event as a whole
– E.g. To work out: (go to the gym, get changed), warm up, do exercises, cool down,
(shower&change, go home)
• An accomplishment therefore takes time to be realised
– Since its completion is an essential part of its meaning, an accomplishment can be said to be
“finished” when it is completed.
• If an accomplishment is “stopped”, that means it has been interrupted before it has come to its
natural conclusion
– When an event stops midway it is no longer an accomplishment
• How accomplishments interact with context
– Time expressions
• Accomplishments have a starting point, duration, and a conclusion.
– We can ask How long did it take to do X?
• We can use the ‘time as container’ schema: I did it in [+time]
– Syntactic features
• Some syntactic features denote or imply a conclusive endpoint, e.g.
– a direct object - especially if this is a concrete, countable noun (thing), e.g. “I read the book
[from cover to cover]”
– a resultative adjunct because it emphasizes the conclusion
– a directional prepositional phrase because it states the final destination
– an adverbial particle which emphasises the final position or state
Accomplishing activities
• Expressing accomplishments in the progressive aspect turns them into accomplishing activities.
– The focus is internal, i.e. on the action in progress
• The beginning and end are defocused; only the duration is known
• Because there is no beginning or end to act as temporal boundaries, the time-as-container
schema is not compatible (no “in + time”)
• Instead, time is specified as duration, e.g. for hours, all day long
• An accomplishing activity may be stopped, i.e. interrupted, but not completed
– The completion of the action falls outside the restricted viewing frame
– The restricted viewing frame of the progressive aspect shows only the cumulative phase of the
accomplishment
• John drew a circle (bounded) tells us that a complete circle was drawn
• John was drawing a circle (unbounded) tells us that the circle was not completed
– Notice that the direct object (a concrete, bounded thing) tells us what completion of the event
means: an incomplete circle is not a circle – its completion has been interrupted

Accomplishments in context
• “Humans are lucky to live a hundred years. Oak trees may live a thousand; mayflies, in their
adult form, a single day. But they are all alive in the same way. They are made up of cells which
embody flows of energy and stores of information. Their metabolisms make use of that energy, be
it from sunlight or food, to build new molecules and break down old ones, using mechanisms
described in the genes they inherited and may, or may not, pass on.”
Source: The outsiders inside (The Economist, 22-08.2020, pp.13-14)
– Note how the direct object, molecules, confirms that build and break down are
accomplishments.
• Molecules are [very small] bounded things.
• To build them they must be completely made
• To break them down, they must be destroyed past the point of their usefulness (c.f. Chapter 4)

BOUNDED AND UNBOUNDED ACTIVITIES

Activities
• Activities are solely characterised by their duration
– They consist of a homogeneous action which has no conclusive endpoint.
– Since there can be no natural completion of an activity, it just ‘stops’ (it can’t be ‘finished’ or
‘completed’)
• How activities interact with context
– Time expressions
• They are atelic: there is not even an implicit start or end, so we cannot use the time-as-container
schema (“in”)
• They focus on duration and progress, so we can use time expressions of duration (timeline
schema) e.g.
– We can ask “How long did you do X for ?”
– We can say “I did it for half an hour / from morning till evening”
– Syntax
• The direct object of an activity is unbounded (i.e. an abstract or uncountable noun, or an
indefinite plural count noun), e.g.
– “Diane wrote poetry all evening” (mass noun)
– “Diane wrote poems all evening” (indefinite plural count noun)

Bounded and unbounded activities

• Activities can be bounded or unbounded. In both cases, they are durational and atelic
– Activities are unbounded unless a time expression or a conceptual boundary is imposed in the
context
• Unbounded activities
– They were playing / drinking / working
– Time expressions of duration are typically absent in unbounded activities
• Activities bounded by time expression
– They played all morning /from morning till evening
• Activities bounded conceptually (by direct object/ prepositional phrase)
– “They played Monopoly”
– “He worked on his paper / in the garden / as a taxi-driver / with his colleagues”
• Subtle differences in meaning are conveyed in the choice between simple and progressive
aspect, i.e. in the choice between bounded and unbounded activities
– The simple aspect expresses factuality, definiteness, neutrality
• “I talked to Mr Green” (Bounded activity)
– I initiated the talk: it was held for a purpose; our conversation led to a result.
• ”What did you do in my office?” (Bounded activity)
– Request for purely factual information about what the person actually did in my office.
– The progressive aspect expresses pragmatic inferences
• “I was talking to Mr Green” (Unbounded activity)
– I happened to meet Mr Green; we talked for talk’s sake [casual small talk].
• “What were you doing in my office?” (Unbounded activity)
– Accusation / request for an explanation [the intruder was uninvited]

Activities in context
• “Humans are lucky to live a hundred years. Oak trees may live a thousand; mayflies, in their
adult form, a single day. But they are all alive in the same way. They are made up of cells which
embody flows of energy and stores of information. Their metabolisms make use of that energy, be
it from sunlight or food, to build new molecules and break down old ones, using mechanisms
described in the genes they inherited and may, or may not, pass on.”
Source: The outsiders inside (The Economist, 22-08.2020, pp.13-14)
– Note how the prepositional phrase “of that energy” confirms that make use is a bounded activity
(already suggested by the simple aspect)
• Energy is an abstract, mass noun.
• To make use of it does not mean to exhaust its supply, i.e. there is no natural end-point

ACHIEVEMENTS AND CULMINATING ACTIVITIES

Achievements
• Achievements focus on the terminal point of the action and invoke a culminating phase
immediately before their finish
– They have no duration and no starting point and are always unbounded
• How activities interact with context
– Time expressions
• They have no start and no duration: they are incompatible with the time-as-container schema
(“in”)
• They have no duration: they are incompatible with the timeline schema (timespan/ duration)
• They favour the time-as destination schema (“at”, “on”)
– “They won the match on Sunday”
– “I’ll pick you up at six”
– Syntax
• Achievements are commonly expressed as past or perfective events (because they have been
completed)
• Achievements are typically neither causative or volitional, i.e. uncontrollable
• Because they are not fully controllable, they cannot normally be used in the imperative
– Notice how *Fall asleep!, *Win the match!, *Catch the bus! sound strange

Culminating activities
• Achievements are always unbounded
– This means that the simple/progressive contrast does not differentiate bounded and unbounded
achievements
– It also means that the simple/progressive contrast does not express duration
• Instead, achievement verbs expressed with the progressive shift their focus
– Plain achievements focus on a situation’s completion
• “We have won the match”
• “I opened my umbrella”
• “The door closed”
– Progressive achievements, known as culminating activities, focus on the culminating phase
immediately preceding the situation’s completion
• “Our team is winning”
– Culminating activities can focus on the terminal point of the achievement, i.e. on the moments
immediately prior to the achievement’s completion
• “The door is closing”
– Culminating activities do not express duration but may have pragmatic uses
• e.g. They can express frustration that something is taking too long to complete,
– e.g. “I’ve been working on this all day and I still don’t understand it”
Achievements in context
• “Humans are lucky to live a hundred years. Oak trees may live a thousand; mayflies, in their
adult form, a single day. But they are all alive in the same way. They are made up of cells which
embody flows of energy and stores of information. Their metabolisms make use of that energy, be
it from sunlight or food, to build new molecules and break down old ones, using mechanisms
described in the genes they inherited and may, or may not, pass on.”
Source: The outsiders inside (The Economist, 22-08.2020, pp.13-14)
– The noun “genes” and our knowledge that reproduction and evoolution are realised generation
by generation, tell us that inherited and pass on are achievements.
• To inherit and to pass on are not processes – they are realized as completed events with the
birth of a new being

ACTS AND ITERATIVE ACTIVITIES

• Acts are punctual events: they have no duration; and they start and end at the same time
– The simple/progressive contrast does not communicate duration but rather the contrast
between repetition (number of times/ events) and iteration (one extended event)
• “I dropped my phone three times today” [repetition]
• “I rolled double sixes eight times in a row!” [repetition]
• Acts are always bounded
– The simple/progressive contrast does not differentiate bounded and unbounded acts: it
distinguishes between number and amount quantification
• Acts expressed with the progressive are iterative activities
– They tell us that a single event is extended in time as a quick succession of identical acts, e.g.
• “James was kicking his sister” [iteration]
• “Someone was knocking loudly at the door” [iteration]
• How acts interact with context
– Time expressions
• Acts and iterative activities have no start and no duration: they are incompatible with the time-
as-container schema (“in”)
• Acts and iterative activities have no culminating phase, so are incompatible with time-as
destination schema (“at”, “to”)
• Acts have no duration: they are incompatible with the timeline schema (time-span/ duration)
• Iterative activities express iteration over time, so are totally compatible with the timeline
schema (time-span/ duration)
– “James kicked a ball around all afternoon” [iterative act + duration]
• Acts favour number quantifiers
– “James kicked his sister three times”. [separate acts]
• Iterative activities favour amount quantifiers
– “James kicked his sister a lot” [several acts over time]

CHAPTER 9Grounding situations in time: Tense

• Time and tense are not the same thing
• Tense relates to the way a situation is viewed from the speaker’s current viewpoint
– The speaker can refer to three time spheres:
1. the present time sphere
2. the past time sphere
3. the future time sphere
– These three time spheres are described as deictic times
• Deictic times are typically expressed by the simple tenses
– More complex times can also be expressed
• By taking a backward-looking stance the speaker views anterior (earlier) times, expressed by one
of the perfect tenses
• By taking a forward-looking stance the speaker views posterior (later) times, expressed by
prospective forms, e.g. be going to

TIME AND TENSE

Time and mental spaces
• Time can be expressed in absolute and in relative terms.
– An absolute system of time = calendar dates
– Relative systems of time = in two weeks’ time, five days ago, etc.
• These are more common in everyday communication
• We think of units of time and events as being lined up along a horizontal time line, or time axis.
– The observer/speaker occupies a position at the present moment of time: he faces the future
lying in front of him on the time line and knows the past lying behind.
• The function of tense is to ground a situation in time
– It also means representing a situation as a mental space
• The base space includes:
– the space and time of interaction,
– the speech participants,
– the contextual circumstances: i.e. the deictic ground shared by speaker and hearer
• The speaker’s viewpoint is normally in the base space at the present time
– Speech time (S) is part of the base space
• It refers to the speaker’s moment of speaking (=now)
– Event time (E) is part of an event space i.e. the mental space surrounding a given situation
• It specifies the time of occurrence
• The speaker views events (there and then) from his/her position in the here and now
• Occasionally s/he can shift viewpoint and present the situation as if it were in the here and how

Deictic times: Simple tenses

• Deictic times relate to speech time (here and now)
– Event time may be
(i) the same as speech time
(ii) earlier than speech time
(iii) later that speech time
• The deictic times are expressed in English by simple tenses
– The present tense locates a situation at or including speech time
– The past tense locates a situation at a time earlier than speech time
• The simple tenses also tell us about a situation’s reality status
– present tense = immediate reality
– past tense = known reality
• English does not have “a future tense”
– If the situation includes the present, we use present tenses
– If it is separate from the present, it reflects projected reality so we use modals

Deictic times: Complex tenses

• Past, present, and future deictic times can serve as reference points for locating the times of
other situations.
– The speaker shifts his/ her viewpoint to the reference point and, from there, can either look
backwards (anterior events) or forwards (posterior events).
• Complex times thus involve two temporal relations
1. a relation between speech time and a deictic time, and
2. a relation between the deictic time as a reference time and the time of an anterior or posterior
event
– Complex times are expressed in English by complex tenses
• Anterior (earlier) times are expressed by the perfect tenses
• Posterior (later) times are expressed by prospective forms
– present progressive with future time reference
– BE going to + INF
– BE to + INF
– modals (will / might / may / could / would + INF)

Complex tenses (i) Anterior times

• Anterior times involve a backwardlooking stance from a viewpoint at a reference time.
• They are expressed in English as perfect tenses, which display the same basic conceptual
configuration
• “Our train has just left” [present perfect]
– The event is seen as occurring before the present
• “Our train had left when we arrived” [past perfect]
– The event is seen as occurring before the past deictic reference point
• “Our train will have left by the time we get there” [future perfect]
– The event is seen as occurring before the future deictic reference point
• The present perfect is unique among the anterior times because
1. it involves only one time sphere (the present)
2. it involves a relation between event time and speech time
• This makes us see the past event with respect to its present relevance (the present is the more
prominent time)
• The present perfect has temporal and aspectual meaning (cf. Ch. 8)
– Temporal meaning = the situation’s anteriority
– Aspectual meaning = perfective (completion)
• The past perfect and the future perfect only refer to anterior time
– They do not express (perfective) aspect

Complex tenses (ii) Posterior times

• Posterior times involve a forward-looking stance from a reference-time viewpoint
• They are coded by prospective forms
– These consist of grammaticised lexical items, e.g. be going to, be about to, be to-INF
• Prospective forms relate the time of an event to a deictic reference time
– “I’m going to go back home to my parents this week”
• My intention to go back home is formed in the reference time (present) and relates to a later
time. Here, reference time and speech time are the same
– “I was going to leave yesterday”
• My intention to go back home was formed in the reference time (past), and relates to a later
time than the reference time. Both are in the ‘past’ compared to the speech time.
• The future prospective form “will be going to + INF” is very rare
• Why you should ignore the (hypothetical) Posterior future
– The British National Corpus contains 100 million words of British English. In this corpus, there are
only 30 examples of the string “will be going to” and of these, only 2 (!) are followed by an
infinitive verb. Neither is a posterior future.
• “I am almost certain we will be going to see the Chancellor to complain about the way this was
done” he added. [go is used in its lexical meaning (andare)
• And of course you will have the added pleasure of knowing that part of the ticket price will be
going to help students and to keep Bristol as a place of excellence.
– In other words, there are no posterior futures in 100m words of text

Summary: times and tenses

• Deictic times (simple past, present, future) are characterised by the speaker’s viewpoint in the
base space (S) and the focus on the situation/event (E)
– As a result, the situations focused upon by the past and future tenses are seen as being detached
from present time
• Complex times are characterised by a reference time (R)
– The Event (E) is linked to the Base space (S) via the reference time (R)
• The present perfect and the present prospective both describe present situations
– In the present perfect, Reference time (R) and Base space (S) coincide
» The speaker adopts a viewpoint in the base space
– In the present progressive, Reference time (R) and Base space (S) do not coincide but they are
connected.
• The past prospective (was going to…) may refer to any posterior time relative to the reference
time (i.e. past, present or future relative to Base space)

PRESENT TIME: PRESENT TENSE AND OTHER TENSES

Bounded present situations S=E
• The present time of a bounded situation should coincide with speech time
• Speech time rarely coincides with the conceptual boundaries of most events
– A durational event, e.g. going upstairs, takes longer to enact (=event time) than it does to say
(=speech time)
• So we cannot say * “Dad goes up the stairs”,
• Instead we say “Dad is going up the stairs”
– A punctual event such as a glass breaking takes less time to occur (=event time) than it does to
describe in words (=speech time)
• So we cannot say * “The glass breaks in my hand”
• Instead, we describe it as a fait accompli: “The glass broke in my hand.”
• This is why we rarely use the simple present to refer to a bounded event in the present time

Unbounded present situations

• Situations that are true in present time are typically unbounded
– Speech time is inside the Event time, e.g.
1. Accomplishing activities (=unbounded events)
2. Indefinitely lasting states (=unbounded states)
3. Everlasting states (=timeless situations)
4. Regularly occurring habitual events (=habitual states)
• Notice that:-
– Accomplishing activities appear in the present progressive
» They are actions in progress, thus incomplete
– Stative verbs tend to appear in the present simple
– Completed activities and events have implicit boundaries so they do not appear in unbounded
present tenses
» They will be expressed in the present perfect or past simple
1. Accomplishing activities e.g. “I’m fixing dinner now”
• Unbounded events like fixing dinner imply a beginning, various sub-events, and an end
– This explains why we can single out any “present” moment of the overall activity, as in I’m fixing
dinner right now
• An activity described in the progressive may also be suspended
– i.e. it may not actually be occurring at the present moment but, instead, “surround” the speech
time, e.g.
» “I’m fixing dinner at the moment” may be said when I am talking on the phone and have
suspended that activity in order to answer
» “I am reading a great novel right now” may be said even if I haven’t opened the book for a few
days
2. Indefinitely lasting states (=unbounded states) e.g.“I love crannachan”
• Indefinitely lasting states are unbounded and unchanging by definition.
– Thus, my love for crannachan (a Scottish dessert) was true in the past, holds at the present
moment, and will probably continue into the future
• A state is homogeneous and every moment of it is the same
– It would uninformative and redundant to single out any specific moment of it by saying, e.g. *I
love crannachan at the moment (nor *I am loving crannachan).
• Since all the component states are identical, the present moment stand for the whole indefinite
duration of the state
– This is an example of temporal metonymy (part for whole)
• This is why the present tense is so well-motivated to describe states
3. Everlasting states (=timeless situations) e.g. “Spaghetti cooks in eight minutes”
» n.b. this example uses an unusual kind of transitivity: ‘medio-passive’ or ‘middle voice’. You will
never learn about it in your language lessons but it’s quite common in food/drink contexts
– Everlasting states are timeless situations
• They pertain to the way the world in general is structured
– Assertions about such general situations are also valid at the present moment and therefore
described in the simple present
• Again, this is a form of temporal metonymy (part for whole)
– Many genres such as academic discourse, dictionary definitions, explanations of how things
work, etc. are mainly written in the simple present because they are timeless
4. Regularly occurring habitual events (=habitual states) e.g. “I eat spaghetti every day”
– Regularly occurring habitual events are seen in English as states and expressed in the simple
present
• Indeed, if you use the simple present with action verbs you automatically imply that they are
habits
– The regular occurrence of habitual events makes them seem to be a property of the person or
object
• Thus, a person who eats spaghetti every day might be Italian (or a student, or simply someone
who loves spaghetti !)
• A person who is always smiling has the property of having a cheerful disposition
– e.g. Sarah is always smiling.
– or: Sarah is always smiling when I see her.

ANTERIOR TIME: PRESENT PERFECT, PAST TENSE, AND PAST PERFECT

From present anterior time to past times
• English divides the time continuum from the present to the remote past into three time spheres
of increasing distance from the present time
– The present perfect is a present tense that incorporates past time
– The deictic past is separate from present time
– The past perfect is separate from the deictic past

Present perfect
Present perfect = anterior situations viewed from the present viewpoint
• The present perfect is a complex tense
• It involves a backward-looking stance.
– The viewpoint at the present moment regards an anterior situation (or an anterior phase of a
situation).
– This viewing arrangement has consequences for properties of the present perfect and its uses in
English.

Meaning of the present perfect

• The present perfect is characterised by three properties which determine its general meaning:
1. Focus on the present time
2. Current relevance
3. Indefiniteness
1. Focus on the present time
– The auxiliary verb have in the present perfect grounds the situation in the present time
– The anterior situation is described by a past participle
• Past participles are atemporal, they cannot ground the situation
– We see the whole process of the event/action (typically accomplishments) from start to finish
2. Current relevance
– Only those past situations which the speaker views as relevant to ‘now’ are construed in the
present perfect
– The reasoning process with the present perfect is:
• From present state looking back to an earlier situation
– Cause? Explanation?
• From an earlier situation looking forward to the present
3. Indefiniteness
– The anterior situation’s indefiniteness comes from focusing on its present relevance.
• We focus on the situation, not on when and where it happened
– This is why the present perfect is incompatible with adjuncts that specify a definite setting
• So we switch to the past simple, which is grounded in definite place, time, and circumstances

Uses of the present perfect

• The type of situation (bounded/unbounded; telic/atelic) affects the conceptual configurations,
inferences, and uses of the present perfect
– The Present perfect (simple) has four possible meanings
1. Anterior bounded telic events: Resultative perfect
2. Anterior bounded atelic situations: Inferential perfect
3. Anterior recent situations: Recent perfect
4. Anterior phase of states and habits: Continuative perfect
– The Present perfect progressive has two possible meanings
1. Anterior unbounded events: Inferential perfect progressive
2. Anterior phase of temporary states and habits: Continuative perfect progressive

Present perfect (simple)

(i) Anterior bounded telic events: Resultative perfect
– The resultative perfect expresses the completion of a bounded telic event
• i.e. a completed accomplishment or achievement
• The “result” is not explicitly stated but is understood
– It is also understood as not being recent (cf. recent perfect, next slide)
(ii) Anterior bounded atelic situations: Inferential perfect
– The inferential perfect is used with bounded atelic situations
• i.e. activities, acts, and temporary states (with no time adjunct; but often with ever/ never)
– When temporary states occur with (since/ for), the time adjunct specifies when a still-existing
(present) state started and it becomes a continuative perfect (see next slide)
(iii) Anterior recent situations: Recent perfect
– The recent perfect describes immediately preceding atelic situations which almost coincide with
speech time.
• The immediacy of the past situation needs to be explicitly signalled, so time adjuncts are
necessary:
– Either to indicate recentness: just, already, now, so far, up to now, etc.,
– Or to include both the time of the anterior situation and speech time: today, this evening, this
month, these weeks, etc.
(iv) Anterior phase of states and habits: Continuative perfect
– The continuative perfect describes a persistent state or a habit from its beginning to the present
moment.
• It applies specifically to the initial phase of a situation that is anterior to speech time
– The termination of the state has not yet, and may never, come about
• The duration of the situation up to the present must specify
1. The beginning of the state or habit (using since + a time reference), or
2. Its duration up to now (using for + time span)

Present perfect progressive

(i) Anterior unbounded events: Inferential perfect progressive
• The inferential perfect progressive refers to the inferred state that follows – or arises after – an
anterior unbounded event
– i.e. accomplishing activities and unbounded activities
• Inferences about current relevance are drawn from focusing on the durational phase, not the
completion, of these situations, e.g.
“I have been trying to phone the plumber” suggests unsuccessful attempts
“Dad has been repainting the house” focuses on the sub-events, and suggests that the repainting
is not yet complete
(ii) Anterior phase of temporary states and habits: Continuative perfect progressive
• The continuative perfect progressive focuses on the (past) duration of (present) temporary
states and habits
– The beginning of the temporary state or habit is defocused
– The period of time that temporary states and habits last is typically specified by adjuncts of
duration, e.g. over a year, for the past 18 months , etc.

Past tense
• The past tense grounds events and states in past time, i.e. in the deictic time preceding speech
time
• There are three properties that distinguish past tense from the present perfect
1. Focus on the past time
• We are concerned with immediate reality, i.e. our mental spaces revolve around the base space
(here and now). The focus on the past time is in contrast to the present time.
2. Detachment from the present
• There is a time gap between a past situation and the present, i.e. past situations are felt to be
“exclusive” of the present time.
• A past situation presented in the past tense is not judged on its relevance for the present.
3. Definiteness
• Past situations are part of known reality and are seen as definite.
– The definiteness of a past situation relates not only to its event time, e.g. yesterday, a minute
ago, but also to its referents and the setting.

Simple past (Event before Speech)

• A bounded past situation is a definite whole that is completed or finished at some point in the
past
– Past situations therefore tend to form a series of events, typically in narratives
Unbounded past situations
• Unbounded past situations focus on duration
– The past progressive is used with unbounded past activities
– The past simple is used with unbounded past states or habits
• Unbounded past situations often provide a background for one or more bounded events to
occur.
The first sign that something wasUS amiss came when he sawBE some would-be shoppers running
down Buchanan Street. He couldn’t hearUS what they were shoutingUA [...] but the shoppers they
encounteredBE generally stoppedB. In their tracks; apart, of course, from the ones who startedBE
running in the other direction for a gawk at what was happening.UA
Christopher Brookmyre, The Sacred Art of Stealing, p91
US – unbounded state; UA – unbounded action
BS – bounded state; BE – bounded event

Deictic shifts of past situations

• Past situations are sometimes portrayed as if they occurred in present time
– In particular, we can recognize the narrative present, i.e. a narrative device, and the historic
present,
• The effect is to make the progression of events seem more immediate and intimate, as if they
were occurring in real time.
He looks, behaves and sounds like no other human being Scot has ever seen. His legs are too short
for his body; that’s the first thing you notice, because it affects how he walks. Or maybe it’s more
like his body, his big thick neck and his massive heid are too big for his legs. That’s how he got the
name Momo.
(Brookmyre, A Tale Etched in Blood and Hard Black Pencil, p63)
September 1st — Germany invades Poland.
September 3rd — war is declared on Germany.
September 17th — Soviet Union invades Poland.
• We can identify two more stylistic uses of the present:
1. The “scientific present” is used to discuss scientific discoveries and academic ideas which are
still current, e.g.
“Reichenbach (1947: 296) claims that ‘the number of recognized grammatical tenses in English is
only 6’.”
2. The “summary present” is used in newspaper headlines
• The text of the article resumes use of the past tense, e.g.
UK BEACH LITTER RISES BY A THIRD, REPORT FINDS
The amount of rubbish found dumped on
UK beaches rose by a third last year, according to a new report...

Past perfect
• Thinking of a situation earlier than the past requires a shift in viewpoint
– The speaker shifts to the deictic past, then takes on a retrospective stance towards the anterior
(earlier) situation
• The past perfect is used to express anteriority to the past
– The use of the past perfect with unbounded situations parallels that of the present perfect
• The unbounded activity or temporary state tends to provide background information
• The duration of the anterior situation invites inferences
– In the past perfect, inferences pertain to the coherence of events within a narrative past space.

FUTURE TIME: PRESENT PROSPECTIVE, FUTURE TENSE, AND FUTURE PROSPECTIVE

Future time
• English distinguishes two types of future time
1. The future as posterior to the present, expressed with present tenses
• present simple, present progressive (plus expressions derived from these, particularly be going
to, be about to)
2. The deictic future
• expressed with the modal verb will
• The future always involves uncertainty, so future situations are subject to our
imaginationmodal verbs
– English has a number of future forms expressing shades of (un)certainty about a future situation

Present prospective forms

• Situations that are posterior to the present involve a prospective viewpoint
– The viewpoint is in the base space
– The focus is on the present
• These situations are expressed by
– The present progressive with obligatory future time reference
• (more rarely) the present simple with obligatory future time reference
– A variety of lexical forms: be going to, be about to, be on the verge of and be on the point of
• There are two types of present prospective
1. The intentional future
• This refers to future events that come about as a result of a person’s present intentions or
decisions.
– It is expressed by the form be going to
– Will is also sometimes used, due to its semantic value of volition
2. The contingent future
• This refers to future events which, due to our knowledge of the structure of the world, are seen
as being dependent, or contingent, on phenomena that hold at the present time.
– It is typically expressed by the form be going to.
– It can also be expressed by present tenses: in this case, the present is ‘stretched’ to
accommodate a longer time than usual

Future time: will- forms

• The modal meanings of will (and shall) involve implications of ‘volition’ and ‘insistence’ and allow
future predictions
– The predicted future with will/shall focuses on the future situation and is separate from speech
time.
• It is based on projected reality, not factual reality
– Will/shall can combine with the progressive (be –ing) to express the matter-of-course future
(Leech, 1971)
• This is independent of anyone’s will or intention
e.g. “I’ll arrive late / I’ll be arriving late – have dinner without me”
– The predicted future is also associated with promises (and threats):
• These are reduced conditionals, i.e. modals, not tenses.
e.g. “I’ll do it later” (“... if/when I have time / if I feel like it / if I don’t forget...”)

Deictic shifts of future situations

• Present tense for future situations is tied to the present time
– The use of the simple present (+ future reference) is the scheduled future
• The scheduled future applies to fixed, cyclic or recurrent events such as train timetables,
calendars and agendas, regular appointments, etc.
e.g. My train leaves at six p.m.
– The use of the present progressive (+ future reference) is the planned future
• The planned future applies to (planned, controllable) future events
– The present progressive draws the event into the present time sphere
e.g. We are getting married in spring. [planned future]
• Events scheduled in the distant future cannot be drawn into the present time sphere, so cannot
be discussed using present tenses
Use of the present tenses within first conditionals: the background future
e.g. If you do that again, I’ll kill you!
– The if-clause functions as the ground
• The ground stretches from the present moment to the future point in time when the figure
event occurs
• It also allows an implication of cause-effect (the ground is the cause)
– The main (will-)clause functions as the figure
• It indicates the future result of the present, or anterior, condition

Future prospective
The future prospective (will be going to + INF) exists in theory but not in practice
– In theory, it combines the effect of will (volition) and one of the meanings of going to:
contingency
– In practice – as we saw in an earlier slide – it is not used

INTERPLAY OF PAST AND FUTURE TIMES: PAST PROSPECTIVE AND FUTURE PERFECT
Posterior situations viewed from a past viewpoint: Past prospective
• The past prospective indicates that the speaker views the situation in the deictic past and looks
forwards at a posterior (later) situation
– This situation may be before, in, or after the speech time
• The past prospective has two usages: intention and contingency
– It is used in narrative, in complex conditionals, and in situations which did not materialise as
originally foreseen
• e.g. I was going to finish my paper by the end of the month
– I started the action (writing the paper) in the past
– I expected to finish it at the end of the month (i.e. a later moment)
– But I have not finished it yet (=now)
» I have done less (so far) than I thought I would have done (when I started)
– I will not be able to finish it by the end of the month
» It is taking longer than I planned

Anterior situations viewed from a future viewpoint: Future perfect

• The future perfect, indicates that the speaker views the situation in the deictic future and looks
back at an anterior (earlier) situation
e.g. I will have finished my paper by tomorrow. [future situation]
– I started the action (writing the paper) in the past
– When I started, I expected to finish it by the end of the month
– But I have nearly finished it already
» I have done as much or more (so far) than I expected
– I will definitely finish it by tomorrow
“The future perfect progressive is all but non-existent in authentic English.”
The authors are wrong: there are 15 occurrences in BNC, e.g.
– “Some readers will have been growing roses for years, others may be starting for the first time”
– “In many cases the acquitted defendant will have been receiving legal aid.”
• These authentic examples illustrate how the future perfect progressive is used to make
suppositions and inferences

CHAPTER 10Grounding situations in potentiality: Modality

• Modality is concerned with the speaker’s evaluation of the potentiality of a state of affairs
• Modal verbs ground a situation in potential reality
– Modality can be expressed by modal verbs, and also by
– modal adjectives e.g. possible, probable, likely
– modal adverbs e.g. possibly, allegedly
– cognition verbs e.g. think, believe
• Modality relates to distinct “worlds”
1. The world of knowledge and reasoning: epistemic modality
• possibility, probability, and supposition
2. The world of things and social interaction: root modality
• attitudes, ability, and the imposition of our will on others
• The most important type of root modality is deontic modality
– These “worlds” usually do not interact

TWO MAIN TYPES OF MODALITY

Assertion and epistemic modality
• When we make a statement about something, we communicate its reality status
– We can choose between two options
1. Make an assertion of what is real, known and certain
• i.e. what can be observed, tested, experienced directly and objectively
• This usually involves evidentiality, i.e. statements about evidence
2. Make a statement about our interpretation of potential reality
• i.e. what we think is true, how likely something is, etc.
• This involves epistemic modality (from the Greek episteme, knowledge’, although epistemic
modality indicates that the speaker lacks knowledge)
– Evidential assertion: “there is a lot of difficult terminology in our textbook”
• The statement is factual but it also invites the interlocutor to believe that the difficult
terminology may be a problem, at least for some students
– Epistemic statement: “the terminology in our textbook might be difficult for some students”
• The modal verb might conveys the possibility that some students find the terminology difficult
• In the story Hansel and Gretel, two children get lost in the woods and come to the gingerbread
house.
– Hansel looks closely for evidence of inhabitation, e.g.
• clean and in good repair with a well-tended garden
• curtains at the windows, smoke coming out of the chimney
• washing hanging out to dry, crockery on the kitchen table…
– On the basis of the evidence, Hansel can make a strong assertion of what he believes to be true,
e.g.
“There is someone living in the house”
“There isn’t anyone living in the house”
– Alternatively – and especially if there is not enough evidence available - he can make a weak
(epistemic) assertion of what he believes to be possible:
“There must be someone living in the house”
“There can’t be anyone living in the house”
To understand “There isn’t anyone living in the house” we need to imagine two things
1. An uninhabited house
2. An inhabited house (=the opposite idea)
• cf. full / empty categories
• These two possibilities are assessed in order to decide which is true in this situation (blended
space)
• To understand “There must be someone living in the house,” we need to imagine three things:
1. The house as it appears (reality space / evidence)
2. What an inhabited house might look like (positive potentiality space)
3. What an uninhabited house might look like (negative potentiality space)
• These three spaces are assessed to arrive at a decision as to which is likely in this situation
– Notice the scalar quantification in the reality space and the blend
• Epistemic modality and evidentiality lead to similar results but they work in opposite ways
– They both work via profiling, i.e. how things are interconnected
• Evidential expressions profile the evidence and invoke an assessed probability as its result
• Modal expressions profile an assessed probability and invoke evidence as its source
– Imagine you are near the supermarket at 8pm, and you are hoping that it is still open so you can
get some last-minute food shopping done
• You can make an assertion based on the evidence
“The lights are still on and there are quite a few cars parked outside”
– I state the evidence, and imply that the shop is still open
• Or you can make an epistemic statement
“The supermarket must still be open”
– I make an assumption that the shop is open from the evidence available (i.e. the lights being still
on and cars being parked outside)

Deontic modality
• The second class of modality is deontic modality
– Deontic modality relates to social interaction
• It mainly comprises the notions of ‘obligation’ and ‘permission’
– The speaker invokes his/her authority (or a general rule) to make somebody carry out an act.
– This means that one person is more ‘powerful’ than the other
• It is future-oriented and expresses potential reality
– If you order somebody to do something, they are not already doing it!
– If you ask for permission to do something, you are not doing it yet!
– The order/ request relates to the expected outcome in the (near) future
• It invokes a complex interplay of mental spaces
1. Two reality spaces (the situation as it is vs. the ideal situation)
2. An assessment space (comparing the two reality spaces)
3. An attitude space (the speaker’s expectations arising from the situation)
4. A blended space where these four spaces combine
5. A modal space relating to how strong the speaker’s expectation is
• Deontic modality has this complexity because it relates to how people interact with each other
and with the world around them
– This means that it takes account of
• Hierarchies, authority and power relations
– Who is more powerful/ authoritative?
– How big is the difference in power between the interlocutors?
– Who controls the action and who submits?
– How strong/ forceful is the control?
– What are the consequences of not obeying?
– (etc.)
• Social rules and norms
– Is it a law or rule? (strong obligation)
– Is it a norm? (weak obligation)
– Is it a courtesy? (form of respect rather than obligation)

Epistemic vs. deontic modality

• Epistemic and deontic modality can be distinguished on the basis of three parameters
(i) Type of situation
• States/ actions
(ii) Scope of modality
• Comprehension vs desire
(iii) Time of situation
• Possible or potential (uncertain) vs expectation
• Epistemic modality – some examples
(i) Epistemic modality typically applies to states
• “You must be right”
• “She must be telling the truth.”
– But it can also apply to actions
• “He must have had to work late”
• “He might miss the last bus home”
(ii) Scope: assessment of reality
• ‘You must be right’ (necessarily true)
• ‘You may be right’ (possibly true)
(iii) Time: potential reality in the past, present or future
• ‘You must be right’ (potential present reality)
• ‘You must have been right’ (likelihood of past reality)
• ‘You’ll be right, as always’ (probable future reality)
• Deontic modality – some examples
(i) Deontic modality only applies to actions
• “You can/ may go home”
• “You should watch less tv and do more revision”
(ii) Scope: expectation that an action be performed
• “You can/ may go home” (I allow you to go);
• “You must go home” (I insist that you go)
(iii) Time: expected future reality
– cf. “desire space”, similar to wish, want…
• e.g. “You can go home” (at the moment, you are with me, not at home)
• “You should watch less telly and do more revision” (at the moment, you are watching too much
telly and not studying enough)

Other types of root modality

• Deontic modality is the most common form of (nonepistemic) “root modality”
• There are two other types of root modality:-
– Intrinsic modality
• This is concerned with the intrinsic qualities of a thing or circumstances (i.e. potentialities arising
from speaker-external sources)
– Intrinsic modalities typically involve a person’s or thing’s intrinsic disposition, which has the
potential of being actualized e.g. The meeting can be cancelled, ‘meetings are cancellable’
– Disposition (or dynamic) modality
• This includes the notions of ‘ability’ or ‘propensity’ and ‘willingness’.
– If, for example, you can play the guitar, you have the possibility to do so, and very probably you
will actually do so.
• Additionally, modality of all sorts (epistemic and root) can be compelling or enabling

UNDERSTANDING THE RANGE OF MODAL EXPRESSIONS

The range of modal expressions
– There are many modal verbs and even more modalising expressions in English
– This variety serves a purpose
• It allows us to communicate fine gradations of meaning, particularly concerning
– How strong the (epistemic) potential or (deontic) expectation is:
» Expressed as gradience
» Refers to force dynamics
– How subjective the potential or expectation is
» Modality is always subjective, but some expressions are more strongly subjective than others

Gradability and modality

• Epistemic modality ranges from high to low probability
• Deontic modality ranges from strong to weak compulsion
– Or from close (controllable) to distant (beyond control)

Subjectivity of modality
• Modal assessments and attitudes are subjective
– Subjectivity may be construed and expressed in different ways:-
• Subjective but construed as objective, e.g. cognition verb + situation
“I believe that Ann is pregnant”
• Objective with a subjective flavor, e.g. modal adverb in the situation
“Ann is probably pregnant”
• Maximally subjective, e.g. modal verb + copula (expressing relation)
“Ann may be pregnant”
• As we saw on the previous slide, there are three classes of modal assessment
1. Modal auxiliary verbs
• can, could, may, might, must, ought to, shall, should, will, would
• Including the lexical modals: have (got) to; be able to; be allowed/ permitted to;
• And the modal uses of need (not), dare (not)
– Cfr Italian verbi servili
2. Mental expressions
• Cognition verbs like believe, judge, conclude and doubt
• Complex expressions such as be of the opinion, have the impression, as far as I can tell, etc.
– Cfr. Italian congiuntivo
3. Modal adjuncts
• Modal adverbs like perhaps, certainly, allegedly
• Modal prepositional phrases like in all likelihood or of necessity
• Modalising clauses such as there is a good chance that, etc.
– Cfr. Italian congiuntivo

Force dynamics of modality

• The notion of force dynamics is connected to authority and control
– Force dynamics and deontic modality
• We experience force dynamics in the social world when a person in authority tells a weaker
person what to do
– “You mustn’t go out after 10pm because of the curfew”
– “You should stop wasting your time watching daytime TV”
• When we ask for permission, we acknowledge that we are weaker than the person we ask
– “Am I allowed to take the dog out for a walk?”
– “Can I watch some TV now?”
– Force dynamics and epistemic modality
• We experience force dynamics in knowledge and belief when the evidence leads us to believe
that only one possible conclusion is right
– This “must be”, or “is necessarily” true
• Conversely, it can be used in the negative to indicate that the evidence makes a conclusion
wrong
– This “can’t [possibly] be” true

Force dynamics of ‘obligation’: must

An obligation is a binding force that is seen as compelling a person to carry out a certain action.
– The speaker-imposer is the source of the force
– The hearer is the agent of the action which he is obliged to carry out
• This force-dynamic constellation is expressed by the modal must of obligation.

Force dynamics of ‘permission’: may

An act of permission involves a situation of enablement
– The speaker (permission-giver) removes a potential barrier which enables the hearer
(permission-seeker) to carry out his intended action. e.g. “You may/can go home”
– The permission-giver is more powerful than the permission-seeker
• The permission-giver relinquishes control,
• This allows the permission-seeker to regain his/hers.

Force dynamics of ‘epistemic necessity’: must

• Imagine a situation in which you are following some instructions step by step.
– When you reach the end, the evolutionary momentum (build-up) of your work allows you to
conclude that you have done everything correctly:
“This must be right”
– expresses an epistemic necessity
» i.e. something that the evidence tells us is the only possible conclusion

Force dynamics of ‘epistemic possibility’: may

• “May” can express deontic or epistemic modality
– “you may go home” is deontic
– “This may be right” is epistemic
• i.e. expresses ‘possibility’
• Epistemic possibility is based on the force of evolutionary momentum
– Epistemic may shares with deontic may the idea of a barrier that is lifted
• In deontic may, the barrier is permission
• In epistemic may, the barrier is lack of evidence
– This impedes the reasoning process, giving rise to uncertainty

COMPELLING MODALITIES
Evolution of compelling modalities
• Obligations, prohibitions, and necessities all involve compulsion of some sort, and are therefore
known as compelling modalities
• They are expressed by...
– must, should, ought to, have (got) to, need (to), and will
• The modal verbs have evolved from Old English, when they were conjugations of full lexical
verbs:
– Must = O.E. mōst (‘be obliged’, subjunctive)
– Should = O.E. sceold (‘to be duty-bound’, past tense)
– Ought = O.E. aghen (‘to owe’, past tense)
– Will = O.E. willan (‘to wish’)
• This makes their link with ‘compulsion’ (and the Italian dovere) a lot clearer

Compelling modalities: root modals

• There is a range of modal verbs because they each express different nuances regarding:
1. The source of the compelling force
• If the speaker is the source of the compulsion, the modality is subjective
– This is the case of performative obligations (obligations that require actions) indicated by must
and have (got) to
• If the compulsion is caused by external (uncontrollable) circumstances, the modality is (more or
less) objective
– This is the case of needs and desires
2. The strength of the compelling force
• Strong obligations imply control
• Weak obligations imply absence of control

Strong compelling modalities

• The strongest root modalities express necessity
– Obligations and intrinsic necessities are imposed by a volitionally acting, authoritative speaker
or, in questions, by the hearer asking permission (from an authority)
– They are typically expressed by must
• As a result, must is associated with strong impositions enforced by humans
– The obligation rests on authority and conveys exigency
– A weaker form of obligation is have (got) to
• It also conveys exigency but does not imply authority: it is more common regarding intrinsic
necessity, i.e. a necessity arising from a thing and general rules or norms
– The compelling force of have (got) to is felt to be weaker and more readily acceptable than must
because we do not feel that another person is imposing his/her authority over us
• Intrinsic necessities are, in a way, simply a fact of life
• Epistemic modality can also express necessity
– Because they are speaker-internal, epistemic necessities are mostly subjective and led by
inference
• Strong compelling epistemic modality is typically expressed by must and have (got) to
– Epistemic must emphasises the subjective aspect of the speaker’s assessment of necessity rather
than external evidence
• There is so much evidence for a state of affairs that it is assessed as almost factual reality
• The speaker’s inferential processes are subjective but also based on external evidence
• The compelling modals must and have to display inverse degrees of strength in obligations and
epistemic necessities:
– obligation: must (speaker-internal, authoritative) is stronger than have to
– necessity: have to (speaker-external, objective) is stronger than must

Neutral compelling modalities

• Neutral compelling necessities refer to intrinsic modality
• They are expressed by volitional will and by modal need
– Volitional will describes a person’s inner wishes
• Our wishes and desires invite inferences about future actions and states
– E.g. Cinderella’s fairy godmother says “You will go to the ball!” – and goes on to transform
Cinderella from pauper into princess
» n.b. Volitional will is the auxiliary verb used in imperative question tags
– Modal need means ‘requiring what is lacking’, i.e. intrinsic attributes of things or people
• In the negative, need not means “not requiring what is lacking”
• Need to implies no human authority figure – the ‘authority’ is speakerexternal
– “You need to download the latest version of the App”
» The intrinsic nature of software means that it needs to be upgraded
– “Your LPG tank needs to be replaced every 10 years; methane every 5 years.”
» This is most likely to be understood in the sense of intrinsic necessity (‘it is essential / the law’).

Weak compelling modalities

• The weak obligation of should and ought to derives from
1. Individual wishes and desires, i.e. subjective obligations
e.g. “You should dress properly”
2. General norms such as moral values, i.e. external obligations,
e.g. “Your should weigh your suitcase before you leave for the airport ”
• Should and ought to describe the speaker’s idea of desirability about an advisable course of
action
– Unlike most modals, should can refer to generic, past, present, and future times.
a. You should visit your mother more regularly and more often. [generic]
b. You should be visiting your mother, not just phoning her. [present]
c. Carol should have visited her mother yesterday. It was her birthday. [past]
– Note that is often impossible to distinguish between deontic and epistemic should/ought to

ENABLING MODALITIES
Evolution of enabling modalities
• Enabling modalities involve the unimpeded potential of a force.
They comprise:
– Abilities
– Permissions
– Intrinsic and epistemic possibilities
• There are only two pairs of English modals denoting enabling modalities: can/could and
may/might
– The original lexical meaning of can is ‘know’ (Old English cnāwan).
• Can has retained its original sense of ‘ability, know-how’
• It is normally used to express ‘intrinsic possibility’
– The original lexical meaning of may and might is ‘be (physically) able’
• cfr. might(y); from Old English maʒan; ic maʒ / ic miht,
• Both can and may express ‘permission’ but, of course, convey different meanings of permission
(have the ability to vs. have the power to)
– May and might are normally used for ‘epistemic modality’

Ability
• Abilities are salient, distinctive attributes which have the potential of being actualised as a
thing’s characteristic behaviour
• Abilities that are salient change depending on what is referred to
– Salient abilities of humans are things which not everybody can do – they are seen as
characteristic “abilities” of individuals
• An ability is inseparably linked to the person who has this ability
• An ability that all humans share, e.g. being able to walk, is not an ability unless it is framed as a
special achievement, e.g.
– a baby’s first steps “Frankie is able to walk already!” / “Frankie can’t walk yet”
– regaining the ability to walk after a bad accident, etc. “Jenny can now walk with the help of a
rollator”
– Salient abilities of animals typically characterize the species, not the individual
• In other words, they tend to be generic
– Salient abilities of natural physical things are mainly those that are surprising or exceptional
relative to our knowledge of the world
• These also tend to be generic
• Abilities can be expressed by using the modal verb can or its lexicalised form be able to
– There are two aspects of abilities:
1. The ability as an abstract idea, and
2. The actualization of the activity
• Can/could only implies the abstract idea, the potential for actuation
– For this reason, we use can to describe habitual states which include the present moment, and
could for habitual states which were true in the past
• Neither tells us about the actuation of the ability
• The inflected forms of be able to describe both the potential and the actuation of the ability
– Past events are therefore expressed as “was/were able to”, “managed to”, etc.
• Future abilities and/or their actuation are expressed as “will be able to” / “will manage to”
– e.g. “Are you sure you’ll be able to drive home? You look like you’ve had one drink too many.”
• I often ask about these things in the exam

Permission
• Through giving permission, the speaker relinquishes his/her power to prevent the hearer’s
potential action and thus “enables” it to occur
– Giving permission is therefore based on the speaker’s authority
• Permission-granting is expressed using the subjective modals may and can
– May carries with it a strong tone of authority
• It is becoming less and less frequent as society becomes more equal
– Can is always preferred in colloquial and less formal settings
• In many respects, the difference between may and can mirrors the difference between must and
have to
– Permissions based on external circumstances (not on an individual’s decision) are always
expressed by can.

Intrinsic and epistemic possibility

• In the same way that we distinguished between intrinsic and epistemic necessity we need to
distinguish between intrinsic and epistemic possibility
– Intrinsic possibility (=“this is available to you”) is associated with can
“You can download PowerPoint from Microsoft”
• Can indicates a possibility for the hearer to do something so that a future situation will come
about.
– The potential success of the download is dependent on the person’s intrinsic abilities.
– The source of an intrinsic possibility is inherent in a participant and hence external to the
speaker.
– Epistemic possibility (=“this is possible for you”) is associated with may/might
“You may have PowerPoint already installed on your computer”
• May describes the speaker’s assessment of a given state of affairs
– The possibility results from the speaker’s subjective judgement
• In epistemic possibility, we often add the adverb “well” or “indeed” to clarify that this is
epistemic, not deontic may by reinforcing the subjectivity
– “You may [well/ indeed] have PowerPoint already installed on your computer”
• Might does not require any such clarification
• Can and may are not normally interchangeable BUT in the case of questions, epistemic
possibility is never expressed by may (not)
– e.g. Can/Could/Might this (not) wait a little?

Intrinsic possibility
• Intrinsic possibility refers to a possibility enabled by a source that is external to the speaker
– It is mainly used to characterise general situations
• The external source need not be specified (but it is conceptually present)
• If it applies to specific situations, the external source is always specified
– “You can download PowerPoint from Microsoft.”
– The grammatical device that typically invites general statements is the passive impersonal
construction, which allows the speaker to remain vague about the agent.
• The use of the passive impersonal with intrinsic can is particularly popular in academic writing.
– “it can be said/ noted/ observed/ argued/ claimed/ concluded that….”

Epistemic possibility
• Epistemic possibility refers to potential reality
– It is based on evidence and counter-evidence, combined with subjective judgement and the
speaker’s world knowledge
• The modals of epistemic possibility are may, might, and could
– Can, as we saw on the previous slide, expresses intrinsic possibility
• The difference between might and could is often unclear for learners
– Both refer to possibility on the basis of available evidence
– They also rely on the idea of positive/ neutral/ negative expectations (cf Chapter 5 re. some/any)
• May (esp. AmE) and might (esp. BrE) are used when something is possible on the basis of the
evidence and when no appropriate background knowledge is available (=neutral expectation)
– i.e. Might means “this may be true and I have no idea if it is or not”
• Could is used when something is possible on the basis of the evidence, in combination with
appropriate background knowledge which gives a negative expectation
– i.e. Could often means “this may be true but I think it unlikely”

MAKING MODAL VERBS NEGATIVE

Modals in the negative: a special type of negation
• Negation can affect two things
1. the modality, or
2. the proposition
• As a result, negation activates different meanings, each of
which is expressed by a different form, e.g:-
– (deontic) must = obligation to do sth
• must not = obligation not to do sth
– negation of proposition
• don’t have to /needn’t = negation of obligation
– negation of modality
– (epistemic) must (be) = belief that sth is
• can’t (be) = assumption of belief that sth is not
– negation of proposition
• don’t have to (be) / needn’t (be) = negation of belief that sth is
– negation of modality

Root modals and their negations

Negation of the modality
• Need not, don’t have to, and haven’t got to express negations of external compelling forces, i.e
exemptions
– If I am not obliged to do something I have permission not to do it, e.g.
“You need not submit a certificate”
“You don’t have to pay tax on this income”
– (You are exempted from some regulation that normally applies)

Negation of the proposition

• May not, can’t, and mustn’t invoke the force-dynamic pattern
(power/control) and express negative obligation, specifically
1. Denial of permission
• Expressed with the enabling modals may not and can’t
– In using may not, the speaker conveys the option of closing a barrier rather than lifting it
– In using can’t, the speaker indicates that her denial of permission is due to external restraints
2. Prohibition (obligation not to)
• Expressed by the compelling modal mustn’t
– In using mustn’t the prohibition is implicitly imposed by a strong compelling force, typically a
person in authority

Epistemic modals and their negations

Negation of the modality
• Need not, don’t have to, and haven’t got to also express the epistemic notions of ‘not necessary’
and ‘possibility that not…’, specifically:
1. An accepted fact or necessity is not necessarily the case
– Not necessary is expressed with need not, or not have to e.g.
• “Aging is unavoidable, but it need not be quite so inexorable”
• “Aging is unavoidable, but it doesn’t have to be quite so inexorable”
2. An assumption or modal statement is possibly not the case
– Possible that not… is expressed with may/ might not, i.e. ‘be possible that not’:
• “Aging can be reversed, but it may not make you wiser”
• “Aging can be reversed, but it might not make you wise”
– Positive may (“possibly true”) conveys higher certainty than negated may (“possibly not true”)

Negation of the proposition

• The negated modal of possibility (i.e. impossibility) is can’t, e.g.
• “Jack can’t be back home (yet)”
– Don’t have to (=“unnecessity”), so the only option remaining is can’t (= ‘not possible’ and ‘be
necessary that not’)

SUMMARY
• Two main types of modality are normally distinguished
– Epistemic modality (probability/possibility)
– Root modality, comprising three subtypes
1. Deontic modalityobligations and permissions.
2. Intrinsic modalitypotentialities arising from speaker-external sources,
3. Disposition modality‘ability’ or ‘propensity’ and ‘willingness’
• Modality is gradable, reflecting
– Degree of certainty (epistemic modality)
– Strength of obligation (deontic modality)
• The English modals are polysemous: most can be used in both root and epistemic modality
• Negative modal statements are complex because the negation can affect either the modality or
the proposition it modalises