33.3546, Review: Cognitive Science, Computational Linguistics, Linguistic Theories, Semantics: Truswell (2021)
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LINGUIST List: Vol-33-3546. Mon Nov 14 2022. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.
Subject: 33.3546, Review: Cognitive Science, Computational Linguistics, Linguistic Theories, Semantics: Truswell (2021)
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Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2022 22:27:25
From: Luana Lopes Amaral [luanalopes at ufmg.br]
Subject: The Oxford Handbook of Event Structure
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/32/32-3532.html
EDITOR: Robert Truswell
TITLE: The Oxford Handbook of Event Structure
SERIES TITLE: Oxford Handbooks
PUBLISHER: Oxford University Press
YEAR: 2021
REVIEWER: Luana Lopes Amaral, Federal University of Minas Gerais
SUMMARY
“The Oxford Handbook of Event Structure”, edited by Robert Truswell, brings
together 22 chapters that investigate the linguistics of events, or event
structure. As Truswell (p. 1) defines it, “event structure is first and
foremost a linguistic concern.” The Handbook starts with an Introduction,
written by the editor, which lays down the fundamentals and origins of the
research into event structure in linguistics, as well as their further
developments. Starting from the foundational works of Davidson (1967), Vendler
(1967), and the Generative Semanticists (Lakoff, 1965; McCawley 1968),
Truswell explains the main three ideas that guide the linguistic analysis of
event structure, including the analyses in the chapters to be presented:
Davidson’s event variable, Vendler’s temporal analysis, and the lexical
decomposition approach inherited from Generative Semantics. These three ideas
formed the ground on which further theories of event structure have been
built, such as Verkuyl’s and Dowty’s compositional analysis of lexical aspect,
Higginbotham’s compositional analysis of the event variable, and the
development of lexical semantic theories of the conceptual representation of
events, exemplified by the works of Talmy (1975, 1985), Jackendoff (1990), and
Levin and Rappaport Hovav (1995, 2005).
Based on these ideas, the chapters of the Handbook are divided into four
parts. Part I contains chapters that discuss the logic of events from a Formal
Semantics perspective; Part II comprises studies which investigate the impact
of lexicalized event structure in syntactic form; Part III includes chapters
on crosslinguistic patterns and variation of event structure; finally, Part IV
brings together broad views of event structure in cognitive and computational
approaches.
Part I
Part I, Events and Natural Language Metaphysics, includes seven chapters
(Chapters 2 through 8), which delve into event structure from the Formal
Semantics point of view. Chapters 2 and 7 develop temporal analyses of the
event structure, based on the initial Vendlerian classification. In Chapter 2,
Anita Mittwoch introduces the notion of aspectual classes, and discusses types
of events denoted by predicates. The author also discusses issues with the
traditional quadripartite Vendlerian classification of events and presents
solutions to those issues. In Chapter 7, by Henk J. Verkuyl, aspect and
aspectual classes return to the scene. The author proposes to apply to aspect
the binary theory of tense (roughly, a proposal which distinguishes only two
properties of tense – instead of the triple past, present, future). The other
six chapters are based on the Davidsonian view of events. Chapter 3 continues
the investigation about types of events denoted by predicates; in fact, this
chapter, by Claudia Maienborn, specifically discusses the distinctions between
events (dynamic eventualities) and states. The author explores the Davidsonian
perspective on events and its further applications to states. The fourth
chapter turns to a very important issue in event structure research: What
counts as a single event? The chapter by Robert Truswell, the editor of the
volume, also assuming a Davidsonian view, tries to account for the
individuation of events in this perspective by arguing that events are like
individuals. This chapter discusses the limits and constraints involved in the
composition of events and in their interpretation as a complex single event.
Chapter 5 highlights the pervasiveness of agentivity and causation in human
thought and experience and, consequently, in language. For the pervasiveness
of these concepts, they are essential to the analysis of event structure. In
this chapter, the author, Richmond H. Thomason, presents a theory of the
semantic representation of causal events. In Chapter 6, Bridget Copley
continues to explore the notion of causation. She reanalyzes Talmy’s cognitive
notion of force dynamics from a formal perspective, and examines the use of
the notion of force in event structure. The author reviews both cognitive and
formal approaches to force dynamics and, assuming the formal perspective,
shows how this notion can explain a series of linguistic phenomena. Chapter 8
closes Part I of the Handbook with an analysis of event types. As other
chapters have anticipated, events are not all of the same type, and, for that
reason, predicates present different types of denotations. In direct dialogue
with other chapters, Berit Gehrke presents a proposal for the incorporation of
event kinds into the analysis of event structure.
Part II
Part II, Events in Morphosyntax and Lexical Semantics, includes six chapters
(Chapters 9 through 14). This part brings a different type of analysis into
event structure. Instead of investigating the nature of the eventive
denotation of predicates, as Part I does, Part II studies event structure
properties which are responsible for structuring morphosyntax. This part
presents different approaches to event structure which are derived from the
decomposition of events proposed by Generative Semantics. One of those
approaches is the derivation of thematic roles from event structure, assuming
the idea that event structure determines syntactic form. Chapter 9 adopts this
view. In Chapter 9, Nikolas Gisborne and James Donaldson review and analyze
difficult issues in the thematic roles approach and propose an account which
takes into consideration the force-dynamic relations present in the verbal
event structure. Another of those approaches, which has come to be known as
Neo-Davidsonian, is assumed in the following chapters. The approach is
specially explained and discussed in Chapter 11, by Terje Lohndal.
Deconstructing the standard limits between syntax and morphology, the authors
of Chapters 10-14 show that the inner structure of words includes components
which determine event structure. In Chapter 10, Lisa Levinson studies
systematic morphological operations which are relevant to event structure, and
she also investigates cases in which word compositionality is not so
transparent. The following chapters continue along the same lines: Chapter 12,
by Gilliam Ramchand, focuses on the decomposition of verbs; Chapter 13, by
Friederike Moltmann, explores the decomposition of nominals; and, closing Part
II, Rebekah Baglini and Christopher Kennedy explore the decomposition of
adjectives and their event structure in Chapter 14.
Part III
Part III (Chapters 15 through 18) continues the investigation of the
compositionality of event structure, but focuses on the impact of specific
parts of verbal event structure on syntax. Most importantly, this part
includes chapters which develop crosslinguistic analyses of event structure
properties, hence its name: Crosslinguistic Perspectives. Chapter 15, by Beth
Levin and Malka Rappaport Hovav, investigates crosslinguistic patterns of
event structure lexicalization on verbs. After reviewing other works on types
of lexicalization patterns (especially on the directed motion domain), the
authors reaffirm their view on manner-result complementarity as an explanation
for such patterns. In Chapter 16, Tova Rapoport explores the event structure
described by secondary predicates. Despite being included in Part III, the
chapter only discusses English data. Chapter 17, by Tal Siloni, directly
tackles the relation between event structure and syntactic structure, more
specifically in the realm of argument realization and argument alternations.
Based on data from different languages, the author discusses the
decompositional approach to verbal semantics and shows that different types of
argument alternations (the inchoative alternation and the causative
alternation), in different languages, have different loci of derivation,
namely syntax and/or the lexicon. Finally, in closing Part III, Chapter 18
returns to the discussion of aspect. Based on data from different languages,
the author, Lisa deMena Travis, discusses an aspectual class that would be at
first sight problematic in a Vendlerian perspective, namely nonculminating
accomplishments. And, in a syntactic decompositional account, she shows that
compositionality is also an important property of predicates in the derivation
of aspect.
Part IV
Part IV, Events, Cognition, and Computation, goes beyond denotation and the
morphosyntactic analysis of event structure. This part includes four chapters
(Chapters 19 through 22) and closes the Handbook. The first two chapters
investigate event structure in larger linguistic structures, analyzing
properties of the text and the discourse. Chapter 19, by Hans Kamp, presents
an overview of tense and aspect in Discourse Representation Theory. The author
concentrates on how these semantic properties of event structure manifest
themselves at the level of the multisentential text and discourse. Continuing
the analysis at the multisentential level, in Chapter 20, Andrew Kehler
investigates coherence relations. Dialoguing with Truswell’s chapter on
individuation and composition of events, the author develops an analysis of
how events are put together and correlated in the production of a
multisentential text. The third chapter of Part IV (Chapter 21), by Mark
Steedman, investigates semantic representations of event structure. The author
reviews proposals for decompositional representations of the semantics of
event structure and presents a computational model for obtaining such
representations from text. The final chapter – Chapter 22, by Neil Cohn and
Martin Paczynski – presents experimental evidence (from
electroencephalography) for the way humans process events. Using both
linguistic and non-linguistics inputs in the experiments, the authors show
that the neurophysiological mechanisms of event processing are very similar in
the two settings.
EVALUATION
The Handbook presents a wide-ranging review of the linguistic literature on
event structure. As a handbook on this topic, it definitely fulfills its goal.
The Introduction is a superb reference text on event structure. It covers the
origins of the studies on this topic in linguistic literature, introduces the
more recent developments, and also explains clearly the theoretical concepts
involved in event structure research. The following chapters all bring
together reviews of the literature on specific topics related to event
structure and new proposals to solve remaining issues. In this sense, the
Handbook performs a noteworthy movement from past to future; inspired by
pioneer studies, it lays the groundwork for what is to come next. For that,
the Handbook ends up being an excellent reference text on the origins and
development of event structure research and also a great way for the reader to
stay up to date with current research on the topic. Another consequence of
such movement from past to future is that the Handbook brings together authors
with a long experience in event structure research, including the founders of
important areas of linguistic investigation into the nature of event
structure, such as Levin, Rappaport Hovav, Verkuyl, Steedman, Mittwoch,
Siloni, Ramchand, and others, with promising young researchers who are
bringing new ideas and interpretations into the scenery, such as Baglini,
Levinson, and Donaldson. Other positive characteristics of the Handbook are
the range of theoretical perspectives covered throughout the chapters, and
also the range of linguistic phenomena investigated. Although formal
approaches get the upper hand, the chapters include cognitive, computational,
syntactic, and lexical approaches to event structure – from the analysis of
the inner structure of words to the analysis of cohesion in discourse.
REFERENCES
Davidson, Donald. 1967. The logical form of action sentences. In The logic of
decision and action (ed. N. Rescher), pp. 81-95. Pittsburgh, PA: University of
Pittsburgh Press.
Jackendoff, Ray. 1990. Semantic structures. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Lakoff, George. 1965. On the nature of syntactic irregularity. Technical
Report NSF-i6, The Computation Laboratory of Harvard University, Cambridge,
MA.
Levin, Beth & Malka Rappaport Hovav. 1995. Unaccusativity: At the
syntax-lexical semantics interface. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Levin, Beth & Malka Rappaport Hovav. 2005. Argument realization. Cambridge,
MA: Cambridge University Press.
McCawley, James. 1968. Lexical insertion in a transformational grammar without
deep structure. In Papers from the Fourth Regional Meeting, Chicago Linguistic
Society, April 19-20, 1968 (ed. B. Darden, C.-J. Bailey, and A. Davison), pp.
71-80.
Talmy, Leonard. 1975. Semantics and syntax of motion. In Syntax and Semantics
4 (ed. J.P. Kimball), pp. 181-238. New York, NY: Academic Press.
Talmy, Leonard. 1985. Lexicalization patterns: Semantic structure in lexical
forms. In Language typology and syntactic description 3: Grammatical
categories and the lexicon (ed. T. Shopen), pp. 57-149. Cambridge, MA:
Cambridge University Press.
Vendler, Zeno. 1967. Linguistics in Philosophy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Luana Lopes Amaral is a professor (adjunto) at the Faculty of Languages,
Literature, and Linguistics at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG),
in Brazil. Her research is focused on Lexical Semantics
(www.letras.ufmg.br/verboweb) and construction grammar, taking Brazilian
Portuguese as the main object language. Her main interests are verbal
semantics and argument structure constructions.
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