Advances in Role and Reference Grammar

A SYNOPSIS OF ROLE AND REFERENCE GRAMMAR 35

Criterion States Achievements Accomplishments Activities

1. Occurs with progressive No D:Yes/P:No^19 Yes Yes


2. Occurs with adverbs like No No Yes Yes
   vigorously, actively, etc.


3. Occurs with φ for an hour, Yes D:Yes/P:No Yes Yes
   spend an hour 0ing


4. Occurs with 0 in an hour, No D:Yes/P:No Yes No
   take an hour to φ


5. 0 for an hour entails φ at Yes D:No/P:d.n.a. No Yes
   all times in the hour


6. χ is 1 entails χ has  d.n.a. D:No/P: d.n.a. No Yes


7. Has inherent causative No No Yes No
   semantics
   Table 2

The collective effect of these tests is to differentiate the four classes. It

should be noted that it is necessary to adapt the tests to the features of the

language under investigation. For example, one of the tests Dowty gives to

differentiate states from the other classes is "has habitual interpretation in

simple present tense", which is clearly an English-specific test. Similarly,

the progressive test is applicable only to languages with a progressive tense-

aspect form. There is no simple syntactic test to determine whether a verb

is inherently causative or not, but paraphrases can be useful; for example,

learn can be paraphrased as "come to know", while teach can reasonably be

paraphrased as "bring it about that someone comes to know", with "bring

it about" being the causative component.

Dowty also puts forth a formal explanation for these patterns: verbs

are analyzed in terms of a lexical decomposition system in which stative

predicates are taken as basic and the other classes are derived from them

(cf. 1979:71ff.). Representationally, states would be primitive, e.g. know',

be', have'. Achievements, which are inchoative semantically, are rep­

resented as states plus a BECOME operator, e.g. BECOME know'

"learn", BECOME be' "become", BECOME have' "receive".

Accomplishments, which are inherently causative, have a complex struc­

ture consisting of an activity predicate linked to an achievement predicate

by an operator-connective CAUSE, e.g. [...] CAUSE [BECOME know']

"teach". Dowty's theory posits that activity predicates should be derived from