enjoysdoingthings. Yet they occur syntactically with direct objects such asbegin/enjoy the bookandbegin/enjoy the beer.
Suchsentencesare understood(inthedefaultcase) as‘begin/enjoyreadingthebook’and‘begin/enjoydrinkingthebeer’
(an observation appearing also in Newmeyer 1969/75). Pustejovsky observes that the default activity necessary to
understand these direct objects comes from the telicquale of the nouns themselves: books are for reading, beer is for
drinking. Thus, he argues, qualia structure is on occasion necessary in order to accomplish the semantic composition
of a verb and its object, normally the provinceof simple variable satisfaction. (Section 12.2 takes up other cases where
simple variable satisfaction is insufficient.)
Finally, qualia structure can also be adapted to activities, whether expressed by verbs or nouns.^194 In particular,
argumentstructure fallsintotheformal quale;for instance, theformal qualeofsprintwill say it is a typeof locomotion,
and therefore involves a character traversing a path. The constitutive quale will include the rapid (and effortful?)
character of the motion. The agentive quale will perhaps specify that the activity arises from the character's will to
move, i.e. it is not a passive motion like falling. More generally, the agentive quale would include causes and reasons
thatgive rise to theactivity in question. Purposes (proper functions) also occur as part of verbmeanings. For example,
the meaning ofchasemust specify that the subject's purpose is to catch the object. This information might be encoded
in the telic quale (or possibly in the agentive quale, as proper outcome).
11.10 Dot objects
Pustejovsky's other important innovation grows out of the observation that certain classes of objects belong to more
than one taxonomy. One such class consists of information-bearing objects such as novels and newspapers. As a
physical object, a novelhas a size and weight, and it has covers and pages as parts. But a novelalso bears information
which is about a topic and represents certain events pertaining to that topic.As a physicalobject, the novel came into
existence by being printed and bound; as an information object, it came into existence by being written. And yet the
wordnovelis notambiguous or polysemous, since bothaspects can be invoked at once:That novel about the Crimean War
has a red cover.
Pustejovsky formalizes this dual aspect of an information-bearing object by
LEXICAL SEMANTICS 373
(^194) It is not clear to me that Pustejovsky's way of carrying out this extension is altogether optimal or consistent. In this informal account I will attemptto express the basic
insight as I myself see it; Pustejovsky is not to be held responsible.