PREPOSITION ASSIGNMENT IN ENGLISH^295To summarize, non-predicative from marks a change in location with
motional accomplishments, as predicative from marks the antecedent state
in a change of state with achievement verbs. In each case, sequences are
described without overlap. In other words, "John had malaria" and "John
died" are discrete situations, just as "John was at the bank" and "John was
not at the bank" are discrete events.
The second set of verbs with which predicative from occurs are the sta-
tives in sentences (47)-(49): suffer, know, see. With these verbs, from also
marks sequential events (i.e., "John has malaria" and "John suffers"), but
in these cases, there is overlap between the two situations. It is obvious that
an LS modeled on that in (52) will not adequately describe a situation such
as (47) {John suffered from arthritis) because the situations in which "John
has arthritis" and "John suffers" overlap. Another set of verbs with which
predicative from occurs — go, extend, last — can be analyzed as extensional
statives. These are metaphorical motion structures which, on the surface,
look very like the BECOME NOT be-at' & BECOME be-via' &
BECOME be-at' structures proposed for motional accomplishments. Sen
tences (52) and (53) profile extensional statives involving metaphorical
motion in time or space between two points.
(52) The fog extends from London to Paris.
(53) The play lasts from 8:00 to 11:00.
An LS modeled on that for motion achievements, such as that proposed in
(54), does not adequately describe the situation in (52) or (53).
(54) * [be-at' (London, fog)] & [BECOME NOT be-at' (London,
fog)] & [BECOME be-at' (Paris, fog)] & [be-at' (Paris, fog)]
This provisional LS describes a situation in which the fog is present in Paris,
but no longer in London. The same difficulty would arise in a similar LS for
(53) inasmuch as the dramatic action which began at 8:00 is still unfolding
at 10:45. Notice that in sentence (52) changing the order of the arguments
(London and Paris) does not change the truth conditions of the situation
described.^14
Since to describes the endpoint of the fog situation, just as it describes
the endpoint of Rita's walk in (29), the semantic structure proposed for to
in the previous section is adequate. The difficulty posed by these contexts is
in the specification of from.
Jackendoff s solution (1983:173) is the specification of two structures:
(a) [GO] and (b)[GOExtensional], where (a) and (b) can be specified as distinct