The Major Parts of Speechand therefore has an activity interpretation. Now compare The roses smell
musty, which is non-progressive and grammatical, with *The roses are smell-
ing musty, which is progressive but ungrammatical. From data like this we
must conclude that smell also allows a state interpretation.
There are many more subclasses of verbs and we present some of them in
the following exercises to allow you to develop your understanding of verbs
to the degree you need or want.
Exercise
- Just on the basis of your intuitions, classify the following verbs as
state verbs or activity verbs: cost, depart, approve, approve of, re-
member, remain. What difficulties did you experience in classifying
these verbs semantically? Check your classification by using the pro-
gressive test. - Look up the word appear in a good desk dictionary. How many differ-
ent meanings does it have? Identify which of these meanings indicate
states, changes of state, or actions. - Clean and tidy are activity verbs. What change of state does each
describe? Paraphrase the verbs using the adjectives clean and tidy.
Think of several more such verbs and their associated adjectives. - Which kind of verb (state or activity) can be used to answer the
question, What did X do? Supply example sentences, both grammatical
and ungrammatical (e.g., She learned American Sign Language vs. *She
knew American Sign Language) to support your answer. - A distinction related to change of state is between telic and atelic
verbs. Telic verbs represent events that have a natural end point, the
accomplishment of some purpose, or a change of state, e.g., make,
evaporate. (These are also called accomplishment or resultative
verbs.) Once something is made or has evaporated, the making and
evaporating processes must stop for that thing. As with change of state
verbs, telic verbs in the progressive represent processes before their
completion. The water is evaporating implies that the water has not
yet fully evaporated. Atelic verbs represent events as having no natural
end-state or product, e.g., golf, as in The CEOs are golfing. A verb may
be telic on some occasions, e.g., The children are playing a game of