《EVENT STRUCTURE》.pdfVIP

SHEILA GLASBEY EVENT STRUCTURE, PUNCTUALITY, AND WHEN* € In this paper, I discuss observations on when given by Sandstrom (1993) for construc- tions of the form ‘When A B’, where A and B both describe events (as opposed to states). € Sandstrom proposes that for events described in the simple past, the temporal inter- pretation of such sequences varies according to whether A describes a culminated pro- cess (CP) (accomplishment) or a culmination (CULM) (roughly, an achievement). She offers an account of this behaviour based on the claim that culminations denote changes of state while culminated processes do not. I argue that this claim is unmotivated, and in addition, draw attention to a range of counterexamples to her generalisation. I present an analysis which is not based on the CP/CULM distinction but relies instead on the distinction originally proposed by Dowty (1979) between the event structures CAUSE- BECOME and BECOME. I show that this distinction is closely related to whether the event has a prototypical agent. It is therefore thematic structure rather than temporal structure that determines the behaviour of when in these cases. 1. IN T R O D U C T I O N € Sandstrom (1993) observes an interesting and, to my knowledge, previously unnoticed contrast between the behaviour of main-clause sequences of events described in narrative discourse, such as (1), and when-constructions of the form ‘When e e ’ (where e and e are events) such as (2).1 1 2 1 2 ð1Þ Bertie arrived at the airport. He went to the check-in desk. ð2Þ When Bertie arri