James Higginbotham, Fabio Pianesi, Achille C. Varzi, eds.
Speaking of Events.
OUP. 2000
In recent years the idea that an adequate semantics of ordinary language
calls for some theory of events has sparked considerable debate among linguists and philosophers.
On the one hand, so many linguistic phenomena appear to be explained if (and, according to some authors, only if)
we make room for logical forms in which reference to or quantification over events is explicitly featured.
Examples include nominalization, adverbial modification, tense and aspect, plurals, and singular causal statements.
On the other hand, a number of deep philosophical questions arise as soon as we take events into consideration.
Are events entities of a kind? What are their identity and individuation criteria?
How does semantic theorizing depend on such metaphysical issues?
Speaking of Events offers a vivid and up-to-date indication of this debate, with emphasis precisely on the interplay between linguistic applications and philosophical implications. Each chapter has been written expressly for this volume by leading authors in the field, including Nicholas Asher, Pier Marco Bertinetto, Johannes Brandl, Denis Delfitto, Regine Eckardt, James Higginbotham, Alessandro Lenci, Terence Parsons, Alice ter Meulen, and Henk Verkuyl. The volume also includes a comprehensive introductory essay by editors Fabio Pianesi and Achille Varzi which provides a state-of-the-art overview of this engaging and far-reaching interdisciplinary debate.
Contents
- • Fabio Pianesi, Achille C. Varzi. Events and Event Talk: An Introduction. 2000
- • James Higginbotham. On Events in Linguistic Semantics. 2000
- • Terence Parsons. Underlying States and Time Travel. 2000
- • Johannes L. Brandl. Do Events Recur?. 2000
- • Regine Eckardt. Causation, Contexts, and Event Individuation. 2000
- • Nicholas Asher. Events, Facts, Propositions, and Evolutive Anaphora. 2000
- • Alice G. B. ter Meulen. Chronoscopes: The Dynamic Representation of Facts and Events. 2000
- • Henk J. Verknyl. Events as Dividuals: Aspectual Composition and Event Semantics. 2000
- • Denis Delfitto, Pier Marco Bertinetto. Word Order and Quantification over Times. 2000
- • Alessandro Lenci, Pier Marco Bertinetto. Aspects, Adverbs, and Events: Habituality vs. Perfectivity. 2000