Lexical Meanings of Verbs, and Aspect in English

Abstract

The meanings of verbs as lexical entries play a major role in the compositional explication of aspect in English at the level of the sentence. These meanings can be classified into different groups according to the way situations are depicted. This has already been done by different authors in various publications — some of which were discussed in Chapter One, On the essence of aspect. But, whenever a large number of verbs in English are investigated, the results usually create the impression that verbs have too many different meanings to be effectively classified into groups. Trying to present the regularities of explicating aspect in English compositionally as invalid, the critics of the compositional theory usually refer to the variety of meanings displayed by verbs, arguing that this variety cannot be subsumed under a handful of rules. It is impossible for the verb lexicon with its enormous semantic diversity to be neatly divided into two or three major groups — this is one of the major objections.