DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.15131093
title: Еxternal and internal states. Exploring the predicate taxonomy

description: I address the issues in predicate taxonomies with focus on the class of states. In the 1960-s, Donald Davidson defined states as a kind of spatiotemporal things that holds during a time interval [Davidson 1980]. If p is a state and holds in some locus during an interval starting from t0 and ending in tn, that means p is true in this locus for every time point ti Î {t0…tn}, so that p consists of homogeneous phases, cf. [Maienborn 2007]. Later predicate taxonomies rooting in Davidson usually add to the distinction of spatiotemporal vs non-spatiotemporal things another dimension — the distinction of dynamic vs static situations in the spirit of [Vendler 1957]. Dynamic situations were initially claimed to have an endpoint, i.e. a point of transition from p to ~ p, contrary to stative situations. This criterion does not work since all spatiotemporal things have an endpoint according to the Davidsonian analysis. However, the contrast between all types of dynamic predicates and Davidsonian states is captured by the homogeneity criterion: Davidsonian states consist of homogeneous phases, while dynamic predicates do not. Davidsonian taxonomies leave a possibility of classifying states into different types. This is done in [Bulygina 1982: 82 — 85] and [Seliverstova 1982: 93 – 97], who distinguish spatiotemporal vs non-spatiotemporal stative situations: the latter, called свойства or качества are analyzed as names of properties abstracted from any referential situations. The idea that the absence of agreement on a nominal predicate encodes the distinction of spatiotemporal vs non-spatiotemporal stative situations in Russian was first introduced in 1928 by Lev Ščerba who dubbed spatiotemporal prediсates состояния, i.e ‘states’ and non-spatiotemporal predicates качества. i.e. ‘properties’. The same distinction under the cover terms ‘stage-level predicates” (SLP) vs ‘individual-level predicates’ (ILP) was reintroduced 50 years later by Greg Carlson [Carlson 1977], cf. [Kratzer 1995]. The basic subcategorization of SLPs in Russian and in general is the distinction of internal vs external SLPs [Zimmerling 2018a]. There are three relevant criteria: (i) Internal SLPs denote situations with a priority semantic argument (semantic subject), external SLPs lack it. (ii) External SLPs can be quantified based on their spatiotemporal characteristics, internal SLPs can be only quantified on their semantic subjects. (iii) External SLPs denote sensually (visually or audibly) perceived situations, internal SLPs do not.

Comments.



The term 'internal states' is borrowed from Anna Zaliznjak's book (1992), who considers a different class of stative predicates and develops a different approach basing on Vendler's classification, not on Davidson.

I stick to the term 'internal state' in the descriptions of Russian predicatives in Zimmerling (1998, 1999). The subcategorization of D-states into external and internal is specially addressed in my papers Zimmerling (2014, 2018), though I do not use the cover term 'D-state' there. The identification of D-states with SLP-predicates and the relation of Davidsonian holistic ontology to Carlson's and Ščerba's partial ontologies is taken in my papers Zimmerling (2021, 2022, 2023) and in Federico Silvagni's works which I unfortunately did not know at the time of the publication. See the 'related works' section. This identification is not accepted by Claudia Maienborn, who represents the neo-Davidsonian tradition.

 The works of Davidson on some reasons had lesser impact on Russian linguistics than the works of Vendler. Neither Bulygina (1982), not Seliverstova (1982) directly  cite them, though the latter proposes an ontology very similar to Davidson, and both authors implement the notions of event and situation in their ontologies.