14. On Krifka’s “Nominal Reference, TemporalConstitutionandQuantification in Event Semantics”

Krifka, in his paper “Nominal reference, temporal constitution and quantification in event semantics”, provides the first formal mereological (algebraic) analysis of the relation between nominal reference and temporal constitution (also based on his 1986 PhD thesis). The focus is on two manifestations of this relation in the grammar of natural languages. First, as many observed, there are direct structural analogies between the following two sets of distinction: namely, mass/count and atelic/telic. They are clearly reflected in their parallel cooccurrence patterns with quantifiers, numerical and measure expressions. Second, nominal reference and temporal constitution interact and mutually constraint each other in the derivation of meaning of complex verbal predicates. One key example is aspectual composition(ality) e.g., eat soup (atelic) versus eat two apples (telic). In order to provide an adequate analysis of the relevant data Krifka’s principal innovation is to assume a single join semi-lattice structure, undetermined with respect to atomicity, relative to which he defines two higher-order, cross-categorial predicates for reference types of natural language predicates: namely, quantized and cumulative. Specifically in the case of aspectual composition, the interactions and mutual constraints between the structure of objects and eventualities stem from the systematic mappings (homomorphisms) whose source is the lexical semantics of verbs. Such mappings are also independently motivated by other phenomena exhibiting systematic interactions objects and eventualities.