Underlying states and time travel
In James Higginbotham, Fabio Pianesi & Achille C. Varzi (eds.),
Speaking of events. New York: Oxford University Press (
2000)
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Abstract
I begin by sketching a theory about the semantics of verbs in event sentences, and the evidence on which that theory is based. In the second section, I discuss the evidence for extending that theory to state sentences, including copulative sentences with adjectives and nouns; the evidence for this extension of the theory is not very good. In the third section, I discuss new evidence based on considerations of talk about time travel; that evidence is apparently quite good. I conclude with a problem about formulating default knowledge.