User:Pathawi/Event structure (linguistics)

Event structure is a field of research in contemporary linguistics focused on the relation between perceptual events and grammatical structure. In the words of Robert Truswell, "there are systematic relationships between properties of events and aspects of sentence structure. Either events are grammatical objects, or they are intimately related to grammatical objects. To put it another way, we talk as if there are events."

Core Concepts
Three concepts were central to the development of linguistic event structure studies over the course of the '60s through '90s:
 * Covert argument position, which allowed an analysis of verbs as denoting properties of events (an idea which may be traced back to Donald Davidson, though not described by him in these terms).
 * The analysis of grammatical aspect to classify the temporal properties of predicates, generally in a mode derived from the work of Zeno Vendler.
 * The notions that "verbs can have internal semantic structure, and that aspects of verb meaning are determined compositionally," originating in Generative Semantics.