Event Structure and the Classification of Verbs

Abstract

In the present article, it will be assumed that events may be split into subevents and that there is a temporal relationship of precedence or overlap between subevents. The event structure is understood as the set of subevents together with the temporal relationship between them. An essential part of event structure can be determined by means of temporal adverbials. It will be claimed that at least ten different verb classes can be identified on the basis of event structure. It will also be pointed out that in some cases event structure has to be derived compositionally.