Individuals in Time

This monograph investigates the temporal properties of those predicates referring to individuals – the so-called individual-level (IL) predicates – in contrast to those known as stage-level (SL) predicates. Many of the traditional tenets attributed to the IL/SL dichotomy are not solidly founded, this book claims, as it examines current theoretical issues concerning the syntax/semantics inter­face such as the relation between semantic prop­erties of predicates and their syntactic structure. By using the contrast found in Spanish copular clauses (ser vs. estar), Individuals in Time shows that the conception of IL predicates as permanent and stative cannot be maintained. The existence of nonstative IL predicates is demonstrated through analyzing the correlation between the syntactic presence of certain projections (specifi­cally, preposi­tional complements) and process-like aspect properties. This detailed examin­ation of IL predicates in the domains of inner aspect, outer aspect, and tense will be welcomed by scholars and students with an interest in event structure, tense, and aspect.

Professor Tim Stowell, University of California, Los Angeles:
Arche brings to light an enormous body of new data, involving paradigms of a sort that have been largely overlooked in previous accounts. Her account of the interaction between discourse structure and the interpretative properties of quantifiers, tense, outer aspect, an inner aspect feels like it is on the right track. The account of the SL/IL distinction that emerges is striking and compelling in its simplicity, even if the overall picture that emerges of the interaction between this and other syntactic phenomena proves to be more complex than what previous researchers had envisaged.