Editing Lexical aspect (section)

==Theories of aspectual class==
Although all theories of lexical aspect recognize that verbs divide into different classes, the details of the classification differ. An early attempt by Vendler recognized four classes, which has been modified several times.

===Vendler's classification===
[[Zeno Vendler]] classified verbs into four categories on whether they express "activity", "accomplishment", "achievement" or "state". Activities and accomplishments are distinguished from achievements and states in that the first two allow the use of [[continuous and progressive aspects]].  Activities and accomplishments are distinguished from each other by boundedness. Activities do not have a terminal point (a point before which the activity has taken place and after which it cannot continue: "John drew a circle"), but accomplishments have one. Of achievements and states, achievements are instantaneous, but states are durative. Achievements and accomplishments are distinguished from one another in that achievements take place immediately (such as in "recognise" or "find"), but accomplishments approach an endpoint incrementally (as in "paint a picture" or "build a house").<ref name="alonidekkerrothstein">{{cite encyclopedia |last1=Rothstein |first1=Susan|editor-last1=Aloni |editor-first1=Maria |editor1-link=Maria Aloni|editor-last2=Dekker |editor-first2=Paul |encyclopedia=Cambridge Handbook of Formal Semantics |title=Aspect |year=2016 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-1-107-02839-5}}</ref><ref name="Vendler">{{cite journal |last1=Vendler |first1=Zeno|date=1957 |title=Verbs and Times|journal=The Philosophical Review |volume=66 |issue=2|pages=143–160 |doi=10.2307/2182371|url=https://www.cs.brandeis.edu/~jamesp/content/courses/cs216-2009/readings2009/Vendler-LOT.pdf|jstor=2182371}}</ref>

===Comrie's classification===
In his discussion of lexical aspect, [[Bernard Comrie]] included the category [[semelfactive]] or punctual events such as "sneeze". His divisions of the categories were as follows: states, activities, and accomplishments are durative, but semelfactives and achievements are punctual. Of the durative verbs, states are unique as they involve no change, and activities are atelic (that is, have no "terminal point") whereas accomplishments are telic. Of the punctual verbs, semelfactives are atelic, and achievements are telic. The following table shows examples of lexical aspect in English that involve change (an example of a state is 'know').<ref name = "alonidekkerrothstein" /><ref>{{cite book |last=Comrie |first=Bernard |author-link=Bernard Comrie |date=1976 |title=Aspect: An Introduction to the Study of Verbal Aspect and Related Problems|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn= 9784838401000|series=Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics}}</ref>
{| class="wikitable"
!
!Punctual
!Durative
|-
!Telic
|Achievement<br/>(''to release'')
|Accomplishment<br/>(''to drown'')
|-
! Atelic
|Semelfactive<br/>(''to knock'')
|Activity<br/>(''to walk'')
|-
! Static
|
| State<br/>(''to know'')
|}

===Moens and Steedman's classification===
Another classification is proposed by Moens and Steedman, based on the idea of the event nucleus.<ref>{{Cite journal|title = Temporal ontology and temporal reference|author1-first=Marc|author1-last=Moens|author2-first=Mark|author2-last=Steedman|author2-link=Mark Steedman|date = 1988|volume=14|issue=2|journal = Computational Linguistics|url=https://aclanthology.org/J88-2003.pdf|issn=0362-613X|pages=15–28|publisher=Association for Computational Linguistics}}</ref>
{| class="wikitable"
!
! colspan="3" |Event nucleus
|-
!
!Preparatory
phase
!Culminating
event
!Consequent
phase
|-
|Semelfactive
|
|style="background-color:green;"|
|
|-
|State
|
|
|style="background-color:green;"|
|-
|Activity
|style="background-color:green;"|
|
|
|-
|Achievement
|
|colspan="2" style="background-color:green;"|
|-
|Accomplishment
|colspan="3" style="background-color:green;"|
|}