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A stative verb is one which asserts that one of its arguments has a particular property (possibly in relation to its other arguments). Statives differ from other aspectual classes of verbs in that they are static; they have no duration and no distinguished endpoint. Verbs which are not stative are often called dynamic verbs. In linguistics, grammatical aspect is a property of a verb that defines the nature of temporal flow (or lack thereof) in the described event or state. ...
Some languages morphologically distinguish stative and dynamic verbs, or transform one into another. Arabic, for example, can use the same verbal root to mean ride (stative) and mount (dynamic). Morphology is a subdiscipline of linguistics that studies word structure. ...
Arabic (العربية) is a Semitic language, closely related to Hebrew and Aramaic. ...
The root is the primary lexical unit of a word, which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents. ...
Propositions that are expressed in most Indo-European languages by noun qualifiers (such as adjectives), are instead expressed by stative verbs in many other languages. In Japanese, so-called i-adjectives are in fact best analyzed as intransitive stative verbs (for example, takai alone means "is high/expensive", and samukunakatta means was not cold). Proto-Indo-European Indo-European studies The Indo-European languages include some 443 (SIL estimate) languages and dialects spoken by about three billion people, including most of the major language families of Europe and western Asia, which belong to a single superfamily. ...
An adjective is a part of speech which modifies a noun, usually making its meaning more specific. ...
In grammar, an intransitive verb is an action verb that takes no object. ...
In languages where the copula is a verb, it is a stative verb, as is the case in English be. Some other English stative verbs are believe, know, seem, and have. All these generally denote states rather than actions. However, it should be noted that verbs like have and be, which are usually stative, can be dynamic in certain situations. The following are not stative: The word copula originates from the Latin noun for a link or tie that connects two different things. ...
- You are being silly.
- She is having a baby.
Think is stative when it means "believe", but not when it means "consider".
Formal definitions
In some theories of formal semantics, including David Dowty's, stative verbs have a logical form which is the lambda expression In general, semantics (from the Greek semantikos, or significant meaning, derived from sema, sign) is the study of meaning, in some sense of that term. ...
Logic (from Classical Greek λόγος (logos), originally meaning the word, or what is spoken, but coming to mean thought or reason) is most often said to be the study of arguments, although the exact definition of logic is a matter of controversy amongst philosophers (see below). ...
The lambda calculus is a formal system designed to investigate function definition, function application, and recursion. ...
l(x): [STATE x] Apart from Dowty, Z. Vendler and C. S. Smith have also written influential work on aspectual classification of verbs.
English stative verbs Dowty gives some tests to decide whether an English verb is stative. They are as follows: - Statives do not occur in the progressive (the * before a sentence means that it is ungrammatical or absurd to most native English speakers):
- John is running. (non-stative)
- *John is knowing the answer.
- They cannot be complements of "force":
- I forced John to run.
- *I forced John to know the answer.
- They do not occur as imperatives.
- They cannot appear in the pseudo-cleft construction:
- What John did was run.
- *What John did was know the answer.
Grammar is the study of the rules governing the use of a language. ...
References - David Dowty's home page (Ohio State University, Department of Linguistics)
- Zeno Vendler's bio and works (University of Calgary, Department of Philosophy)
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