Aspects, Aktionsarten, and the time line

This paper discusses the interaction between Aktionsarten, aspect, and the narrative time line. In general, the paper deals with the definition of sequential clauses, with particular attention to stativities. It has been observed that when stative clauses are understood as inchoative situations, they are candidates for the time line. However, a study of Biblical Hebrew, French, and Russian, languages marking narrative clauses aspectually, reveals that 'real' states may also appear on the time line. Hinrichs's semantic theory (1982) does not account for this, and the pragmatic analyses of Dry (1981) and Dowty (1986) deal only with inchoatives. The present paper proposes a semantic theory which distinguishes between the definition of sequential clauses and their identification. The definition centers on the notion of end points, which is a semantic, rather than a real-world, property, as defined in this paper. Situations have end points iff they are contained in their reference time, and only such situations can appear on the time line. Events are always contained in their R-time and hence are always candidates for the time line, but states are contained in it only when (a) they are interpreted as inchoatives or (b) their duration is restricted by overt linguistic marking, for example, adverbials such as 'for three hours'. When states are contained in their reference time, that is, have end points, they too may appear in sequence.