The algebra of events

A number of writers have commented on the close parallels between the mass-count distinction in nominal systems and the aspectual classification of verbal expressions (Allen, 1966; Mourelatos, 1978; L. Carlson, 1981; Hoepelman and Rohrer, 1980) that has been the subject of much attention in recent years in linguistics and philosophy. To take just one class of examples for now, there is a parallel between the two sets of distinctions in their cooccurrence patterns with expressions denoting numbers or amounts, as in Examples (1a)–(4b):

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