The Oxford Handbook of Event Structure

Edited by Robert Truswell

Oxford Handbooks

First detailed survey of research into event structure
Interdisciplinary approach, with insights from linguistics, philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, and computer science
Explores both foundational research and new cutting edge developments

The Oxford Handbook of Event Structure

Edited by Robert Truswell

Description

This handbook deals with research into the nature of events, and how we use language to describe events. The study of event structure over the past 60 years has been one of the most successful areas of lexical semantics, uniting insights from morphology and syntax, lexical and compositional semantics, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence to develop insightful theories of events and event descriptions. This volume provides accessible introductions to major topics and ongoing debates in event structure research, exploring what events are, how we perceive them, how we reason with them, and the role they play in the organization of grammar and discourse. The chapters are divided into four parts: the first covers metaphysical issues related to events; the second is concerned with the relationship between event structure and grammar; the third is a series of crosslinguistic case studies; and the fourth deals with links to cognitive science and artificial intelligence more broadly.

The book is strongly interdisciplinary in nature, with insights from linguistics, philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, and computer science, and will appeal to a wide range of researchers and students from advanced undergraduate level upwards.

The Oxford Handbook of Event Structure

Edited by Robert Truswell

Oxford Handbooks

1. Introduction, Robert Truswell
Part I: Events and Natural Language Metaphysics
2. Aspectual classes, Anita Mittwoch
3. Events and states, Claudia Maienborn
4. Event composition and event individuation, Robert Truswell
5. The semantic representation of causation and agentivity, Richmond H. Thomason
6. Force dynamics, Bridget Copley
7. Event structure without naive physics, Henk J. Verkuyl
8. Event kinds, Berit Gehrke
Part II: Events in Morphosyntax and Lexical Semantics
9. Thematic roles and events, Nikolas Gisborne and James Donaldson
10. Semantic domains for syntactic word-building, Lisa Levinson
11. Neodavidsonianism in semantics and syntax, Terje Lohndal
12. Event structure and verbal decomposition, Gillian Ramchand
13. Nominals and event structure, Friederike Moltmann
14. Adjectives and event structure, Rebekah Baglini and Chris Kennedy
Part III: Crosslinguistic Perspectives
15. Lexicalization patterns, Beth Levin and Malka Rappaport Hovav
16. Secondary predication, Tova Rapoport
17. Event structure and syntax, Tal Siloni
18. Inner aspect crosslinguistically, Lisa deMena Travis
Part IV: Events, Cognition, and Computation
19. Tense and aspect in Discourse Representation Theory, Hans Kamp
20. Coherence relations, Andrew Kehler
21. Form-independent meaning-representation for eventualities, Mark Steedman
22. The neurophysiology of event processing in language and visual events, Neil Cohn and Martin Paczynski

The Oxford Handbook of Event Structure

Edited by Robert Truswell

Oxford Handbooks

Author Information

Robert Truswell is Lecturer in Linguistics and English Language at the University of Edinburgh, and Adjunct Professor in Linguistics at the University of Ottawa, where he was Assistant Professor from 2011-14. He works on many aspects of syntax, semantics, and their interface, as well as syntactic and semantic change, and topics related to the evolution of language. His previous publications include the monograph Events, Phrases, and Questions (OUP, 2011), and the edited volumes Syntax and its Limits (OUP, 2014, with Raffaella Folli and Christina Sevdali) and Micro-change and Macro-change in Diachronic Syntax (OUP, 2017, with Eric Mathieu).

Contributors:

Rebekah Baglini, Stanford University
Neil Cohn, Tilburg University
Bridget Copley, CNRS/Universite Paris 8
James Donaldson, University of Edinburgh
Berit Gehrke, CNRS/Universite Paris Diderot
Nik Gisborne, University of Edinburgh
Hans Kamp, University of Stuttgart (retired)
Andrew Kehler, University of California, San Diego
Christopher Kennedy, University of Chicago
Beth Levin, Stanford University
Lisa Levinson, Oakland University
Terje Lohndal, The Norwegian University of Science and Technology and University of Tromso
Claudia Maienborn, Universitat Tubingen
Anita Mittwoch, Hebrew University of Jerusalem (retired)
Friederike Moltmann, CNRS
†Martin Paczynski, Wright State University
Gillian Ramchand, University of Tromso
Malka Rappaport Hovav, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Tova Rapoport, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Tal Siloni, Tel Aviv University
Mark Steedman, University of Edinburgh
Richmond H. Thomason, University of Michigan
Lisa deMena Travis, McGill University
Robert Truswell, University of Edinburgh
Henk Verkuyl, Utrecht University

The Oxford Handbook of Event Structure

Edited by Robert Truswell

Oxford Handbooks

Reviews and Awards

"The Handbook presents a wide-ranging review of the linguistic literature on event structure. As a handbook on this topic, it definitely fulfills its goal" -- Luana Lopes Amaral, Linguist List

"The book contains supporting references and a helpful subject index at the end. Because of its interdisciplinary nature, this book will be of interest to advanced undergraduate students and above in linguistics, philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, and computer science." -- G. C. Gamst, CHOICE