Agentivity and Nonstativity in English

Abstract

This paper discusses the semantic properties, agentivity and stativity of verbs, and investigates how such properties constrain syntactic operations in English. For this purpose, this paper critically reviews the dynamic-stativedichotomy and verb classification based on this dichotomy by Quirk et al. (1985), claiming that agentivity and stativity are two distinct concepts and thus neither is redundant to the other. The paper demonstrates that the agentively (not dynamically) used verbs cannot occur in imperatives, Wh-clefting constructions, and Do-so Substitutions. In addition, agentively used verbs readily have a future time reference with the simple present tense whereas nonagentively used verbs do not. This paper also draws analogies between nouns and verbs, and between adjectives and verbs in terms of agentivity.