States, Processes and Actions by Wallace Chafe

Syntactic description has usually taken the sentence to be its basic unit of organization.

The total human conceptual universe is dichotomized initially into two major areas. The area of the verb, embraces the states and events, and the area of the noun, embraces things. The verb will be assumed to be central and the noun peripheral.

In every language a verb is present systematically in all but a few marginal utterances, accompanied by one or more nouns. Utterances which semantically have no verb, like ‘oh’ or ‘ouch’ perhaps, seem best regarded as relics of the prehuman kind of communication in which the direct symbolization of unitary messages was the rule.

The nature of the verb determines what the rest of the sentence will be like, it determines nouns will accompany it, what the relation of these nouns to it will be and how these nouns will be semantically specified

‘The men laughed’

The verb dictates it must be accompanied by a noun, related to it as ‘agent’ specified as animate, and also as human.

‘The chair laughed’

What we do is to interpret chair as if it were abnormally animate, what we do not do is to interpret laugh in an abnormal way as if it were a different kind of activity, performed by inanimate objects. Any unit like past which is added semantically to a verb is added simultaneously to the entire sentence which is built around that verb. A noun is like a planet whose internal modifications affect it alone and not the solar system as whole.

States

1)       

a.    The wood is dry

b.    The rope is tight

c.    The dish is broken

d.    The elephant is dead

2)     

a.    The wood dried

b.    The rope tightened

c.    The dish broke

d.    The elephant died

3)     

a.    Michael run

b.    The men laughed

c.    Harriet sang

d.    The tiger pounced

4)     

a.    Michael dried the wood

b.    The men tightened the rope

c.    Harriet broke the dish

d.    The tiger killed the elephant

In set 1) a certain noun is said to be in a certain state or condition, the verb is specified as a state. The remaining sentences contain verbs which are not specified as states. As a rule, nonstates can be distinguished from states by the fact that they answer the question ‘What happened?’ ‘What’s happening?’ and so on. A nonstate is a ‘happening’ an event.

What happened?

The wood dried

The men laughed

Harriet broke the dish

But not (for example)

The wood was dry

A nonstate can occur in the progressive form which is not available to a state:

            The wood is drying

            The men are laughing

Harriet is breaking the dish

But not

            The wood is being dry.

To indicate that a verb may or may not be specified as a state, a rule of the following form can be used:

            V - →>state

The arrow has a broken shaft means that its application is optional, it has a double head means that it must be read is further specified as, and not is rewritten as, is replaced by, or the like.

Processes and actions

            Nonstates are not all of the same kind; in 2) the sentences seem to be dealing with processes, where the noun is said to have changed its state or condition, the verb has been specified as process. In 3) sentences express an action sentence to distinguish an action form a process is that an action sentence will answer the question ‘What did N do?’ where N is some noun.

            What did Harriet do?

                        She sang

But not (for example)

                        She died

In 4) the verb is a process and an action, as a process it involves a change in the condition of the noun, its patient; as an action it expresses what someone, its agent, does. The agent is still someone who does something, but the agent does it to something, the patient of a process:

What did Harriet do?

            She broke the dish

What happened to the dish?

Harriet broke it

Ambient

a.    It’s hot

b.    It’s late

c.    It’s Tuesday

The verb in each of these sentences is specified as a state. These sentences do not answer the question ‘What’s happening?’, nor can they be made progressive, they cover the total environment.

____________     l                           l l                       pat   V                        N    state	The wood is dry	____________     l                           l l                       pat   V                  N  process	The wood dried
____________     l                           l l                       agt   V                         N action	Harriet sang	________              l                  l          l              agt  ____l____       N     l                  l     l               Pat V                  N Process action	Michael dried the wood
V State ambient	It’s hot	V Action ambient	It’s rainig