Aspectual semantics and secondary predication

In this paper we outline the semantics of the class of sentences represente d below: Maria llego contenta(Maria arrived happy), Maria hablo dormida(Maria spoke in her dreams), Maria escribio la carta nerviosa(Maria wrote the letter ner vous). The term depictive is generally used to refer to the secondary predicate th at occurs in these sentences-the adjectives contenta, dormida, nerviosa-in agreement with the subject term. We adopt this terminology and in this pape r we shall speak of depictive predicates, predication and sentences. We ass ume, uncontroversially, that each depictive sentence expresses a temporal r elation between its primary predicate (the verbal predicate) and its second ary predicate (the adjectival predicate). We then show that this temporal r elation is closely related to the formal semantics of temporal when-clauses . The theoretical background for our treatment is found in the works of Donal d Davidson and David Dowty. We shall rehearse the most basic features of Da vidson's treatment of adverbial modification. After that we present Dowty's view on depictive predication. The central task of our presentation is to unify the two previous themes. Roughly speaking, the proposal we develop in this lecture casts Dowty's basic intuition within an event based semantics . We also discuss the role of the Spanish imperfective past in the understand ing of depictive sentences and its consequences for our semantics. In addit ion to that, we address the question of the low acceptability of the so-cal led ser adjectives in depictive sentences. We point out that this question is related to the (cross-linguistically attested) low acceptability of indi vidual-level predicates in such sentences.