Neo-Davidsonian ontology of events

Abstract

Recent Neo-Davidsonian accounts of the semantics of progressive constructions of action verbs (‘John is building a house’) reflect an ontological distinction between processes or incomplete events on the one hand, and complete events on the other. This paper has two goals. First, it attempts to show that this putative ontological distinction is beset with problems. The second goal of this paper is to offer the beginnings of a positive proposal that seeks to show how the ontologically austere Davidsonian can account for the truth conditions of progressive constructions without the need for an enriched ontology.