事例:"he was a different race five times"


不可算名詞が通常は個数を数えられない (#three wines / three glasses of wine) のと同じように,ふつう,状態述語は回数を繰り返せません:

A specific indication of replication is the adverbial phrase again and again. As expected, it only occurs with perfectives. While a sufficiently forgetful person might well say I learned the poem again and again, it is a bit strange to say ??I knew the poem again and again for the sake of alternating periods of knowing the poem and not knowing it. Learn replicates because an event of learning is inherently bounded and (alas) gives no guarantee that the resulting knowledge will endure -- it may have to be learned on multiple occasions. But since know is imperfective -- it induces the expectation of indefinite continuation. For know to be replicable, we need to make a semantic adjustment and construe the profiled relationship as occurring in bounded episodes. We have the conceptual flexibility to do this if we can imagine a plausible scenario, and here we can, owing to the frailty of human memory.
(Ronald Langacker, Cognitive Grammar: A Basic Introduction, p.154)


 とはいえ,上記の引用でラネカーも言っているように,しかるべき文脈では状態動詞が回数表現とともにあらわれることがあります:

In the end he was sick three times and then wouldn't stop coughing.
("A patient's diary: episode 5 ― a little visitor")

I held his hand and chatted to him - he was sick about six times - once on my arm.
("Litvinenko a year on: Our stories," BBC News)

My dog keeps being sick. he's not off his food, and seems happy playing with our other dog..so whats going on why is he being sick? he was sick three times in 2 days, then he was ok - but he's just been sick again
(http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/705511)


この例の be sick は永続的でないステージレベルの述語なので,回数表現と共起するのもそれほど意外ではありません.

 しかし個体レベルの状態述語となると回数表現と共起しそうにないものですが,下記の例ではまさにそうした共起がみられます:

Here's a famous case: One guy in South Africa who by the time he was fifty had been reclassified racially because the laws changed. And so now he was a different race FIVE TIMES by the time he was fifty.

(David Weinberger, "Everything Is Miscellaneous," Google TechTalks, May 10, 2007; 07:19-30)


be (a) RACE はデフォルトでは主語の永続的な特徴をあらわす個体レベルの状態述語です:e.g. "he was a black African." それが,ここでは「(法律が変わったのにともなって)50歳になるまでに彼は5回人種が変わった」という状態変化をあらわしています.


関連エントリ:ミヒャエリス「英語の時制