Aspect and the categorization of states: The case of ser and estar in Spanish (review)

The main goal of this book is to present a descriptively and explanatorily adequate analysis of the complementary distribution of Spanish copular verbs ser and estar. This is a topic that has interested researchers for decades, given its traditional significance in Spanish grammar, either from a pedagogical or from a descriptive/theoretical point of view. Roby carefully traces the history of the diverging and overlapping accounts on the topic, but also presents a new account that takes advantage of several insights from competing theories.

Ch. 1, ‘Theoretical premises and background data’ (1–10), presents several theoretical premises and concepts that have been used to characterize one of the basic intuitions about the ser/estar distinction, namely that ser predication applies over a long period of time and estar pertains to a shorter or more restricted period. Among the premises discussed in this chapter, there are several about cognitive divisions of the world: the stage-level vs. individual-level distinction, the location of pragmatics in grammar, the functional category of aspect in generative theories of syntax, and the semantic notions of aspectual composition and coercion

Ch. 2, ‘Common interpretations of ser and estar’ (11–31), deals with several traditional accounts of ser and estar, which are prevalent in most pedagogical textbooks and elementary grammars of Spanish. These accounts mostly provide a general rule or rules, and add a number of circumstantial exceptions to cover loose ends. R correctly states that, although from a communicative point of view these approaches correctly serve their main purpose of helping beginning learners to use ser and estar efficiently, from an explanatory or even a descriptive standpoint, they cannot be taken as adequate since several important counterexamples can be immediately found. The most widespread of these accounts is to establish the distinction between copulas in terms of the permanent vs. temporary distinction: ser is claimed to be used to describe permanent situations or realities, whereas estar is used to describe temporary situations or entities. Nevertheless, it is clear that states described with ser may change (Carlos es budista ‘Carlos is a Buddhist’) and states represented by estar are not necessarily temporary (Ricardo está muerto ‘Ricardo is dead’, Oaxaca está en México ‘Oaxaca is in Mexico’). A slightly modified version is to claim that estar indicates a change of state. An account based on this proposal would not be completely accurate either, since estar can be used to describe geographical or other locations.

In general, an important piece of evidence for any analysis is the group of those adjectives that seem to change in meaning when used with one copula or the other. For example, ser listo means ‘to be clever’ whereas estar listo means ‘to be ready’. Many accounts have assumed that these adjectives have a constant meaning and the copulas somehow alter or change the meaning. R convincingly argues that copula choice does not alter the meaning of the lexical item. Rather, the meaning of the verb phrase is compositionally determined. He also criticizes implied-comparison interpretations as a function of copula choice and argues against another pervasive distinction— the idea that ser associates with inherent qualities and estar with current conditions.

Ch. 3, ‘Other theoretical developments’ (33–59), discusses several recent theoretical accounts of the ser/estar distinction, belonging to several grammar domains: semantic accounts in terms of the stage-level vs. individual-level distinction, syntactic accounts (Schmitt 1992), ser and estar as aspectual indicators (Luján 1981), and a dicourse-based account (Maienborn 2005).

In Ch. 4, ‘Critical assessment of a discourse-based interpretation’ (61–89), R analyzes Maienborn’s account in detail, with special attention to the notion of a topic-situation contrast. For Maienborn, the use of estar is based on a speaker’s claim from immediate evidence. Although R concedes that Maienborn’s account is mostly accurate from a descriptive standpoint...