ABSTRACT
Eventuality types have played an important role in the organization of the grammar of natural languages since Dowty. They represent certain conventional ways in which languages systematically divide states of affairs into categories, and which are crucial to the semantic representation of verbs, verb phrases and sentences. The term 'eventuality type' has an ontologically broader coverage than 'event type' or 'Aktionsart', because it does not connote specifically dynamicity and exlusion of states. Lexical semantic properties of eventuality types were modelled in terms of purely temporal notions, that is, on basis of abstract properties of moments and/or intervals of time. The 'gappiness' property gained a surprising prominence in temporal accounts of eventuality types and was considered by some logicians important enough to serve as a basis for their classification. In short, eventuality descriptions, denoted by verbal predicates and sentences, represent certain conventional ways in which languages tend to lexicalize the structure of various states.
