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The different distinctions related to lexical aspect-state, activity, accomplishments and achievements-play an important role in the grammar of Spanish, but many of the details about how these distinctions can be implemented are unclear: which features distinguish between the classes, how the classes relate to each other, what is the nature of telicity or dynamicity and how one can account for the alternations that a verb is subject to involving its aspect are some of the most important problems from this perspective. The goal of this article is to provide a sufficient empirical base to address these questions and present the current alternatives to answer them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

El estudio de los estados ha adolecido tradicionalmente de un problema: hasta no hace mucho carecíamos de pruebas lo suficientemente adecuadas para identificar a los estados, ya que la mayoría de ellas eran pruebas que los estados no superaban, por lo que esta clase aspectual solo podía definirse en negativo. Con el propósito de ofrecer una herramienta útil a los investigadores interesados, en este artículo se recopilan más de una veintena de diagnósticos sobre estados. Junto a los diagnósticos (negativos) más clásicos (desarrollados en las tradiciones de Vendler-Dowty y Davidson), se incluyen un buen número de diagnósticos más recientes que ya permiten caracterizar a los estados en positivo.

The different distinctions related to lexical aspect –state, activity, accomplishments and achievements– play an important role in the grammar of Spanish, but many of the details about how these distinctions can be implemented are unclear: which features distinguish between the classes, how the classes relate to each other, what is the nature of telicity or dynamicity and how one can account for the alternations that a verb is subject to involving its aspect are some of the most important problems from this perspective. The goal of this article is to provide a sufficient empirical base to address these questions and present the current alternatives to answer them.

Perfect predicates have usually been defined as stative. The purpose of this paper is to explain why. I will pay attention to both the resultative and the experiential Perfects. Contrary to Katz (2003), Nishiyama & Koenig (2004, 2010), Michaelis (2011) and Piñón (2014), the stativity of the Perfect will be derived from its nature as a content of grammatical Aspect. More precisely, I will assume that the Perfect allows us to make assertions regarding the state of affairs that follows an event that culminates or ceases (Klein 1992, 1994). In the case that we are dealing with the resultative Perfect, that state of affairs will be equated with the goal state of the subeventive structure of a telic predicate. But if we are dealing with the experiential Perfect, the state of affairs will be equated with the final state of a process which ends up characterizing the subject as a participant in the type of event denoted by the verbal predicate.

Perfect predicates have been defined as stative. The purpose of this paper is to explain why. I will pay attention to both the resultative and the experiential Perfects. Contrary to Katz (2003), Nishiyama & Koenig (2004, 2010), Michaelis (2011) and Piñón (2014), the stativity of the Perfect will be derived from its nature as a content of grammatical Aspect. More precisely, I will assume that the Perfect allows us to make assertions regarding the state of affairs that follows an event that culminates or ceases (Klein 1992, 1994). In the case that we are dealing with the resultative Perfect, that state of affairs will be equated with the goal state of the subeventive structure of a telic predicate (García Fernández 2006). But if we are dealing with the experiential Perfect, the state of affairs will be equated with the final state of a process which ends up characterizing the subject as a participant in the type of event denoted by the verbal predicate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]