On the Event Structure of German bleiben

Abstract

The German copular verb bleiben („to remain“) is supposed to denote the continuation of a state. In this paper, I will argue that bleiben has next to that reading another reading, too, where it denotes a change of state and which seems to be equivalent to werden (“to become”). The aim of this paper is to present an event structure for bleiben which integrates both readings as well as to examine the event structures of werden and bleiben and to discuss whether the change-of-state meaning denoted by bleiben is equivalent to that of werden. I will show that this is not the case and that bleiben always denotes a state. An exception to this last point forms bleiben when it appears in the context of non-finite posture verbs. These bleiben-constructions, which are limited to a small number of posture verbs, denote events, too.