Interpreting adjectival passives: Evidence for the activation of contrasting states

Interpreting adjectival passives: Evidence for the activation of contrasting states

Berry Claus and Olga Kriukova

Abstract In this paper, we report an experimental study that addressed the comprehension of adjectival passives in German, e.g., Das Fenster ist geöffnet (The window is opened). We drew on recent linguistic accounts (Gehrke to appear; Maienborn 2009) that propose that the interpretation of such forms necessitates the involvement of a contrasting state (e.g., closed window). In line with this proposal, the results of our experiment indicate that contrasting states are mentally better available after reading a sentence with an adjectival passive than after reading a corresponding sentence with an adjective, e.g., Das Fenster ist offen (The window is open).

1. Introduction

Upon entering a room and noticing that the window is still in the state of being open, one might say something like (1a) or (1b):

(1) a. The window is still open. b. The window is still opened.

Even though the two sentences describe the window’s current state, this is accomplished in two different ways: by using an adjective in (1a) and an adjectival passive in (1b). Adjectives and adjectival passives appear to be alternative means to convey seemingly similar states; yet, the information they carry is not exactly the same, and sentences (1a) and (1b) are not equivalent. In the present paper, we address the question as to whether comprehenders are sensitive to the differences between adjectives and ad-jectival passives on the level of the content of mental representations con-structed during comprehension.

Adjectival passives, also referred to as “be-passives” (Gehrke to ap-pear), “adjectival resultatives” (Gese, Stolterfoht, and Maienborn 2009), or “state/stative passives” (Kratzer 2000 and Schlücker 2009, respectively),

2 Berry Claus and Olga Kriukova

occupy a special position in language as they bear some similarities both to verbal passives and copula-adjective constructions. In English, a structure consisting of a form of “to be” and participle II, as “to be opened”, is am-biguous between a verbal-passive reading and an adjectival-passive read-ing. It is context that often helps to discriminate between the two interpre-tations, as illustrated in (2).

(2) a. The window was opened three hours ago. b. The window was opened for three hours.

The predicate in (2a) is a verbal passive: it clearly refers to a specific event, the time of which is marked by the temporal adverbial. Conversely, the predicate in (2b) is an adjectival passive: it describes a state which is a result of some event. The event itself in this case is only implicit and the temporal adverbial does not refer to the event time (von Stechow 1998), but rather to the temporal extension of the state.

The same analysis also holds for German verbal and adjectival passives, as in examples (3a) and (3b). Verbal passives contain a clear event-reference and allow modification by temporal-frame adverbials, while ad-jectival passives describe a state and only imply some kind of event. Un-like in English, in German, the two structures are grammatically different: verbal passives are formed with an auxiliary verb werden (become) and a participle, while adjectival passives are formed with the copula sein (be) and a participle. The absence of structural ambiguity makes German a very suitable language for research on adjectival passives.

(3) a. Das Fenster wurde vor drei Stunden geöffnet. The window became opened three hours ago. ‘The window was opened three hours ago.’

b. Das Fenster war drei Stunden lang geöffnet. The window was opened for three hours. ‘The window was opened for three hours.’

How exactly the formation of adjectival passives happens is still a mat-ter of a debate: some researchers use a syntactic structural approach to explain the phenomenon (e.g., Embick 2004); some take a lexical route assuming adjectivization of the verbal participle by a zero-affix (e.g., Kratzer 2000); others add pragmatic aspect into account (e.g., Maienborn 2009) or appeal to the semantics of the underlying verb from which the

Interpreting adjectival passives: activation of contrasting states 3

participle was formed (Gehrke to appear). Yet, it is widely accepted that adjectival passives are copula-adjective constructions similar to copular constructions with genuine adjectives (e.g., Gehrke to appear; Kratzer 2000; Levin and Rappaport 1986; Maienborn 2009, 2011; Rapp 1996; Schlücker 2009; von Stechow 1998; Welke 2007).

An adjectival analysis of the adjectival passive is supported by several diagnostics (for a review see Embick 2004 and Schlücker 2009, for evi-dence from corpora see Gese et al. 2009). One example is the occurrence of the negative prefix un- in German adjectival passives as in (4). As un-prefixation is licensed with adjectives but not with verbs, the combination of the prefix with participles indicates the adjectival nature of the partici-ple. Moreover, the participle can also appear in comparative or superlative forms, indicating adjectival gradation (see (5)). A further diagnostics is based on the observation that adjectival passives can be conjoined with genuine adjectives in coordinated copular constructions, such as in (6). Considering that coordination requires category identity (cf. Lang 1984), this also supports an adjectival analysis.

(4) Das Hemd ist ungebügelt. ‘The shirt is unironed.’

(5) a. In the entire world, it is the hawksbill that is most threatened by

extinction.

b. He is more humiliated than her at times. (6) The aircraft is cleaned and ready for boarding.

In addition to these diagnostics, the adjectivization account is further bolstered by psycholinguistic evidence from a self-paced reading study by Stolterfoht, Gese, and Maienborn (2010). They found prolonged reading times for participles in adjectival passive constructions compared to parti-ciples in verbal passive constructions. This finding is in line with the as-sumption that the participle of an adjectival passive requires an adjectival conversion resulting in extra processing costs.

With regard to the interpretation of adjectival passives, the view that ad-jectival passives are copula-adjective constructions implies that adjectival passives, just like copula-adjective constructions, describe states by assign-ing an object a certain property denoted by the predicate. However, the property ascribed is not the same. An adjective’s meaning is coded in the


lexicon, and the property, ascribed by an adjective, occupies a “fixed place in the subject referent’s property space” (Maienborn 2009: 40). For in-stance, the adjective leer (‘empty) in (7a) simply assigns a lexically deter-mined property to the rubbish bin and does not require the comprehender to derive any further implications (see also Welke 2007).

Unlike adjectives, adjectival passives attribute a referent a property that is not lexically coded but needs to be inferred from the event denoted by the verbal base of the participle (Maienborn 2009). A property assigned by an adjectival passive is linked to the event and is the result or outcome of this event (Embick 2004; Gese et al. 2009; Maienborn 2009; Schlücker 2009, see also Rapp and von Stechow 1999), hence, the alternative name “adjectival resultatives”. The adjectival passive in (7b) does not merely ascribe a state to the rubbish bin but conveys that it emerged as a result of some action, i.e. emptying.

(7) a. Der Mülleimer ist leer. ‘The rubbish bin is empty.’

b. Der Mülleimer ist geleert. ‘The rubbish bin is emptied.’

A recent experimental finding by Kaup, Lüdtke, and Maienborn (2010) suggests that comprehenders are sensitive to the difference between adjec-tives and adjectival passives. Employing the action-sentence compatibility paradigm (Glenberg and Kaschak 2002), they tapped into the motor actions that were activated when reading state descriptions with either of the two forms. For adjectival passives, they found an activation of the movement involved in performing the action underlying the current state (e.g., moving the hand toward the body for opening in (8)) – suggesting that compre-henders simulated the action corresponding to the root verb of the adjecti-val passive1.

(8) Die Schublade ist noch geöffnet. ‘The drawer is still opened.’

The finding by Kaup et al. (2010) is consistent with the notion that the stative property conveyed by an adjectival passive has to be recovered on the basis of its root verb. According to Maienborn (2007, 2009, 2011), an adjectival passive assigns a semantically underspecified event-based ad hoc property. Instantiating the ad hoc property may require much prag-


matic effort in case of non-resultative verbs (e.g., The cat is petted, which is only fine with a “job is done” interpretation (Kratzer 2000: 4)), and less or virtual no pragmatic effort with resultative verbs. However, Maienborn argues that the basic mechanism of interpreting adjectival passives in terms of an ad hoc formation is the same and generally requires the availability of a salient contrasting state which crucially determines the specification of the ad hoc property.

Maienborn proposes two possible contrast dimensions, the temporal and the qualitative dimension, determined by contextual information and result-ing in two different readings2 of adjectival passives.

(9) Der Schatz ist vergraben … ‘The treasure is buried …’

a. wir können jetzt fliehen. post state reading ‘now we can make our escape.’

b. und nicht versenkt. target state reading ‘and not sunk.’

Example from Gese (2010)

In (9a), the contextual information provides a contrasting state s’ which differs from the linguistically conveyed state s along the temporal dimen-sion, such that s’ precedes s and the ad-hoc property expressed by the ad-jectival passive, does not hold in s’. On this post state reading, the treasure is classified as being in the post state of a burying event (Maienborn 2009: 46).

In contrast, on the target state reading, as exemplified in (9b), the treas-ure belongs to the class of buried treasures rather than being sunk (or sealed or burned). Here the contrast dimension is qualitative; the contrast-ing state s’ pertains to some property that is distinct from the ad-hoc prop-erty conveyed by the adjectival passive and is salient within the given con-text (Maienborn 2009: 46).

The crucial point of Maienborn’s account with regard to the present pa-per is that the interpretation of an adjectival passive necessarily involves a contrasting alternative state. A very similar assumption is made in a recent proposal by Gehrke (to appear) who argues that adjectival-passive states are evaluated with respect to an opposite state. However, differently from Maienborn, she attributes the involvement of a contrasting alternative to


semantics rather than pragmatics. We will come back to this difference in the Conclusion.

In what follows, we will report a psycholinguistic experiment that aimed at gaining some insight with regard to the psychological plausibility of Maienborn’s (2009) and Gehrke’s (to appear) proposals that the inter-pretation of adjectival passives includes the involvement of a contrasting state. Consider sentence (10a). Here, the adjectival passive stems from a change-of-state verb (to open) and is embedded in the context of a descrip-tion of a desired situation. We reasoned that by this configuration the changeability of the predicated entity from time t to time t+1 is highlighted. In turn, this may favour a construal of the contrasting state along the tem-poral dimension – resulting in a post state reading of the adjectival passive. Hence, with a sentence such as (10a), we expect that the adjectival passive is evaluated against a temporally preceding contrasting state. As the root verb is a change-of-state verb, the contrasting state is given by the initial state of the respective event structure, i.e. closed window. If interpreting adjectival passives does indeed necessitate a contrasting state, then this should be reflected in a mental availability of that state during comprehen-sion. For instance, processing sentence (10a) should involve an activated representation of a closed window.

(10) a. Ralf wäre es lieber, wenn das Fenster geöffnet wäre. ‘Ralf would like it more if the window were opened.’

b. Ralf wäre es lieber, wenn das Fenster offen wäre. ‘Ralf would like it more if the window were open.’

To investigate this issue, we contrasted state descriptions with adjecti-val passives and with adjectives (see (10a) and (10b)) and compared the mental availability of the contrasting state. If the contrasting state can be found to be more available with adjectival passives than with adjectives, then this would provide empirical support for the proposal of an involve-ment of a contrasting state in the interpretation of adjectival passives.

The experimental material consisted of descriptions of desired states, such as (10a) or (10b). All adjectival passives rooted from change-of-state verbs. As was outlined above, we expected that such a combination would bring forward a post-state reading which should ensure that the contrasting state would be as unequivocal as possible. That is, for our material, the contrasting state can be assumed to be the initial state of the root-verb event.


A side-effect of employing descriptions of desired states as experimen-tal material is that even the adjective versions (see (10b)) do not only con-vey information about the linguistically conveyed (desired) state but im-plicitly also about the factual state – as this is easily inferable. Considering that the factual state always corresponds to contrasting state (e.g., closed window), the materials in principle allow for the possibility of an activa-tion of the contrasting state for the adjective version of the sentences. Thus, our experiment could be considered a conservative test of the predic-tion that the contrasting state should be more available with adjectival pas-sives than with adjectives. Yet, the inference of the contrasting (factual) state is not a prerequisite for the understanding of the adjective versions, whereas the interpretation of the adjectival passive versions is proposed to necessitate the activation of the contrasting state.

2. Experiment

To test the mental availability of the contrasting state, we employed a vari-ant of sentence-picture verification paradigm (Clark and Chase 1972) sug-gested to us by B. Kaup (p.c.). After reading a sentence such as (10a) or (10b), participants were presented with a picture that either depicted the linguistically conveyed state, i.e. the desired state, or the contrasting state, i.e. the implied factual state (e.g., open or closed window, respectively, as depicted in Figure 1).

Participants’ task was to press a key as soon as they had identified the depicted object. We measured the picture-identification latencies consider-ing them to reflect the mental availability of the depicted state3. If it is true that the interpretation of adjectival passives necessarily involves a contrast-

Figure 1. Sample pictures used in the experiment, corresponding to the sentence Ralf would like it more if the window were opened/open. Left: picture of the linguis-tically conveyed state. Right: picture of the contrasting state.


ing state then participants should be faster to identify a picture of the con-trasting state after reading a sentence with an adjectival passive than after reading a sentence with an adjective. The pictures of the linguistically con-veyed state (e.g. open window) were included as a control condition – in-tended to provide an indication of whether or not an obtained difference between adjectival passives and adjectives would be specific to the mental availability of the contrasting state.

To gain some insight concerning the time course of processing adjecti-val passives, we tapped participants’ mental representation at two different stages. The picture of the linguistically conveyed or contrasting state was either presented immediately after sentence reading or with a delay of 1,500 milliseconds. Assuming that the interpretation of adjectival passives does indeed involve a contrasting state, there are several possibilities with regard to the time course. It may be that the activation of the contrasting state decays rapidly – resulting in different result patterns at the two times of testing. Alternatively, it may be that the activation of the contrasting state is sustained – then the pattern of results should not differ across the two times of testing. However, the main focus of the present study was to experimentally investigate the general prediction that processing adjectival passives involves the activation of a contrasting state. 2.1. Method

Sixty-four participants from Saarland University took part in the experi-ment and received a monetary reimbursement for their participation. All participants were native speakers of German.

The materials comprised sets of sentences, pictures, words, and ques-tions. There were 32 experimental sentences. All were of the type X wäre es lieber, wenn Y Z wäre (‘X would like it more if Y were Z’), where X was a proper name referring to an individual, Y denoted an object, and Z expressed a property. There were two versions of each experimental sen-tence: in one version, Z was an (adjectival-passive) participle, in the other version, Z was an adjective (as illustrated in (10a) and (10b)). The root verbs of all adjectival passives were change-of-state verbs. In each of the adjective versions, the adjective denoted the result state of the correspond-ing adjectival passive’s root verb (e.g., open-opened, empty-emptied). In approximately half of the experimental sentences (n = 17), the root verb of the employed adjectival passive was a deadjectival verb (e.g., spitzen [to sharpen], derived from spitz [sharp]); in the remaining experimental sen-


tences (n = 15), the adjectival passive’s root verb was a verb that is not derived from an adjective (e.g., bügeln [to iron]).

The filler items served to conceal the purpose of the experiment. We constructed 50 filler sentences that were similar to the experimental sen-tences in length, form, and complexity and in ascribing a propositional attitude. However, the propositional attitude expressed by the filler sen-tences differed from the desiderative attitude expressed by the experimen-tal sentences. There were three types of filler sentences. One type of filler sentences (n = 16) expressed a positive attitude about some state, such as X findet es gut, dass Y Z ist (‘X finds it good that Y is Z’). The other two types of filler sentences (n = 34) expressed a negative attitude about some state either in the form X findet es schlecht, dass Y Z ist (‘X finds it bad that Y is Z’) or X wäre es unangenehm, wenn Y Z wäre (‘X would be un-comfortable if Y were Z’). Half of the filler sentences contained an adjec-tival-passive construction; the other half contained a copula-adjective con-struction.

There were 114 black-and-white pictures. Sixty-four pictures served as pictures for the experimental trials. They were comprised of 32 pairs of pictures such that each pair depicted the object that was named in the re-spective experimental sentence but in opposite states (see sample pictures in Figure 1). That is, the depicted state either corresponded to the linguisti-cally conveyed state or to the contrasting state.

Fifty pictures were used for the filler sentences. Eight filler pictures showed the object that was named in the corresponding filler sentence and the remaining 42 filler pictures depicted an object that was not named in the corresponding filler sentence.

To motivate the picture-identification task, it was followed by a picture-word verification task. Participants had to decide whether a given word named the depicted object. There were 82 words, 32 for the experimental pictures and 50 for the filler pictures. For half of the experimental trials and for half of the filler trials, the word named the object that was depicted on the picture and for the other half of the experimental and filler trials, the word named an object that was not depicted on the picture

For twenty-six filler sentences, “Yes/No” questions were constructed to encourage the participants to read for comprehension. The questions were related to the content of the corresponding sentence. Half of the compre-hension questions required a positive answer, and the other half a negative one.

The experiment employed a 2(Delay: zero vs. 1500ms) x 2(Form: adjec-tival passive vs. adjective) x 2(Depicted State: linguistically conveyed vs.


contrasting) design with Delay being the only between-subjects factor. Half of the participants were randomly assigned to the zero-delay condition and the other half to the 1500ms-delay condition. The assignment of condi-tions (Form x Depicted State) to experimental sentences/pictures and par-ticipants was counterbalanced. Each participant saw eight different items in each of the four conditions (combinations of sentence versions and pic-ture versions).

Experimental and filler trials were presented to the participants in vari-ous mixed random orders. Figure 2 provides an illustration of the trial pro-cedure.

Each trial started with a sentence presented on a computer screen for self-paced reading. After reading and understanding the sentence, partici-pants had to press a key which caused the sentence to disappear. Either immediately or 1500 ms after that (depending on the delay condition), a picture was presented. Participants’ task was to press a key as soon as they had identified the object depicted on the picture. Then, the picture was replaced by a word for which participants had to indicate whether or not it named the depicted object by pressing either of two keys. For approxi-mately 30% of the trials (all filler trials), this was followed by a compre-hension question requiring a “yes-” or “no-”answer. Participants were in-structed to respond as quickly and accurately as possible to all tasks during a trial and were allowed to take breaks between trials.

2.2. Results and Discussion

Analyses were carried out on the picture-identification latencies of the experimental trials with correct responses to the word-verification task (accuracy for word verification: 99.3%).

Figure 2. Illustration of the trial procedure for experimental trials.


We excluded trials with a sentence reading time shorter than 300ms and longer than 5000ms and with a picture-identification latency shorter than 300ms and longer than 3000ms (3.6% of the data). Subsequently, picture-identification latencies that deviated more than 2 SDs from an item’s mean in the respective Form x Depicted State condition were classified as out-liers and eliminated (4.6% of the data). In addition, the data from one par-ticipant had to be excluded due to too few remaining data points (n = 2) in one condition after applying the outlier-elimination procedure.

Table 1 shows the means of the picture-identification latencies as a function of Form and Depicted State separately for the zero-delay and for the 1500ms-delay conditions.

An alpha-level of .05 was used for all statistical tests. Data were first submitted to a 2(Delay) x 2(Form) x 2(Depicted State) mixed analysis of variance. There was a significant main effect of Delay, F(1, 61) = 5.56, MSE = 1,619,006, p < .05. Picture-identification latencies were faster in the 1500ms-delay condition than in the zero-delay condition. This effect is of little interest, however; it could be attributed to a higher processing load in the zero-delay condition or it may simply be due to the between-subjects manipulation of delay. Most relevant with regard to the present issue, there was a highly significant interaction of Form and Depicted State, F(1, 61) = 6.91, MSE = 14,258, p = .01. No other effects or interactions were signifi-cant, all Fs < 1.

Table 1. Mean picture-identification latencies (in ms) as a function of Form and Depicted State separately for the two delay conditions.

zero-delay 1500ms-delay

Depicted State adjective adjectival

passive 95% CI

adjective adjectival

passive 95% CI

linguistically conveyed

1080 1123 ±42 919 955 ±51

contrasting 1118 1085 ±47 967 923 ±34

Note. The 95%CIs are within-subject confidence intervals (cf. Masson and Loftus, 2003) associated with the contrast between adjectives and adjectival passives in the respective Depicted State condition.

Since there were no significant interactions involving the factor Delay,

the data was collapsed across the two delay conditions and pairwise com-parisons were conducted, separately for the two levels of the factor De-picted State. For pictures showing the linguistically conveyed state (e.g.,


open window), there was a trend toward shorter picture-identification la-tencies after sentences with adjectives than after sentences with adjectival passives, t(62) = 1.76, p = .08. In contrast, for pictures showing the con-trasting state (e.g., closed window), picture-identification latencies were significantly shorter after sentences with adjectival passives than after sen-tences with adjectives, t(62) = 1.99, p = .05.

The pattern of results clearly indicates that comprehenders are sensitive to the differences between adjectives and adjectival passives. This is in line with previous studies (Kaup et al. 2010; Stolterfoht et al. 2010). The spe-cific contribution of the present results is that they provide empirical evi-dence for the assumption that the interpretation of adjectival passives in-cludes the involvement of a contrasting state (Gehrke to appear; Maienborn 2009). Picture-identification latencies for contrasting states (e.g., closed window) were found to be shorter after processing a sentence with an ad-jectival passive than after processing a sentence with an adjective. This suggests a difference in mental availability, consistent with the proposed activation of a contrasting state when interpreting an adjectival passive.

The finding of an interaction between Form and Depicted State indi-cates that the difference in mental availability for the contrasting state can-not be attributed to a general effect but seems to be specific to the contrast-ing state. For pictures of the state that was linguistically conveyed (e.g., open/opened window), the identification latencies were not shorter after adjectival passives than after adjectives. Rather, there was a trend for the opposite pattern. We will come back to this point in the Conclusion.

Remarkably, we found no interaction with the manipulated delay, dem-onstrating that the pattern of results did not differ in the two delay condi-tions. More specifically, the picture-identification latencies indicate that the contrasting state was better available after an adjectival passive than after an adjective immediately after reading the sentence as well as 1,500 ms after reading the sentence. With regard to the time-course issue, this suggests that the activation of the contrasting state is sustained rather than rapidly decreased.

3. Conclusion

Our study addressed the interpretation of adjectival passives. Unlike adjec-tives, which ascribe a lexically coded property, the property ascribed by an adjectival passive is generally not lexicalized but needs to be inferred on the basis of the root verb’s event (e.g., Embick 2004; Maienborn 2009;


Schlücker 2009), possibly incorporating contextual information and back-ground knowledge.

Typically, the property assigned by an adjectival passive corresponds to the result or outcome of the underlying event. However, as pointed out by Maienborn (2009; 2011), interpreting an adjectival passive calls for more than deriving a result state. On the one hand, it is not always clear what constitutes the result state (as an example consider cited; cf. Maienborn 2011). On the other hand, adjectival passives characteristically serve more than just expressing a result state, for example they may imply information concerning the quality of the predicated object (consider as an example The manuscript is submitted, which may imply: ‘better than being prepared but not as good as being published’; cf. Maienborn 2009). Maienborn pro-poses that an adjectival passive is a means to convey an ad hoc property that is derived on the basis of a contrasting state. That the interpretation of an adjectival passive involves an alternative state is also put forward in a recent account by Gehrke (to appear), who assumes that the state expressed by an adjectival passive is evaluated with regard to an opposite state.

The results of our study are consistent with these proposals. Identifica-tion latencies for pictures showing the contrasting state were found to be faster after reading a sentence with an adjectival passive than after reading a sentence with an adjective (e.g., Ralf would like it more if the window were opened vs. open). This finding indicates a difference in mental avail-ability, which corresponds to the prediction of an activation of the contrast-ing state when interpreting an adjectival passive. As elucidated in the In-troduction, our experiment constituted a conservative test of the prediction. In both versions, adjectival passive and adjective, the sentences described desired states and could have invited for the inference that the contrasting state holds in the factual situation. Thus, an activation of the contrasting state was conceivable for both versions. However, the crucial difference is that understanding the adjective versions does not require inferring and activating the contrasting state, whereas the activation of the contrasting state is proposed to be essential for interpreting the adjectival passive ver-sions.

As a control, our study also included a test of the mental availability of the linguistically conveyed desired state (e.g., picture that shows an open window). Here, we did not find any indication of an enhanced availability following adjectival passives. This demonstrates that the effect is specific to the availability of the contrasting state. Identification latencies for the pictures depicting the linguistically conveyed state were shorter after ad-jectives than after adjectival passives. We want to point out that this differ-


ence was not significant. Still, the direction of the descriptive difference may be considered as an indication that the linguistically conveyed desired state was mentally better available after adjectives than after adjectival passives. At first sight this may be surprising, considering that one would expect a representation of the linguistically conveyed state for both forms – possibly delayed in the case of the adjectival passive. Yet, even a signifi-cant difference in the picture-identification latencies would not necessarily imply that the linguistically conveyed state was not available after reading the adjectival passive. Prolonged picture-identification latencies for the linguistically conveyed desired state with adjectival passives could also be accounted for by assuming interference between two activated state repre-sentations, a representation of the contrasting state and a representation of the linguistically conveyed state.

As to the time course of the activation of the contrasting state, the pat-tern of picture-identification latencies did not differ for the two times of testing. More specifically, the results indicated an enhanced availability of the contrasting state in the adjectival passive conditions both immediately after reading and after a delay of 1,500ms. This suggests that the activation of the contrasting state does not decay rapidly but rather is long lasting. It is tempting to speculate that the sustainability of the activation may be taken as an indication that the contrasting state is not only involved in the process of deriving the property that is expressed by the adjectival passive but, moreover, becomes a part of the meaning representation. However, the present results do not allow for any conclusions in this regard. It is a highly interesting task for future research to investigate this issue.

It could be objected that the main finding of our study – i.e., enhanced availability of the contrasting state – could also be accounted for without the assumption that the contrasting state is involved in deriving the prop-erty implied by the adjectival passive. In our study, the root verbs of the employed adjectival passives all were change-of-state verbs and the con-trasting state corresponded to the initial state of the root verb’s event. On the assumption that processing an adjectival passive generally activates the root verb’s lexical entry including the respective event structure (cf. Moens and Steedman 1988) of a change-of-state verb, then this may, at first sight, provide a more parsimonious account of our findings. The enhanced avail-ability of the contrasting state, i.e. initial state, could be attributed to its activation as part of the event structure. Yet, there is reason to doubt this alternative account. Psycholinguistic findings suggest that the activation of the different parts of an event structure is modulated by whether the event is described as being ongoing or completed (Ferretti, Kutas, and McRae


2007; Ferretti, Rohde, Kehler, and Crutchley 2009; Morrow 1985) and that the initial state is not always highly activated but that its level of activation may depend on verb aspect. For example, findings from a study by Ferretti et al. (2009) on transfer-of-possession verbs indicate a higher activation of the Goal compared with the Source with the difference being more pro-nounced with perfective verb aspect. Hence, processing adjectival passives may trigger the activation of the event denoted by the participle’s root verb but this may not necessarily involve an enhanced and persistent mental availability of the event’s initial state. However, on the basis of the present findings, the alternative account cannot be definitely discarded. An inter-esting and revealing test case would be to test for the mental availability of the contrasting state in cases of a target state reading rather than a post state reading (see Introduction). On a target state reading, the contrasting state does not correspond to the underlying event’s initial state but depends on the respective qualitative dimension. If one could still find enhanced availability for the contrasting state then this could not be accounted for by verb-based, lexically driven activation.

If accepting that our finding of an enhanced mental availability of the initial state could be explained by the activation of a contrasting state in the process of interpreting an adjectival passive, then this is in line with Maienborn’s (2009) as well as with Gehrke’s (to appear) proposals. As was mentioned in the Introduction, the two accounts differ in whether the in-volvement of a contrasting state is attributed to pragmatics or semantics. According to Maienborn (2009), an adjectival passive expresses an ad hoc property, which is semantically underspecified. Deriving a suitable instan-tiation of the property is assumed to require pragmatic inferencing on the basis of a contrasting state – either on the temporal dimension (post state reading) or on the qualitative dimension (target state reading).

In Gehrke’s (to appear) account, on the other hand, the state expressed by an adjectival passive is semantically specified as the instantiation of a consequent-state kind. The state is evaluated against an opposite state on a scalar dimension. In cases where the event structure of the root verb in-cludes a BECOME component (cf. Dowty 1979), as with change-of-state verbs, the dimension is temporal and the opposite state is given by the re-spective initial state. According to Gehrke, the temporal scale is the basic one; cases where the opposite state cannot be evaluated on the temporal dimension require pragmatic licensing and call for converting the temporal interpretation of BECOME to a qualitative dimension.

In our study, each of the employed adjectival passives was based on a change-of-state verb and the intended interpretation was a target state read-


ing. Hence, both Maienborn’s and Gehrke’s account yield the same predic-tion: the contrasting state or opposite state, respectively, should correspond to the initial state of the root verb’s event and should be involved in the interpretation of the adjectival passive – which is consistent with our find-ing of an enhanced mental availability of the initial state with adjectival passives.

So, how could one empirically decide between the two accounts with regard to their psychological plausibility? One possibility is to test for po-tential context effects. A study that is germane to this issue is the one by Kaup and colleagues (2010), which has been mentioned already in the In-troduction. As was outlined before, their results suggest that when process-ing an adjectival passive, comprehenders simulate the action denoted by the root verb. However, evidence for such mental simulations was only found when the sentential context contained the temporal particle noch (‘still’ as in The drawer is still opened), but not for otherwise equal sen-tences without the temporal particle. A sentential context which contains the temporal particle noch (‘still’) highlights the changeability of an en-tity’s state and in this regard corresponds to the desiderative-modality con-text of our experimental sentences (e.g., Ralf would like it more if the win-dow were opened), which likewise may draw attention to the alterability of states. Thus, it would be interesting to see whether modifying our material such that the context is “neutral” (e.g., The window is opened) would yield different results than the present experiment.

Obtaining different results depending on sentential context could also be revealing with regard to the difference between the adjectival-passive accounts of Maienborn (2009) and Gehrke (to appear). If there would be no evidence of an enhanced availability of the initial state with simple asser-tions, then this could be accounted for within Maienborn’s framework by the possibility of a target state reading with a contrasting state on a qualita-tive dimension, which simply does not correspond to the probed state. In contrast, Gehrke’s account does not leave such a loophole. Within her framework, an adjectival passive that is based on a change-of-state verb is evaluated with respect to an opposite state on the temporal dimension, i.e. the underlying event’s initial state – regardless of whether the adjectival passive is included in a desiderative-modality sentence or in a simple asser-tion. Hence, different results for the two sentential contexts would pose a problem for Gehrke’s account. We would like to stress that the findings of the study by Kaup et al. (2010) do not provide a suitable basis for any im-plications concerning the effect of manipulating the sentential context of the material in our study – not least because the two studies differ with


regard to the investigated processes and the employed paradigms. It should also be added that decisive experimental tests of an activation of a contrast-ing state on a qualitative dimension are hardly possible as clear-cut predic-tions are lacking and are difficult to make.

In conclusion, our study provided first empirical evidence for the men-tal activation of alternative states when comprehending state descriptions with adjectival passives. This finding provides preliminary support for recent accounts that propose the involvement of a contrasting state (Maienborn 2009) or opposite state (Gehrke to appear) in the interpretation of the state expressed by an adjectival passive. Obviously, our study is just a small step and leaves many questions open. Yet, our results are promising with regard to conducting more precise tests of implications of these ac-counts.


Notes 1. More specifically, response times to sentences with adjectival passives such as

(8) were found to be faster when responding required a hand movement that relates to the action that induced the current state compared with when re-sponding required a hand movement that relates to the action that would change the current state (e.g., described state: (still) opened drawer; inducing action: opening, matching hand-movement: toward the body; changing action: closing, matching hand-movement: away from the body). In contrast, response times to corresponding sentences with adjectives (e.g., The drawer is still open) showed the opposite pattern: Response times were faster for hand movements that matched the (anticipatable) changing action compared with hand movements that matched the inducing action. For further details concern-ing method, results, and interpretation issues we refer to the original paper by Kaup et al. (2010). The crucial point for our consideration in the current con-text is the finding of a mental activation of the inducing action of a described state with adjectival passives but not with adjectives.

2. Kratzer (2000; see also Brandt 1982) also distinguishes two different readings of adjectival passives: a resultant state reading in case the state is permanent and holds forever after the event denoted by the root verb and a target state reading with a more narrow definition than Maienborn’s target state, i.e. re-stricted to states that are reversible.

3. The picture-identification task asked for the identification of the visually pre-sented object independent of the depicted state of the object. Still, it can be expected that the task is facilitated when the depicted state corresponds to a state that is activated in the course of processing the preceding sentence. Re-search on visual perception indicates that object recognition is facilitated by top-down processes based on semantic knowledge or contextual information (e.g., Abdel Rahman and Sommer 2008; Bar 2004). Moreover, empirical find-ings suggest that linguistic information (e.g., a duck in the lake vs. a duck in the air) shapes early visual processing in subsequent object recognition tasks (Hirschfeld and Zwitserlood 2011; Hirschfeld, Zwitserlood, and Dobel 2011; see also Potter and Faulconer 1979).

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Ulrike Karg and Kalina Petrova for their assistance in collecting the data, to Helga Gese and Claudia Maienborn for valuable discussions, and to Berit Gehrke for drawing our attention to the opposite state. We also want to thank Britta Stolterfoht and two anonymous review-ers for their comments and suggestions on an earlier version of this paper.


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Interpreting adjectival passives: Evidence for the activation of contrasting states

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