In linguistics, a stative verb is a verb that describes a state of being, in contrast to a
dynamic verb
A dynamic, fientive or sometimes eventive verb is a verb that shows continued or progressive Action (philosophy), action on the part of the subject (grammar), subject. This is the opposite of a stative verb.
Overview
Actions denoted by dynamic ...
, which describes an action. The difference can be categorized by saying that stative verbs describe situations that are static, or unchanging throughout their entire duration, and dynamic verbs describe processes that entail change over time.
Many languages distinguish between the two types in terms of how they can be used grammatically.
Contrast to dynamic
Some languages use the same verbs for dynamic and stative situations, and others use different (but often related) verbs with some kind of qualifiers to distinguish between them. Some verbs may act as either stative or dynamic. A phrase like "he plays the piano" may be either stative or dynamic, according to the context. When in a given context, the verb "play" relates to a state (an interest or a profession), he could be an amateur who enjoys music or a professional pianist. The dynamic interpretation emerges from a specific context in the case "play" describes an action: "what does he do on Friday evening? He plays the piano".
The distinction between stative and dynamic verbs can be correlated with:
* the distinction between intransitive and transitive
* the possibility of using the progressive aspect with the verb
* morphological markers
Progressive aspect
In
English and certain other languages, stative and dynamic verbs differ in whether or not they typically occur in a
progressive form. Dynamic verbs such as "go" can be used in the progressive (''I am going to school'') whereas stative verbs such as "know" cannot (*''I am knowing the answer''). A verb that has both dynamic and stative uses cannot normally be used in the progressive when a stative meaning is intended: e.g. one cannot normally say, idiomatically, "Every morning, I am going to school". In other languages, statives can be used in the progressive as well; in
Korean, for example, the sentence 미나가 인호를 사랑하고 있다 (''Mina is loving Inho'') is perfectly valid.
Morphological markers
In some languages, stative and dynamic verbs will use entirely different morphological markers on the verbs themselves. For example, in the Mantauran dialect of
Rukai, an indigenous language of Taiwan, the two types of verbs take different prefixes in their finite forms, with dynamic verbs taking ''o-'' and stative verbs taking ''ma-''. Thus, the dynamic verb "jump" is ''o-coroko'' in the active voice, and the stative verb "love" is ''ma-ðalamə''. This sort of marking is characteristic of other
Formosan languages
The Formosan languages are a geographic grouping comprising the languages of the indigenous peoples of Taiwan, all of which are Austronesian. They do not form a single subfamily of Austronesian but rather up to nine separate primary subfamili ...
as well.
Difference from inchoative
In English, a verb that expresses a state can also express the entrance into a state. This is called
inchoative aspect
Inchoative aspect (list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated or ), also known as inceptive, is a grammatical aspect, referring to the beginning of a state. It can be found in conservative Indo-European languages such as Latin and Lithuanian lang ...
. The
simple past
The simple past, past simple, or past indefinite, in English equivalent to the preterite, is the basic form of the past tense in Modern English. It is used principally to describe events in the past, although it also has some other uses. Regular E ...
is sometimes inchoative. For example, the present-tense verb in the sentence "He understands his friend" is stative, and the past-tense verb in the sentence "Suddenly he understood what she said" is inchoative because it means that he understood henceforth. On the other hand, the past-tense verb in "At one time, he understood her" is stative.
The only way the difference between stative and inchoative can be expressed in English is through the use of modifiers, as in the above examples ("suddenly" and "at one time").
Likewise, in
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...
, a verb that expresses a state (e.g., 'I was king') may use the
aorist
Aorist ( ; abbreviated ) verb forms usually express perfective aspect and refer to past events, similar to a preterite. Ancient Greek grammar had the aorist form, and the grammars of other Indo-European languages and languages influenced by the ...
to express entrance into the state (e.g., 'I became king'). However, the aorist can also simply express the state as a whole, with no focus on the beginning of the state ( 'I ruled for twenty years').
Formal definitions
In some theories of formal
semantics
Semantics is the study of linguistic Meaning (philosophy), meaning. It examines what meaning is, how words get their meaning, and how the meaning of a complex expression depends on its parts. Part of this process involves the distinction betwee ...
, including
David Dowty's, stative verbs have a
logic
Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the study of deductively valid inferences or logical truths. It examines how conclusions follow from premises based on the structure o ...
al form that is the
lambda
Lambda (; uppercase , lowercase ; , ''lám(b)da'') is the eleventh letter of the Greek alphabet, representing the voiced alveolar lateral approximant . In the system of Greek numerals, lambda has a value of 30. Lambda is derived from the Phoen ...
expression
: