On events that express properties

Resumen

This paper provides empirical support to the hypothesis that habitual readings and dispositional/capacitative readings are different kinds of generic statements, generated by different operators: an aspectual operator HABASP is responsible for the habitual reading and a like modal dispositional operator MODDISP is responsible for the dispositional reading. We analyze the Spanish construction <ser muy de + infinitive>, ex. María es muy de fumar puros (lit. [María is very of smoking cigars]). This construction put together the meaning of a habitual sentence like María often smokes cigars, realized in the infinitive clause, and the meaning of an Individual Level predicate like María is a cigar smoker, realized in a predicative prepositional phrase muy de. Our analysis explains both the properties of the construction as an IL-predicate that contain an infinitive clause with habitual reading and the restrictions about the predicates that can enter the construction.