The distinction between individual-level (IL) and stage-level (SL) predicates goes back to Carlson (Reference Carlson1977), who builds on Milsark (Reference Milsark1974, Reference Milsark1977). According to Carlson, predicates like be intelligent apply to individuals, while predicates like be available apply to what Carlson dubbed ‘stages’, characterized as spatiotemporal slices of individuals. This dichotomy has been argued to have consequences for several linguistic phenomena – including the interpretation of indefinite subjects, the distribution of perception verbs and the distribution of temporal/locative adverbials – and has therefore received considerable attention in the semantics literature. Since Carlson (Reference Carlson1977), a number of authors have proposed different ways of representing the IL/SL distinction in the grammar. For instance, Diesing (Reference Diesing1992) argues that IL and SL predicates differ in their syntax, while Kratzer (Reference Kratzer, Carlson and Pelletier1995) contends that the syntactic differences between IL and SL predicates are ultimately derived from their argument structure (only SL predicates have a Davidsonian argument). The debate is still very much alive – some researchers have put forward different semantic analyses of the distinction (see, among others, Chierchia Reference Chierchia, Carlson and Pelletier1995), while others have questioned whether the distinction should be characterized in semantic terms (see Maienborn Reference Maienborn2004), or argued that the traditional IL/SL distinction corresponds to several independent contrasts, which should receive different explanations (Jäger Reference Jäger2001).

María J. Arche's book contributes to this ongoing debate by investigating the aspectual properties of IL predicates in adjectival copular sentences in Spanish, and their interaction with viewpoint aspect and tense. Spanish has two copular verbs, ser and estar, and Arche, in line with much recent literature, takes the choice of copula to correlate with the IL/SL distinction. On this view, ser always corresponds to an IL predication, while estar corresponds to an SL predication. This claim is substantiated by the interpretation of minimal pairs like Pablo es guapo ‘Pablo is a good-looking person’ and Pablo está guapo ‘Pablo looks good’, which appears to line up with our intuitions about the IL/SL distinction, inherited from Carlson. Arche uses the proposed correlation between the IL/SL distinction and the alternation of the copular verbs as an analytical tool to tease apart IL and SL predications.

After a brief ‘Presentation of the study’ in chapter 1, Arche sets the stage for the rest of the book in chapter 2, ‘Individual-level predicates’, by introducing a number of semantic and syntactic assumptions and discussing relevant background. The first part of the chapter reviews some of the most influential proposals about the IL/SL distinction. Throughout this section, Arche emphasizes that – as already pointed out by Carlson – the IL/SL distinction cannot be equated with the permanent/temporary distinction. The second part of the chapter discusses the distribution of Spanish ser and estar and introduces the correlation between the two copulas and the IL/SL distinction. Arche characterizes the distinction in the following way: ser copular sentences (IL predications) predicate a property of an individual; estar copular sentences (SL predications) predicate a property of an individual and an occasion. This section also presents several proposals that argue that the distinction between ser and estar is aspectual, something that Arche discusses extensively in subsequent chapters. Finally, the last part of the chapter introduces the syntactic analysis of copular sentences that is assumed in this work – the small clause analysis proposed by Stowell (1981) – and discusses possible functional projections (e.g. an Aspect Phrase) in the small clause.

Chapter 3, ‘Event classes and individual-level predicates’, is devoted to investigating the aspectual properties of IL predicates in copular sentences, with the ultimate goal of determining whether the IL/SL distinction can be considered a matter of inner aspect. The main conclusion is that, contrary to a widely held assumption, IL predications are not always stative. The chapter starts by presenting the notion of inner aspect, listing the tests that have been proposed in the literature to tease apart aspectual classes, and discussing the notion of agentivity. Arche then moves on to examining the properties of ser copular constructions in light of these tests. She concludes that while some Verb Phrases (VPs) of the form ser+Adjective Phrase do indeed exhibit stative behavior (e.g. ser rubio ‘to be blond’, ser esquimal ‘to be an Eskimo’), others pattern with activities (e.g. ser cruel con Pedro ‘to be cruel to Pedro’). The last part of the chapter focuses on the differences between activities and states, and argues that despite their common properties, states and activities should be considered distinct aspectual classes, whose differences have to be accounted for.

Chapter 4, ‘Aspectual alternations in individual-level predicates’, focuses on a subgroup of the ser-VPs (IL predicates on Arche's account) that behave like activities, those that express ‘relational M(ental) P(ropertie)s’, such as to be cruel/kind to someone. Previous accounts of this type of copular clause attribute its non-stativity to the semantics of the copula or to the argument structure of the adjective. In contrast, Arche argues that the source of the aspectual properties of VPs like ser cruel con María ‘to be cruel to Maria’ is the Prepositional Phrase (PP) headed by con. Despite initial appearances, the PP is shown to be optional, and the presence of the PP is argued to correlate with non-stativity and agentivity. Building on work by Hale (Reference Hale, Pieter and van Riemsdijk1984), Stowell (Reference Stowell1993), and others, Arche argues that prepositions can convey aspectual information. She examines the properties of the preposition that combines with cruel-type properties, and concludes that it is those properties that give rise to the activity-like behavior of the VP, thus triggering a shift from state (ser cruel) to activity (ser cruel con María).

In Chapter 5, ‘Outer aspect and individual-level predicates’, Arche is concerned with the interaction of viewpoint aspect and IL predicates. Part of the chapter is devoted to a discussion of the semantics of aspect and tense. Following much previous literature, Arche takes tense and aspect to express relations between times. Aspect, in particular, conveys a relation between the Topic Time and the Event Time (Klein Reference Klein1994). Additionally, aspect is taken to introduce quantification over occasions, with different types of quantification yielding, for example, the difference between the habitual and the progressive. Against this theoretical background, she discusses the behavior of the Spanish imperfective, perfective and progressive forms. Arche also confirms that viewpoint aspect is independent from inner aspect in Spanish. The last part of the chapter discusses how IL predicates interact with different aspectual forms in Spanish: while perfective and imperfective morphology are compatible with any kind of predicate, the progressive is – as has long been noted – incompatible with statives.

In Chapter 6, Arche investigates the interaction of ‘Tense and individual-level predicates’. The focus is on past tense morphology, which has been argued to give rise to ‘lifetime effects’ (Musan Reference Musan1995) in combination with IL predicates; that is, combining past tense with an IL predicate like French (as in Fred was French) typically conveys that the referent of the subject noun phrase is no longer alive. The chapter starts by introducing Kratzer's (Reference Kratzer, Carlson and Pelletier1995) proposal and presenting some evidence against it. First of all, lifetime effects do not arise with all kinds of IL predicates: they are a salient option with permanent IL predicates (e.g. to be an Eskimo) but not with non-permanent IL predicates (to be blond or to be cruel). Second, as shown by Musan, lifetime effects can be neutralized, given the right context. Building on Musan's work, Arche argues that lifetime effects arise when the Topic Time is the lifespan of the individual referred to by the subject, and discusses the interpretational procedure that determines the content of the Topic Time. The last section of the chapter addresses the absence of lifetime effects in subordinate clauses.

Chapter 7, ‘Conclusions and final remarks’, summarizes the main claims made in this book and examines how these claims bear on the debates about the IL/SL distinction and the ser/estar contrast. The discussion in the previous chapters, Arche claims, shows that the IL/SL distinction (i) cannot be explained in terms of the permanent/temporary distinction, (ii) is not affected by viewpoint aspect (adding perfective morphology does not turn IL predicates into SL predicates), and (iii) cannot be explained in terms of inner aspect. Instead, Arche characterizes the IL/SL distinction (taken to parallel the ser/estar contrast) as follows: SL predicates link the predication to an external situation, while IL predicates do not. According to Arche, the piece responsible for the SL status of estar copular constructions is estar itself. She argues that adjectives (at least those that combine with both copulas) are IL by default. Combining them with ser leaves their IL status unchanged, while adding estar makes the predication SL.

Individuals in time brings together an impressive wealth of data, and provides a useful survey of the literature on the SL/IL distinction and the ser/estar alternation. Arche puts forward a number of interesting claims about the building blocks of copular constructions, some of which have consequences beyond the main topic of the book. For instance, the discussion of the construction ser cruel con ‘to be cruel to’ bears on the hotly debated issue of how aspectual classes are constructed. Arche's discussion of how the ser cruel/ser cruel con alternation comes about should be relevant for a general theory of Aktionsart construction. Furthermore, Arche convincingly argues against proposals that attempt to reduce the ser/estar contrast to aspectual or temporal distinctions. However, while Arche's goal is largely compositional – she studies, for instance, how activities or SL predications are constructed – the exact semantic contribution of the pieces is not always specified, which makes the proposal hard to assess.

This problem arises in Arche's discussion of the interaction of Adjective Phrases and the copula. As noted above, Arche claims that estar sentences link the predication to an external situation while ser sentences predicate a property of an individual. From a semanticist's perspective, an account of how this difference comes about should include a hypothesis about the semantic contribution of each of the pieces involved and the mechanisms of semantic composition employed. Following Stowell (Reference Stowell1993, Reference Kratzer, Carlson and Pelletier1996), Arche assumes that all predicates have an eventuality argument. If this is the case, it seems plausible to assume that adjectives express relations between individuals and states, that is, that they have denotations of type <e<s,t>>(Kratzer Reference Kratzer, Carlson and Pelletier2000). From the discussion in chapter 7, it follows that ser just passes the denotation of the adjective up. As for estar, Arche claims that it is responsible for linking the predication to an external situation. But how exactly does this linking happen? Where does the external situation come from? What is the relationship between the external situation and the eventuality argument of the adjective? These questions are not just about the mechanics of the semantic composition, they bear directly on the issue of what is the right characterization of the IL/SL distinction.

On another note, while Arche's survey of the literature is quite comprehensive, it would have been interesting if Arche had been able to include some discussion of Claudia Maienborn's work on the ser/estar distinction (Maienborn Reference Maienborn2005a), on copular clauses in general (Maienborn Reference Maienborn2005b), and on the IL/SL distinction (Maienborn Reference Maienborn2004). Maienborn assumes an intuitive characterization of the ser/estar contrast that is very close to the one adopted in Arche's book. According to Maienborn, estar conveys that speakers restrict their claims to a particular topic situation that they have in mind, while ser conveys that speakers remain neutral as to the specificity of the topic situation. One of the crucial pieces of Maienborn's account is that estar contributes a presupposition that links the predication to a specific discourse situation. This seems in principle compatible with Arche's approach. However, some of Maienborn's claims crucially differ from Arche's. For instance, based on the behavior of copular constructions with locative modifiers, manner adverbials and perception verbs, Maienborn argues that these constructions lack an eventuality argument (Maienborn Reference Maienborn2005a, Reference Maienbornb). A discussion of Maienborn's arguments and a comparison between her proposal and the view adopted in Arche's book would have shed some light on the questions posed in the previous paragraph.