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Concept: State

Superconcept: Event


Component Semantics:

State
Definition: being, having temporally unstable properties, being in temporally unstable relation with something, etc.
Primary slot: object
Restriction: the Entity or Entites being in the State or being the object of the experiencer's experience
Primary slot: experiencer
Restriction: the Living-Entity experiencing the State
WordNet 1.6 Synsets: be#1
WordNet 1.6 Synsets: --

This is the top level concept for Events that have to do with being, not changing. States represent relatively temporally unstable properties and relations of an Entity. There are often Actions that cause Entities to be in States or change from one State to another.

Since States can be thought of as snapshots of slot values associated with Entities, it can be confusing whether an Entity having a slot indicates a State or merely an intrinsic property of the Entity. Rather than join the argument on properties vs. states (or even that of entities vs. sets of properties), we include a State Event, which can be used to package property values of Entities and relations between Entities that:

  1. may be changed by Actions
  2. are not usually thought of as properties of an Entity independent of context
  3. are grouped commonly enough to be lexicalized (to some degree)