Uneventful: Event Semantics for “Qua”

ABSTRACT Event semantics promise a straightforward account of the truth conditions of qualifications with “as” or “qua” as well as the inferences such qualifications license. In this paper, I argue that these promises are difficult to keep. On natural ways of developing the view, an event semantics of qualification yields either the wrong predictions about the truth conditions and logic of qualification or next to no predictions. Qua‐qualifictions, I conclude, are sensitive to the meanings of the qualifying and qualified predicates in a way which resists all but a very schematic general analysis.