Stative Namespace

Core Definition

Stative frames profile a force that actively maintains a condition against change — a position, a captivity, a persistence, a supported posture — that would lapse if the force stopped acting. This is exactly STATIVE's definition in the conceptual dimension's schema catalog: an EVENT-family schema (STATIVE inherits from EVENT, by the same force machinery as an ordinary change), minted by holding the transition step null and constraining Income same_as Outcome — an invariant EVENT itself leaves free. Mode: dynamic (a force genuinely acts), but static in effect (nothing is displaced).

Formal template:

MAINTAIN(force, condition)     — Income same_as Outcome

The diagnostic is what happens if it stops, not can you name what holds it. Permanecer — this namespace's own defining example — routinely asserts maintenance with no maintainer anywhere in the cast at all. Naming a maintainer (a Connector, a supporting Agent) is corroborating evidence when the cast happens to supply one; it is never the test itself (Framework §8, gate ③).

This namespace's scope was narrowed. An earlier version of this document included category membership, possession/kinship, bare locational predication, and plain property-holding as in scope. None of those assert a maintaining force, and all of them already have their own homes — property-holding and resultant states in @attribute (the Attributes schema), category membership/possession/locational relations in @relational (CLASS/PART_WHOLE/FIGURE_GROUND). See Ontological Frames (docs/conceptual/ontological_frames.md) for the decision and the StativeSituation class it unblocks, and Conceptual Schemas §7 for the three-way "state" distinction the narrowing is built on.

Scope

Includes — a force actively holds a condition in place:

• Maintaining verbs, no maintainer required in the cast: permanecer, manter, sustentar, prevalecer, repousar — the condition would lapse if this force stopped, and none of these lexicalizes a directed endpoint
• Posture held against gravity — the SUPPORT/RESISTANCE image schema, STATIVE with a spatial Ground: sentado, deitado, ajoelhado, de pé, curvado, encolhido — the Agent's own body continually supports itself
• Persistence of a process or activity, no boundary crossed: continuar, prosseguir, persistir — contrast with começar/terminar, which cross a boundary and are @change
• Maintained captivity or control — an external force actively holds an entity in a condition it would otherwise leave: preso, detido, sob custódia (captivity); controlar, administrar, fiscalizar (control)
• A vital state read as actively maintained rather than merely holding: vivo, morto, imortal — the state persists only as long as the underlying biological process does

Excludes — see other namespaces:

• A displacement — the initial position differs from the final one → Change (Framework §8 gate ②: "a Protagonist is near or approaching death" is dynamic, not stative — dying is a process, not a maintained condition)
• A sentient participant, constitutive, with designated content → Experiential (gate ① runs before the force test — saber, temer resist the progressive exactly like a stative predicate, but that's not why they're excluded; they're excluded because a Cognizer/Content pair is present at all)
• No force asserted — a plain or measured attribute (João é alto; o livro custa 50 reais) or a resultant state whose producing force is already spent (cansado, from cansar) → Attribute (Attributes; Conceptual Schemas §7's own table marks "none" under Force for both rows — a resultant state is an attribution plus a relation to the producing event, never STATIVE itself)
• No force asserted, and the two participants are exchangeable regions — category membership (João é médico), possession/kinship (João tem dois filhos), bare locational predication (João está em casa) → Relational (gate ⑤, the converse test: a caixa contém a chave fires cleanly on all three of these, which a genuine STATIVE case never does — a maintained state is a configuration of two regions and would pass the converse test too if asked out of order, which is exactly why gate ③ is checked before ⑤)
• Volitional activity, no maintained condition → Agentive (João correu)
• A caused result, by an agent or a natural force → Agentive (João quebrou o vaso)
• A Patient actively undergoing an externally-instigated event, not a static condition merely holding → Undergoing (correr risco, lidar com uma condição contra a vontade). Reclassify here only frames that profile a state obtaining, not an event befalling a Patient.

Critical boundary — stative vs. change: Ficar + adjective/predicate marks entry into a state (Change), not the state itself:

• João ficou feliz → Change (he transitioned into that state)
• João está feliz → almost always Attribute, not Stative — nothing in the sentence asserts that a force is holding him there against a lapse. It clears the bar into Stative only where the maintenance itself is what's being asserted (João permanece feliz apesar de tudo).

In practice, very few plain adjectival predicates clear the force bar. Most "X é/está Y" sentences are Attribute, not Stative — the force test is a genuinely narrow gate, and that narrowness is the point: STATIVE catches permanecer-class maintenance, not ordinary property predication.

Subtypes

What moved out, and where it went:

The ser / estar / ficar contrast that used to organize this document's Subtypes section is a fact about Portuguese copula choice, not about STATIVE — it distinguishes individual-level from stage-level predication in general, and almost all of that predication is @attribute or @relational under the narrowed scope, not @stative. It stays a useful diagnostic for where a property/relation frame's copula falls, just not for deciding whether a frame is @stative at all.

Characteristic signature

STATIVE inherits EVENT's cast — Agonist, Antagonist, Income, Outcome among them — with Income and Outcome held equal, and Target not core (a maintained state has no directed endpoint).

graph LR
    Agonist["Agonist<br/><i>AGENTIVE</i><br/>force, often unexpressed"]
    Antagonist["Antagonist<br/><i>FORMAL</i><br/>entity/region held"]
    Income["Income"]
    Outcome["Outcome"]

    Agonist -->|holds| Antagonist
    Antagonist --- Income
    Antagonist --- Outcome
    Income -.->|same_as| Outcome

    classDef core fill:#8B0000,stroke:#8B0000,color:#fff
    classDef opt fill:#fff,stroke:#8B0000,stroke-dasharray:4 3,color:#8B0000
    class Antagonist,Income,Outcome core
    class Agonist opt

The dashed Agonist node is the point of this diagram: unlike an ordinary EVENT, a STATIVE frame is licensed by the invariant (Income same_as Outcome), never by having an exerter element in the cast. Target is absent entirely — the defining contrast with every dynamic namespace above it.

Diagnostic Tests

Test 1 — Cessation (the primary test; Framework §8, gate ③)

What happens if the force stops? A position the entity would otherwise leave, actively maintained → STATIVE. Nothing is actually stopping it → not Stative; move to Test 4 (the exchange test) or the Attribute boundary below.

✓ "Despite some implication that a State would be interrupted, the Entity remains" → STATIVE (`frm_state_continue`'s own gloss)
✗ O quadro está na parede — nothing is stopping it from being there → NOT STATIVE → RELATIONAL

Corroborating, never required: can you name what holds it — a Connector, a supporting Agent? Permanecer passes Test 1 with nothing in the cast to name.

Test 2 — Progressive incompatibility (necessary, not sufficient)

True states are incompatible with the progressive (estar + gerund). This separates Stative from Agentive/Phenomenon, but not from Attribute or Relational — a plain property resists the progressive too.

✗ *João está sendo alto (João is being tall) → not Agentive/Phenomenon — but this alone doesn't prove Stative; see Test 4
✓ João está correndo (João is running) → NOT STATIVE (Agentive)

Exception — coerced volitional reading: estar sendo + behavioral adjective is grammatical but coerces a non-stative meaning — João está sendo educado = João is acting politely (intentional behavior, not a maintained condition).

Test 3 — Imperative incompatibility

States cannot be commanded because they are not under volitional control.

✗ *Permaneça alto! → STATIVE, not under the addressee's control in that reading
✓ Corra! (Run!) → NOT STATIVE (Agentive)

Test 4 — The exchange test (Framework §8, gate ⑤ — the sharp boundary against Relational)

Can the two participants be exchanged, using a predicate that reverses the relation? A maintained state is not a configuration of two exchangeable regions — an entity and the force holding it cannot swap places the way two regions in a relation can.

✓ a chave está na caixa / a caixa contém a chave → exchangeable → RELATIONAL, not Stative
✗ João permanece calmo / *calmo permanece João → no converse reading → genuinely STATIVE

Test 5 — Homogeneity

Any subinterval of a maintained state is also that state; events are not homogeneous.

STATIVE: João permaneceu calmo das 14h às 17h
→ João permanecia calmo às 15h ✓ (any subinterval holds) → STATIVE

PHENOMENON: João correu das 14h às 15h
→ João correu às 14h30 (not necessarily — event has phases) → NOT STATIVE

Open population work

The @stative namespace in the database currently holds 66 frames, populated against the old, broader scope. Re-running the diagnostics above against every one of them is tracked as open work in What Is Still Missing (docs/conceptual/what_is_missing.md) rather than settled here — this document fixes the scope, not the population.