§12, pp 4-5 of Meaning and the English Verb (Geoffrey N. Leech, Cambridge University Press, London, 1971)

• Also relevant is:

§§ 4.27-4.35, pp 200-209 of A Comprehensive Grammar of The English Language (Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, Jan Svartik, Longman, London & New York, 1985)

notes:
1. There are striking, although not, I think, theoretically significant, differences between the treatment of the semantic categories of verbs in Meaning and the English Verb and in the Comprehensive Grammar. First, although Leech seems to use the same number of categories as do the authors of the Comprehensive Grammar, his terminology is different and considerably more casual. Second, his categories are not “hierarchically” organized as are those of in the Comprehensive Grammar. There, the main distinction is between “stative” and “dynamic” and all the other semantic types are presented as subcategories of those. I feel that Leech’s approach is more appropriate for an ESL contexts, but the relevant sections of the Comprehensive Grammar, should certainly be studied by anyone who is interested in the matter. Figure 4.27 on page 201 is especially illuminating.

2. On pp 4-5 Leech emphasizes that labels such as “state” and “event” are semantic, not grammatical terms. He says: “Strictly, we should not talk of ‘state verbs’ and ‘event verbs’ but rather of ‘state’ and ‘event’ meanings or uses of verbs. It would be inconvenient, however, to avoid the expressions ‘state verb’ and ‘event verb’ altogether. These useful labels are retained here, but it must always be remembered that they are convenient labels for what would be more precisely designated ‘verb being used to refer to an event / a state.‘ ”