  According to some authors, this categorial distinction is actually reflected in the different sorts of expressions through which facts and events are referred to in ordinary language. In the terminology of Vendler (1967), ‘Caesar’s death’ is a perfect nominal: the process of nominalization is complete and the expression can only be modified by adjectival phrases (‘Caesar’s violent death’). By contrast, a that-clause such as ‘that Caesar died’, or a gerundive such as ‘Ceasar’s dying’, are imperfect nominals that still have “a verb alive and kicking inside them”: they can therefore tolerate auxiliaries and tenses (‘That Caesar would die’, ‘Caesar’s having died’), adverbs (‘Ceasar’s dying violently’), negation (‘Ceasar’s not dying’), etc. With some qualifications (McCann 1979), the metaphysical hypothesis would be that, as a norm, perfect nominals stand for events, whereas facts or states of affairs are the referents of imperfect nominals.