Hi, Dalia.

 

These are tricky questions with English verbs, aren't they?

 

It seems to me that "mean" has at least two distinct uses: 1) to describe a state of meaning of a word or event; and 2) to describe something that a person intended. Many people would talk about two different verbs here, mean1 and mean2.

 

1.  The word 'bad' means 'good'. (mean1)

 

2.  I did not mean to insult him.  (mean2)

 

So if we put mean2 with the group of action verbs, John's very clear explanations hold.  It's mean1 that gives us pause because we see it as stative.

 

When states can be described as having beginning or ending points, we can easily understand them in perfect tenses (mean1).  And this might be true of 'seems' as well.

 

3. Jason has always seemed like such a nice kid.

 

4. Until recently, Jason has always seemed like such a nice kid.

 

5. Jason had always seemed so nice, but this recent crime has given me a different picture of him.

 

(I'm sure you can come up with better examples.)

Verbs are fascinating!

 

Linda