grammar - Is "understand" always a stative verb?

I think you might be relying on gut instinct too much.

You can't know everything, let alone what he's saying.

In English, unlike languages that have methods of indicating and dealing with stative and dynamic verbs, there is little need for distinction. To complicate things further, English can approximate the "inchoative aspect", which indicates a transition into a state of existence.

All at once, she understood what her mother had always been saying.

The inchoative often has helping words like "suddenly" to indicate the transition into the state. This would explain sentences like:

I can't begin to understand what he's saying about the inchoative aspect.

or more simply:

I can't understand what he's saying.

• Next film techniques - First use of on-screen text messages, like in Sherlock and House of Cards
• Previous star wars - What is the origin of the name "Jedi"?