Telicity
Grammatical features |
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In linguistics, telicity (/tiːˈlɪsɪti/; from Greek τέλος 'end, goal') is the property of a verb or verb phrase that presents an action or event as having a specific endpoint. A verb or verb phrase with this property is said to be telic; if the situation it describes is not heading for any particular endpoint, it is said to be atelic.
Testing for telicity in English
One common way to gauge whether an English verb phrase is telic is to see whether such a phrase as in an hour, in the sense of "within an hour", (known as a time-frame adverbial) can be applied to it. Conversely, a common way to gauge whether the phrase is atelic is to see whether such a phrase as for an hour (a time-span adverbial) can be applied to it.[1][2][3][4]
Defining the relevant notion of "completeness"
Having endpoints
One often encounters the notion that telic
Put differently, one can simply define telic verbs and verb phrases as referring to events conceptualized or presented as having endpoints, and atelic verbs and verb phrases as those conceptualized or presented as lacking endpoints.
This type of exercise can serve as a reminder of the futility of trying to link linguistic semantics to the real world without considering the intermediary agent of human cognition.
Tending towards a goal
According to Garey (1957), who introduced the term "telic",[6] telic verbs are verbs expressing an action tending towards a goal envisaged as realized in a perfective tense, but as contingent in an imperfective tense; atelic verbs, on the other hand, are verbs which do not involve any goal nor endpoint in their semantic structure, but denote actions that are realized as soon as they begin.[7]
Quantization and cumulativity
Perhaps the most commonly assumed definition of telicity nowadays[
- If x can be described by 'P', and y can also be described by 'P', then x is not a (mereological) proper part of y.
Suppose, for example, that John built two houses. Then each of the two building events can be described as built a house. But the building of the one house isn't, and indeed cannot be thought of a proper part of the building of the second. This contrasts with states describable as, say, walk around aimlessly. If John walked around aimlessly for two hours, then there will be many proper parts of that, that last, say 10 minutes, or 1 hour, etc. which also can be described as walk around aimlessly. Thus, for walk around aimlessly, there will be many choices of x and y, such that both can be described as walk around aimlessly, where x is a proper part of y. Hence, build a house is correctly characterized as telic and walk around aimlessly as atelic by this definition. Quantization can also be used in the definition of count nouns.
An expression 'P' is said to have
- If x can be described as 'P', and y can also be described as 'P', then the mereological sum of x and y can also be described as 'P'.
For example, if there is an event of John walking around from 1pm to 2pm, and another event of his walking around from 2pm to 3pm, then there is, by necessity, a third event which is the sum of the other two, which is also an event of walking around. This doesn't hold for expressions like "built a house." If John built a house from time 1 to time 2, and then he built another house from time 2 to time 3, then the sum of these two events (from time 1 to time 3) is not an event that can be described by "built a house." Cumulativity can also be used in the characterization of
As an aspect
The examples and perspective in this article may not represent a worldwide view of the subject. (December 2010) |
Telicity or telic aspect has been read as a grammatical aspect lately, indicating a reached goal or action completed as intended. Languages that contrast telic and atelic actions are Pirahã and Finnic languages such as Finnish and Estonian; Czech and Hungarian also have perfective prefixes pre- and meg-, respectively, which are additionally telic.
In Finnish, the telicity is mandatorily marked on the object: the
An example of the contrast between resultative and irresultative in Finnish:
Kirjoitin
wrote-1SG
artikkelin.
article-ACC
"I wrote the/an article (and finished it)"
Kirjoitin
wrote-1SG
artikkelia.
article-PTV
"I wrote/was writing the/an article (but did not necessarily finish it)"
The telic sentence necessarily requires finishing the article. In the atelic sentence, it is not expressed whether or not the article is finished. The atelic form expresses ignorance, i.e. atelic is not anti-telic: Kirjoitin artikkelia ja sain sen valmiiksi "I was writing the article-PART and then got it-ACC finished" is correct. What is interpreted as the goal or result is determined by the context, e.g.
- Ammuin karhun – "I shot the bear (succeeded)"; i.e., "I shot the bear dead". ← implicit purpose
- Ammuin karhua – "I shot (towards) the bear"; i.e., "I shot at the bear (but it did not die)".
There are many verbs that correspond to only one telicity due to their inherent meaning. The partitive verbs roughly correspond with atelic verbs in Garey's definition, that is, the action normally does not have a result or goal, and it would be logically and grammatically incorrect to place them in the telic aspect. However, even inherently atelic verbs such as rakastaa "to love" can in semantically unusual constructions, where a kind of result is involved, become telic:
Hän
(s)he
rakastaa
love-3SG
minua.
me-PTV
"(s)he loves me"
Hän
(s)he
rakastaa
love-3SG
minut
me-ACC
kuoliaaksi.
dead-TRANSL
"(s)he loves me to death"
Also, many other stative verbs that are in terms of their meaning inherently atelic, mark their objects in the accusative case, which is the normal case for telic situations:
Tiedän
know-1SG
Pekan
Pekka-GEN
osoitteen.
address-ACC
"I know Pekka's address" (not *Tiedän Pekan osoitetta ... address-PART)
Muistan
remember-1SG
sinun
you-GEN
kasvosi.
face-PL.ACC.2SG_POSS
"I remember your face" (not *Muistan sinun kasvojasi ... face-PL.PART-2SG_POSS)
Furthermore, the telicity contrast can act as case government, so that changing the case can change the meaning entirely. For example, näin hänet (I saw him-ACC) means "I saw him", but näin häntä (I saw him-PART) means "I met him (occasionally, sometimes, every now and then)". This is often highly irregular.
The use of a telic object may implicitly communicate that the action takes place in the future. For example,
- Luen kirjan. "I will read the book"; the action can only be complete in the future.
- Luen kirjaa. "I am reading a book" or "I will be reading a book"; no indication is given for the time.
Often telicity is superficially similar to the perfective aspect, and one can find descriptions such as "roughly perfective–imperfective". However, lexical pairs of perfective and imperfective verbs are found in Finnish, and this contrast can be superimposed with the telicity contrast.[clarification needed]
References
- ^ Verkuyl, Henk. 1972. On the compositional nature of aspects. Dordrecht:Reidel.
- ISBN 90-277-1009-0.
- ISBN 90-6765-443-4.
- ISBN 0-521-56452-2
- ISBN 0-19-929129-2. Aspect and reference time. Based on Ph.D. thesis, Utrecht University, 2002.
- ISBN 9789514535703. Retrieved 2016-08-04.
The term "telic" was first proposed by Howard B. Garey (1957) in a study of aspect in French.
- ^ Garey, Howard B. 1957. "Verbal aspects in French." Language 33:91–110.
- ^ Zwarts, Joost. 2005. "Prepositional Aspect and the Algebra of Paths." Linguistics and Philosophy 28.6, 739-779. [dead link]
External links
- Krifka, Manfred, "Origins of Telicity". Also in Events and Grammar, Susan Rothstein (ed.), 1998, ISBN 0-7923-4940-7, pp. 197–236