Everything about Telicity totally explained
In
linguistics,
telicity is the property of a
verb or
verb phrase that presents an action or event as being complete in some sense. A verb or verb phrase with this property is said to be
telic, while a verb or verb phrase that presents an action or event as being
incomplete 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 it's atelic is to see whether such a phrase as
for an hour (a
time-span adverbial) can be applied to it. This can be called the
time-span/time-frame test. According to this test, the verb phrase
built a house is telic, whereas the minimally different
built houses is atelic:
» Fine: "John built a house in a month."
Bad: *"John built a house for a month."
» :→
built a house is telic
Bad: *"John built houses in a month."
» Fine: "John built houses for a month."
:→
built houses is atelic
Other phrases can be tested similarly; for example,
walked home is telic, because "John walked home in an hour" is fine, while "John walked home for an hour" is bad, and
walked around is atelic, because "John walked around in an hour" is bad, while "John walked around for an hour" is fine.
In applying this test, one must be careful about a number of things.
- The tense and aspect of a verb may affect the result of this test; for example, phrases with progressive verb forms (is going, was talking, has been doing, and so on) almost always accept for an hour and almost never accept in an hour. The test is therefore primarily of interest for verb phrases with verbs in the simple past tense.
- The phrase in an hour, and phrases like it, are ambiguous; they can mean either "in the span of an hour", for example "within an hour", or "one hour from now". Only the former meaning is of interest; "She will be coming in an hour" is fine, but that says nothing about the telicity of the phrase will be coming.
- Strictly speaking, there's a context in which "John built houses in a month" is fine; consider "Jack took three months to build a house, while John built houses in a month." Here, what is meant is "John built houses; he built each house in a month"; and in this sense, built houses is actually telic. It can be argued that the verb phrase "build houses" is, in fact, telic at one level and atelic at another: the telicity applies to the verb without the plural object, and the atelicity applies to the verb and the object together.
Defining the relevant notion of "completeness"
Having endpoints
One often encounters the notion that
telic verbs and
verb phrases
refer to events that
have endpoints, and that
atelic ones
refer to events or states that
don't have endpoints. The notion of
having endpoints applies to
events in the world rather than the
expressions that refer to them. This is the most criticized property of this definition. In fact,
every event or state
in the world begins and ends at some point, except, perhaps, for states that can be described as "the existence of the universe." Certainly, John's
being angry has a beginning, and, unless John is somehow
eternally angry, it also has an endpoint. Thus, it's doubtful that one can define telic expressions by means of properties of the events or states that they
refer to (A very similar problem arises with the notion that
mass nouns refer to
things that can't be counted). Thus, recent attempts at making the notion explicit focus on the
way that telic expressions
refer to, or
present events or states.
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 who introduced this term,
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 don't involve any goal nor endpoint in their semantic structure, but denote actions that are realized as soon as they begin.
Quantization and cumulativity
Perhaps the most commonly assumed definition of
telicity nowadays is the
algebraic definition proposed by
Manfred Krifka. Krifka defines
telic expressions as ones that are
quantized.
Atelic ones can be defined in terms of
cumulative reference. An expression 'P' can be said to be
quantized if and only if it satisfies the following implication, for any choice of x and y:
» :If x can be described by `P`, and y can also be described by 'P', then x isn't 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
cumulative reference if and only if, for any choice of x and y, the following implication holds:
» :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's 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 to 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
mass nouns, and in the characterization of the contrast between
prepositions like "to" and "towards," for example "towards" has cumulative reference to (sets of) paths, while "to" does not.
Telicity as an aspect
Telicity or
telic aspect has been reading 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 also has a perfective suffix
pre-, which is additionally telic.
In Finnish, the telicity is marked on the object: the
accusative is telic, and the
partitive is used to express atelicity. It should be noted that the terms
telic and
atelic are not traditionally used in Finnish grammatical description; instead, it's customary to speak of
resultitive and
irresultative sentences.
An example of the contrast between resultative and irresultative in Finnish:
Kirjoitin artikkelin. wrote-1sg article-accusative "I wrote the article (and finished it)"
Kirjoitin artikkelia. wrote-1sg article-partitive "I wrote/was writing the article (but didn't necessarily finish it)"
The telic sentence necessarily requires finishing the article. In the atelic sentence, it isn't expressed whether or not the article is finished. The atelic form expresses ignorance, for example atelic isn't anti-telic: Kirjoitin artikkelia ja sain sen valmiiksi "I was writing the article and then got it finished" is correct. What is interpreted as the goal or result is determined by the context, for example
Ammuin karhun — "I shot the bear (succeeded)"; for example, "I shot the bear dead". ← implicit purpose
Ammuin karhua — "I shot (towards) the bear"; for example, "I shot at the bear (but it didn't die)".
There are many verbs that correspond to only one telicity due to their inherent meaning. The partitive verbs are the same as atelic verbs in Garey's definition, that is, the action normally doesn't 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 rakastaa minua. (s)he love-3sg me-partitive "(s)he loves me"
Hän rakastaa minut kuoliaaksi. (s)he love-3sg me-accusative dead-translative "(s)he loves me to death"
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". 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.
Further Information
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