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Telicity: History
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Telicity is the semantic property of a predicate or event description that presents an eventuality as having a natural or inherent endpoint, such that the event is construed as reaching a specific culmination or result [1][2]. In aspectual analysis, telic predicates are distinguished from atelic predicates, which describe situations without an inherent endpoint specified by the predicate, even though an atelic situation may eventually stop in reality [1]. Telicity is associated with the interaction of verbal meaning and the semantic properties of a predicate’s arguments and modifiers, including the boundedness of an affected object or the presence of a specified goal or endpoint [2]. The concept concerns the aspectual interpretation of an eventuality rather than its grammatical tense, and it is distinct from whether the event actually reaches its endpoint in a particular instance.

  • aspectual semantics
  • telic predicates
  • atelic predicates
  • event structure

References

  1. Henk J. Verkuyl. A Theory of Aspectuality; Cambridge University Press (CUP): Cambridge, United Kingdom, 1993. [CrossRef]
  2. Olga Borik. Aspect and Reference Time; Oxford University Press (OUP): Oxford, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom, 2006. [CrossRef]
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