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The study investigates the acquisition of telicity in L2 English by L1 Slovak speakers as a function of L2 proficiency (measured by a cloze test score), exposure (operationalized as length of stay in an English-speaking country) and instruction type (monolingual vs. bilingual). Telicity judgments were collected from Slovak learners of L2 English (n = 50) and a control group of American English native speakers (n = 15) in two offline acceptability judgment tasks. Two types of telicity encoding were examined: (1) the contribution of the [±quantized] feature of the object argument to predicate telicity, which involves processes in narrow syntax; and (2) the contribution of adverbial modifiers to telicity interpretations, including coercion contexts, which involve processes of aspectual reinterpretation. Based on previous research, it was hypothesized that the contribution of the [±quantized] feature of the object argument to predicate telicity, which is a syntactic phenomenon, will be easier to acquire than aspectual coercion by means of adverbial modifiers, which relies on pragmatic cues. The results indicate that the most significant predictor of telicity judgments based on syntactic cues is L2 proficiency, while length of stay affects telicity judgments in predicate categories involving coercion contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a completive adverbial meaning 'in a short time', the Taiwanese Southern Min (TSM) ts̍ıt 'one' plus the verbal classifier ē sequence can be used in a preverbal but post-subject position to encode clausal dependency. This usage of ts̍ıt-ē is often translated as 'immediately after' or 'as soon as'. While Adverbial ts̍ıt-ē(-á) (ts̍ıt-ē + the delimitative suffix -á) and tsin kín 'very quickly' in the sentence-initial position of an independent sentence establish backward linking with the preceding sentence, the subordinator ts̍ıt-ē regulates forward linking of two successive (sub)events. As a completive adverbial, the subordinator ts̍ıt-ē is subject to the telicity requirement, and it also encodes a speaker's subjective evaluation that marks (un)expectedness. The low attachment of the subordinator ts̍ıt-ē in the subordinate clause accounts for the asymmetries observed in the three environments for how the telicity requirement is satisfied (e.g., whether completion or inchoativity has to be overtly marked): (a) an independent sentence with completive ts̍ıt-ē(-á), (b) a SUB ts̍ıt-ē clause, and (c) the main clause following a SUB ts̍ıt-ē clause. Finally, the fact that a SUB ts̍ıt-ē clause can only precede the main clause, and must be lower than a reason clause calls for further investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Natural languages distinguish between telic predicates that denote events leading to an inherent endpoint (e.g., draw a balloon) and atelic predicates that denote events with no inherent endpoint (e.g., draw balloons). Telicity distinctions in many languages are already partly available to 4–5-year-olds. Here, using exclusively nonlinguistic tasks and a sample of English-speaking children, we ask whether young learners use corresponding temporal notions to characterize event structure—that is, whether children represent events in cognition as bounded temporal entities with a specified endpoint or unbounded temporal units that could in principle extend indefinitely. We find that 4–5-year-old children in our sample compute boundedness during an event categorization task (Experiment 1) and distinguish event boundedness from event completion (Experiment 2). Furthermore, 4–5-year-olds in our sample evaluate interruptions at event endpoints versus midpoints differently—but only for events that are construed as bounded, presumably because in such construals, events truly culminate (Experiment 3). We conclude that young children represent events in terms of foundational and abstract temporal properties. These properties could support the acquisition of linguistic aspectual distinctions and further scaffold the way children conceptualize and process their dynamic experiences. Public Significance Statement: The present study shows that 4–5-year-old children classify and interpret events in terms of abstract temporal structure (i.e., the way an event begins, develops, and ends). The sensitivity to event temporal profiles could support the acquisition of temporal distinctions in language and further scaffold the way children conceptualize and process their dynamic experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: It is broadly acknowledged that children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) show verb-related limitations. While most previous studies have focused on tense, the mastery of lexical aspect—particularly telicity—has not been the primary focus of much research. Lexical aspect refers to whether an action has a defined endpoint (telic verbs) or not (atelic verbs). Objective: This study investigates the effect of telicity on verb recognition in Chilean children with DLD compared to their typically developing (TD) peers using the Event-Related Potential (ERP) technique. Method: The research design is a mixed factorial design with between-group factors of 2 (DLD/TD) and within-group factors of 2 (telic/atelic verbs) and 2 (coherent/incoherent sentences). The participants were 36 school-aged children (18 DLD, 18 TD) aged 7 to 7 years and 11 months. The task required subjects to listen to sentences that either matched or did not match an action in a video, with sentences including telic or atelic verbs. Results: The study found notable differences between groups in how they processed verbs (N400 and post-N400 components) and direct objects (N400 and P600 components). Conclusions: Children with DLD struggled to differentiate telic and atelic verbs, potentially because they employed overgeneralization strategies consistent with the Event Structural Bootstrapping model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In English, a number of verbs enter a noteworthy, though understudied, combination with a morpheme it, which evidently lacks a referential function. Among these verbs, there are quite a few which were formed from nouns by means of conversion (e.g. to bus it, to au pair it, to verse it, to newspaper it). While some authors assume that the expletive morpheme it in direct-object position functions to enhance a verb's transitivity, the most recent diachronic study has shown that its influence on transitivity is rather marginal. If transitivization is not the driving force behind the use of the 'verb + it' construction, the question as to other functions arises. The aim of this article is to present a new proposal according to which the expletive element is primarily (though not exclusively) an aspectual marker, which, in contrast to the bare verb, expresses telicity (e.g. to bus vs. to bus it). In this function, this element provides the verb it complements with a temporal endpoint. Proceeding from a distinction between (a)telicity and (un)boundedness drawn in the pertinent literature, it will be shown that this endpoint may or may not actually be reached. The aspectual function of the expletive element it is assumed here to co-exist with other functions identified in the few previous works and in the present study. These functions, which are independent of telicity, comprise the expression of necessity, the intensification of activities, the preservation of the verse metre especially in literary texts, and the support of the verbal status of innovative or weakly established denominal conversion verbs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the role of the verbal prefix ex- as a component in Latin aspect. The author provides definitions of "aspect", "Aktionsart" and "situation type", and particularly sets light to the term "telicity", distinguishing between the "inherent telicity" and "maximal telicity". Based on a meticulous examination of all occurrences of the indicative imperfect of verbs with the prefix ex- in a comprehensive corpus encompassing well-preserved Latin texts from Plautus to Ovid, the author verifies her hypothesis that the prefix ex- adds the notion of telicity to the verbs, and that the most common interpretation of their imperfects is the iterativity of telic events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the relationship between language and event cognition? Past work has suggested that linguistic/aspectual distinctions encoding the internal temporal profile of events map onto nonlinguistic event representations. Here, we use a novel visual detection task to directly test the hypothesis that processing telic versus atelic sentences (e.g., "Ebony folded a napkin in 10 seconds" vs. "Ebony did some folding for 10 seconds") can influence whether the very same visual event is processed as containing distinct temporal stages including a well‐defined endpoint or lacking such structure, respectively. In two experiments, we show that processing (a)telicity in language shifts how people later construe the temporal structure of identical visual stimuli. We conclude that event construals are malleable representations that can align with the linguistic framing of events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the properties of a particle, lǝ , in Yixing Chinese that invariably denotes telic reading, obligatorily fronts definite and bare NP objects to the topic position, and imposes past event reading in most situations. It is argued that lǝ is a functional item bearing a quantity feature in the sense of Borer (2005b) and is hence responsible for telicity. Following Partee et al. (1987), Partee (1990), Filip (1997) and Borer (2005b), we propose that lǝ functions as a verbal quantifier, and more specifically, as a verbal universal quantifier, which needs to bind a variable in its quantificational domain. The fronting of definite and bare NPs is compatible with this variable-binding requirement because a trace, and hence a variable, is left as a result of the movement. It is further argued, following the analysis in Lin (2000, 2003, 2007), that lǝ bears a perfective feature. When there is no specific reference time, speech time is taken as default reference time, resulting in the past event reading. lǝ , therefore, bears both an inner aspectual feature and an outer aspectual feature. This paper exhibits how telic items can behave differently across languages and shows the possibility of bundling two temporal features (inner and outer aspectual features) on a single functional item. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the specific temporal uses of the Serbian verb stići, when it denotes the act of overcoming a spatial obstacle, or reaching the end point of a movement at a predetermined time. The study examines the relationship between the spatial (basic) use of this verb and its derived telic sense, and describes the process of its grammaticalization, in which this lexeme loses its semantic and syntactic autonomy and becomes part of a complex predicate. The contrastive section of the study compares the non-spatial uses of stići with the corresponding uses of its French equivalent, the verb arriver. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Telicity is a semantic aspectual notion characterized by the presence of a linguistically marked inherent endpoint of the situation. In Portuguese, it can be done through the presence of a delimited direct complement and/or a delimiter prepositional phrase. In Spanish, in addition to the existing forms in Portuguese, it is possible to use a clitic, known as a telic "se", accompanied by a delimited direct complement. The aim of this investigation is to contribute to the understanding of the acquisition of aspectual categories by native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese Spanish learners as L2. More specifically, we intend to verify whether learners recognize and use the telic "se" to express the aspectual value of telicity in the L2. For this purpose, two linguistic tests were applied, one for production and one for comprehension, to students of the graduation course in Spanish at intermediate and advanced levels. The results indicate that, at both levels, there are subjects who use the telic "se", while others do not, while there are subjects who consider the presence of this aspectual clitic in the sentence as grammatical while others consider it ungrammatical. It was also observed that there is no significant difference in the results of learners at intermediate and advanced levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Change of state expressions involving weak-endstate verbs such as wipe and drink exhibit variation in telicity. The present study is the first to experimentally investigate change of state expressions referred to as adjectival control resultatives (e.g., wipe the table clean) and the corresponding simple transitives (e.g., wipe the table) regarding their telicity readings. Based on their semantic properties, we ask whether German speakers interpret adjectival resultatives as telic and simple transitives as fluctuating between telic and atelic. Following an event-structural approach to telicity, we also seek to contribute to the issue of which event-semantic properties adjectival resultatives and simple transitives share: if it is the adjective that evokes a telic interpretation, then the possible telic interpretation of simple transitives must arise by different means, suggesting a non-uniform construal of telicity. Twenty-one adults participated in a Truth-Value Judgment Task that varied Structure (resultative/transitive) and Event type (complete/incomplete). Generalized mixed effects logistic regression revealed a significant interaction between Event type and Structure. For complete events, acceptance was at ceiling for both structures. For incomplete events, acceptance was significantly lower for resultatives than for simple transitives. These results indicate that in adjectival resultatives telicity is construed semantically – via entailment – and in the corresponding simple transitives via a pragmatic inference, which is not computed very often. We propose that this type of simple transitives designates process events, exactly like their intransitive variant. Resultatives designate a transition event: the adjective and the main verb form a complex predicate; adjectives with closed scales like clean encode the prominent endstate subevent and the verb encodes the process subevent.

Background: It is broadly acknowledged that children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) show verb-related limitations. While most previous studies have focused on tense, the mastery of lexical aspect—particularly telicity—has not been the primary focus of much research. Lexical aspect refers to whether an action has a defined endpoint (telic verbs) or not (atelic verbs). Objective: This study investigates the effect of telicity on verb recognition in Chilean children with DLD compared to their typically developing (TD) peers using the Event-Related Potential (ERP) technique. Method: The research design is a mixed factorial design with between-group factors of 2 (DLD/TD) and within-group factors of 2 (telic/atelic verbs) and 2 (coherent/incoherent sentences). The participants were 36 school-aged children (18 DLD, 18 TD) aged 7 to 7 years and 11 months. The task required subjects to listen to sentences that either matched or did not match an action in a video, with sentences including telic or atelic verbs. Results: The study found notable differences between groups in how they processed verbs (N400 and post-N400 components) and direct objects (N400 and P600 components). Conclusions: Children with DLD struggled to differentiate telic and atelic verbs, potentially because they employed overgeneralization strategies consistent with the Event Structural Bootstrapping model.

The text is devoted to a rarely described and analysed problem of a gap in the distribution of aspectual prefixes in Polish. Lexical prefixes do not appear as parts of word-internal morphology of synthetic change of state (COS) verbs suffixed with verbalizing morphemes -e-/-ej-, -ną-, and -owa-. The analysis presented below treats such COS verbs as homonymous pairs of lexical items. The telic homonym is equipped with the result phrase (RP) headed by the zero morpheme, whose appearance blocks the insertion of any other telicizing morpheme in the form of a lexical prefix. The zero morpheme is selected by the verbalizers peculiar to COS verbs of synthetic type. The atelic homonym does not have the RP in its structure and, in consequence, does not include a structural position for telicizing heads in the form of lexical prefixes to be ever inserted. The model strongly supports the distinction between the concepts of telicity and perfectivity in Polish, and by extrapolation – in other Slavic languages.

The aim of this article is to demonstrate how Danish and Spanish from a typological, cross-linguistic perspective differ systematically from each other both within the domain of verbal lexicalization patterns related to the encoding of the semantic components Motion, Manner and Path and in terms of the predicate formation strategies dominating the two languages. First, on the basis of a contrastive analysis between the Spanish Motion-Path conflating verb pairs meter 'insert'/sacar 'extract' and entrar 'enter'/salir 'exit' and the Danish activity/Manner-of-motion verbs sprøjte 'spray' and stikke 'stick', it is argued that each language disposes of sets of abstract lexemes that do not exist in the other language. They lexicalize on different levels, one could say. Second, and strongly related to the first point, the article suggests that the preference of Danish to create complex schematic expression structures, where Spanish tends to concentrate information in monomorphemic, semantically saturated lexemes, can be explained by applying a template for valence variation that distinguishes between two basic and two extended sentence structures. Specifically, it is the (im)possibility of realizing the so-called A relation, the 'third' argument, that constitutes the differentiating factor between Danish and Spanish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In unrelated sign languages event structure is reflected in the dynamic form of verbs, and hearing non-signers are known to be able to recognise these visual event structures. This study assessed the time course of neural processing mechanisms in non-signers to examine the pathways for incorporation of physical-perceptual motion features into the linguistic system. In an EEG study, hearing non-signers classified telic/atelic verb signs (two-choice lexical decision task). The ERP effects reflect differences in perceptual processing of verb types (early anterior ERP effects) and integration of perceptual and linguistic processing required by the task (later posterior ERP effects). Non-signers appear to segment signed input into discrete events as they try to map the sign to a linguistic concept. This might indicate the potential pathway for co-optation of perceptual features into the linguistic structure of sign languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes an analysis of telicity in motion predicates within the framework of the Exo-Skeletal Model (Borer 2005b). We hypothesize that a motion event is syntactically represented by a Path component, the core of which is a vP that introduces a Figure argument. This Path component is interpreted as quantity in the sense of Borer (2005b) when there is a certain type of morpheme present in the structure, such as a verb that denotes the reaching of an endpoint. A quantity Path component can then assign a semantic value to a functional projection called AspQP, which returns a telic interpretation. Data from Mandarin, Ghanaian Student Pidgin, and Southern Tati show AspQP can be assigned a value either with or without overt head movement. We further propose a distinction between Path and direction, which explains data that were left unexplained in previous studies and seemingly contradict our claim. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While differences in the production and acceptability of aspectual inflectional morphology between Spanish–English heritage and monolingually raised speakers of Spanish have been argued to support incomplete acquisition approaches to heritage language acquisition, other approaches have argued that differences in access (e.g., lexical access) to representations for receptive and productive purposes are at the core of some of the unique characteristics of heritage language data. We investigate these issues by focusing on the effects of lexical access, dominance, age of acquisition and patterns of language use in heritage Spanish–English bilinguals. We study aspectual se in Spanish, which yields telic interpretations, in expressions such as María se comió la manzana 'María ate the apple (completely)' and Maria ate the apple (where completion may not be reached). Our results indicate that se generates telic interpretations for the heritage and monolingually raised group with no group effect. Heritage speakers showed no English effects in terms of lexical access, age of acquisition, patterns of language use or dominance. This suggests that the heritage group did not differ from their monolingually raised counterparts and showed no evidence of incomplete acquisition of telicity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates aspectual meanings that resultative morphemes in Mandarin Chinese contribute to interpretations of the entire predicates, and in particular the culmination readings they bring out of the originally non-culminating accomplishments. Two resultative morphemes are studied: - wán and -diào. I argue that while both morphemes give rise to culmination readings, the culmination readings are derived in different ways. I propose that - wán expresses termination, which comments on the progress of an event. The culmination readings of the telicized accomplishments by - wán are obtained indirectly. By contrast, -diào expresses culmination, commenting directly on the resulting culmination state. The proposed analysis for the two morphemes is couched in the framework defined by Krifka (1989, 1992, 1998), which models the relations between events, individuals, and times as a series of homomorphic relations between mereological part structures. Following Zucchi & White (2001), I analyze -diào in terms of a maximalization over patient, which transfers mereological properties from the individual structure to the event structure, explaining the culmination reading, and - wán a maximalization over time, which transfers mereological properties from the time structure to the event structure, explaining termination, and then transfers the mereological properties to the individual structure, explaining the culmination reading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tense/aspect morphology on verbs is often thought to depend on event features like telicity, but it is not known how speakers identify these features in visual scenes. To examine this question, we asked Japanese speakers to describe computer‐generated animations of simple actions with variation in visual features related to telicity. Experiments with adults and children found that they could use goal information in the animations to select appropriate past and progressive verb forms. They also produced a large number of different verb forms. To explain these findings, a deep‐learning model of verb production from visual input was created that could produce a human‐like distribution of verb forms. It was able to use visual cues to select appropriate tense/aspect morphology. The model predicted that video duration would be related to verb complexity, and past tense production would increase when it received the endpoint as input. These predictions were confirmed in a third study with Japanese adults. This work suggests that verb production could be tightly linked to visual heuristics that support the understanding of events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theories of event cognition have hypothesized that theboundaries of events are characterized by change, including achange in the agent’s goal, but the role of higher-order goalinformation on the placement of event boundaries has not beenaddressed experimentally. We tested whether goals can affecthow viewers determine event boundaries. Participants read acontext sentence stating an agent’s goal (e.g., “Jesse wants toeat the orange with her breakfast” vs. “Jesse wants to use theorange as a garnish”). Participants then saw an image of anevent outcome (e.g., a partly peeled orange) and were asked toidentify whether the event had occurred (“Did she peel theorange?”). Participants were more likely to respond Yes to apartly complete outcome if the outcome satisfied the agent’sgoal. Our results offer the first direct evidence in support of theconclusion that higher-order intentionality information affectsthe way events are conceptualized.

This article explores the relationship between affectedness and Differential Object Marking (DOM) of indefinite direct objects in Turkish and Uzbek. We argue that the distribution of DOM in the two Turkic languages is determined by the direct objects’ specificity and animacy as nominal semantic properties, and affectedness as a verbal semantic property associated with the direct object. We provide original empirical evidence from two forced-choice studies that investigate DOM along the parameters of animacy, affectedness, and telicity, and their interaction with each other. Our findings indicate that affectedness shapes the distribution of DOM in both Turkish and Uzbek, with an interesting variation in how it is instantiated and interacts with animacy. The findings do not confirm an impact of telicity as an independent factor driving overt case marking in the languages investigated. Rather, its influence on DOM stems from interaction with affectedness.

Resumo: Este trabalho se propõe a analisar e a classificar aspectualmente os verbos de editoração do inglês e do português: to edit/editar ou editorar, to copy edit/preparar, to proofread/revisar, to typeset/diagramar e to format/formatar. Esses verbos se apresentam como um interessante objeto de análise no âmbito do aspecto lexical porque possuem tanto características de accomplishments quanto características de atividades. Esse tipo de comportamento dúbio foi amplamente estudado na literatura sobre aspecto e é normalmente atribuído a propriedades do VP. No caso dos verbos de editoração, porém, a variabilidade da classificação aspectual parece não estar estritamente atrelada ao tipo de complemento, mas à incrementalidade da ação descrita pelo verbo. Assim, para a análise desses verbos, adotamos o modelo bidimensional de representação do aspecto lexical, numa abordagem cognitivo-funcional, propondo que esses verbos possuem propriedades aspectuais que estão na interseção entre accomplishments e atividades. Nossos resultados indicam que os verbos de editoração especificam um tipo de mudança direcional. Assim, eles possuem potencial para serem (re)construídos como mudanças direcionais télicas (accomplishments) ou atélicas (atividades), a depender da forma como o falante pretende descrever o evento de editoração. Palavras-chave: aspecto lexical; verbos de editoração; incrementalidade; telicidade; mudança. Abstract: This work aims to analyze and aspectually classify the publishing verbs in English and Portuguese: to edit/editar or editorar, to copy edit/preparar, to proofread/revisar, to typeset/diagramar and to format/formatar. These verbs present themselves as an interesting object of analysis in terms of the lexical aspect because they have characteristics of both accomplishments and activities. This type of dubious behavior has been extensively studied in the aspect literature and is usually attributed to VP properties. In the case of publishing verbs, however, the variability of the aspectual classification seems not to be strictly linked to the type of complement, but to the incrementality of the action described by the verb. Thus, for the analysis of these verbs, we adopt the two-dimensional model of representation of the lexical aspect, in a cognitive-functional approach, proposing that these verbs have aspectual properties that are at the intersection between accomplishments and activities. Our results indicate that the publishing verbs specify a type of directed change. Thus, they have the potential to be (re)construed as telic (accomplishments) or atelic (activities) directed changes, depending on how the speaker intends to describe the publishing event. Keywords: lexical aspect; publishing verbs; incrementality; telicity; change.

It is argued that, contrary to what is claimed in a series of relatively recent studies, verbal aspect has acquired the status of a grammatical feature in Baltic, and the notion of grammatical aspect is relevant to the description of the Baltic languages. As is widely recognized, aspect is less grammaticalized in Baltic than in Slavonic, but the difference is one of a degree rather than of essence, as in both language branches grammatical aspect arises from the grammaticalization of lexical aspect classes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Korean, either specific quantity or definiteness of an object is recognized to be associated with event telicity. However, there has been no clear account on which property is a crucial factor for telicity. This study conducted an acceptability judgment experiment testing to identify what property of an object is associated with telicity of an event VP under the conditions which differ by the presence or absence of the time adverbials (-maney ‘in x time’ and -dongan ‘for x time’). 30 Korean native speakers were given target sentences with multiple choices to select, and the choices were made based on the potential interpretations of the sentences with different types of objects such as a bare noun or numeral classifier object. The target sentences also differ in the presence or absence of the time adverbials, i.e., -maney or -dongan adverbial. The results suggested that contrary to the current literature definiteness may not play a role in event telicity. As for specific quantity, it is not a necessary property of an object, but mere quantity of an object is found to be sufficient for a telic interpretation of an event. The results also showed that -dongan adverbials can have time span meaning not only with numeral classifier objects but also with bare noun objects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What are the categorical distinctions shared betweenconceptual and visual representations? One distinction maybe between bounded and unbounded entities. Previousresearch in sign language has shown that even non-signersassociate signs with repetitive motion with atelic verbs, suchas “run”, and signs with sudden motion with telic verbs, suchas “arrive”. In our first study, we show this distinction holdseven when the visual stimuli depicted bear no intrinsiclinguistic reference: we used non-linguistic random dotmotions. In our second study, we demonstrate this associationoccurs spontaneously, even when subjects are not makingexplicit semantic judgments about verbs. We use a cross-modal lexical decision task in which verbs and non-wordsappear superimposed on bounded or unbounded dot stimuli.We find congruency when the motion boundedness matchesthe conceptual boundedness of the verb. Together, thesestudies provide evidence for an automatic link between visualand conceptual boundedness in the mind.

Resumo: A telicidade se caracteriza pela presença de um ponto final do evento delimitado linguisticamente na sentença. Um dos meios pelos quais essa delimitação pode ser feita se dá pela inserção de determinantes no complemento verbal. No espanhol, discute-se se determinantes plurais conduzem a uma leitura télica ou atélica da sentença. Nessa língua, existe uma partícula aspectual conhecida como “se” télico que ratifica o valor de telicidade da sentença. Dessa forma, ele é utilizado, nesta pesquisa, como um instrumento para a verificação do papel que possuem os determinantes plurais, quando encabeçam o complemento verbal, para a delimitação do evento. Diante disso, pretendeu-se, com este trabalho, verificar se o “se” télico poderia combinar-se com verbos que contivessem complementos verbais encabeçados por determinantes plurais no espanhol a partir de dados das variedades faladas na Colômbia e no Chile. Para tanto, foi aplicado um teste linguístico, caracterizado como de julgamento de gramaticalidade comentado, a falantes nativos dessas regiões. Os resultados demonstram que que a associação investigada no estudo é possível em ambas as variedades e que complementos verbais encabeçados por determinantes plurais conduzem a uma leitura télica da sentença. Além disso, foi possível observar que a associação do “se” télico com verbos como “beber” e com determinantes como “ciertos(as)” e “pocos(as)” parece pouco frequente na língua. Discutiu-se que o “se” télico parece combinar-se com mais frequência com verbos que contenham complementos encabeçados por determinantes plurais que possuam uma menor dependência contextual. Palavras-chave: telicidade; “se” télico; determinantes; delimitação; espanhol. Abstract: Telicity is characterized by the presence of an endpoint of the event linguistically delimited in the sentence. One of the ways in which this delimitation can be made is through the insertion of determiners in the verbal complement. In Spanish, it is discussed whether plural determiners lead to a telic or atelic reading of the sentence. In that language, there is an aspectual particle known as the telic “se” that ratifies the telicity value of the sentence. Thus, it is used, in this research, as an instrument to verify the role that plural determiners have, when they head the verbal complement, for the delimitation of the event. In view of this, it was intended, with this work, to verify if the telic “se” could be combined with verbs that contained verbal complements headed by plural determiners in Spanish based on data from the varieties spoken in Colombia and Chile. For this purpose, a linguistic test, characterized as commented grammar judgment, was applied to native speakers of these regions. The results demonstrate that the association investigated in the study is possible in both varieties and that verbal complements headed by plural determiners lead to a telic reading of the sentence. In addition, it was possible to observe that the association of the telic “se” with verbs such as “beber” and with determiners such as “ciertos(as)” and “pocos(as)” seems infrequent in the language. It was argued that the telic “se” seems to combine more frequently with verbs that contain complements headed by plural determiners that have less contextual dependence. Keywords: telicity; telic “se”; determiners; delimitation; Spanish.

The different distinctions related to lexical aspect-state, activity, accomplishments and achievements-play an important role in the grammar of Spanish, but many of the details about how these distinctions can be implemented are unclear: which features distinguish between the classes, how the classes relate to each other, what is the nature of telicity or dynamicity and how one can account for the alternations that a verb is subject to involving its aspect are some of the most important problems from this perspective. The goal of this article is to provide a sufficient empirical base to address these questions and present the current alternatives to answer them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work aims to analyze and aspectually classify the publishing verbs in English and Portuguese: to edit/editar or editorar, to copy edit/preparar, to proofread/revisar, to typeset/diagramar and to format/formatar. These verbs present themselves as an interesting object of analysis in terms of the lexical aspect because they have characteristics of both accomplishments and activities. This type of dubious behavior has been extensively studied in the aspect literature and is usually attributed to VP properties. In the case of publishing verbs, however, the variability of the aspectual classification seems not to be strictly linked to the type of complement, but to the incrementality of the action described by the verb. Thus, for the analysis of these verbs, we adopt the two-dimensional model of representation of the lexical aspect, in a cognitive-functional approach, proposing that these verbs have aspectual properties that are at the intersection between accomplishments and activities. Our results indicate that the publishing verbs specify a type of directed change. Thus, they have the potential to be (re)construed as telic (accomplishments) or atelic (activities) directed changes, depending on how the speaker intends to describe the publishing event. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While differences in the production and acceptability of aspectual inflectional morphology between Spanish–English heritage and monolingually raised speakers of Spanish have been argued to support incomplete acquisition approaches to heritage language acquisition, other approaches have argued that differences in access (e.g., lexical access) to representations for receptive and productive purposes are at the core of some of the unique characteristics of heritage language data. We investigate these issues by focusing on the effects of lexical access, dominance, age of acquisition and patterns of language use in heritage Spanish–English bilinguals. We study aspectual se in Spanish, which yields telic interpretations, in expressions such as María se comió la manzana ‘María ate the apple (completely)’ and Maria ate the apple (where completion may not be reached). Our results indicate that se generates telic interpretations for the heritage and monolingually raised group with no group effect. Heritage speakers showed no English effects in terms of lexical access, age of acquisition, patterns of language use or dominance. This suggests that the heritage group did not differ from their monolingually raised counterparts and showed no evidence of incomplete acquisition of telicity.

The paper presents the results of a study investigating a possible influence of the viewpoint (perfective vs. imperfective) and lexical (telic vs. atelic) aspect of Polish verbs on the countability of eventive nominalizations (substantiva verbalia) derived from these verbs. Polish substantiva verbalia preserve many properties of the base verbs, including the eventive meaning and aspectual morphology. Native speakers of Polish rated the acceptability of nominalizations in count and mass contexts. An effect of both viewpoint and lexical aspect was found in mass contexts, where aspectually delimited (perfective, accomplishment) nominalizations were less acceptable than non-delimited (imperfective, state) nominalizations. In count contexts, only an effect of the lexical aspect was clearly present, with accomplishment nominalizations being more acceptable than state nominalizations. The nominalizations were overall rated as more natural in mass than count constructions, regardless of the aspect. The results indicate that aspect plays a role in establishing the countability of a word, but it does not fully determine it.

We contrast two views of how contextual influence on sentence meaningcomposition can be explained. The Semantic Similarity View maintainsthat discourse context affects sentence meaning mainly because of thesemantic similarity between the words in the discourse context and thewords in the sentence (as measured by Latent Semantic Analysis). The FreePragmatic View, in contrast, defends the claim that also pragmatic aspectsof the discourse context can affect sentence meaning composition. Thiseffect can be quantitatively modelled by Bayesian Pragmatics. Weintroduce a Predictive Completion Task in which the hearer at everymoment in a communicative situation has to generate a probabilisticprediction about how a discourse being uttered by the speaker is continued.We test the predictions of the two views in EEG using the well-establishedobservation that the conditional probability of a word given a context isnegatively correlated with the amplitude of its N400 component.

Adults with no knowledge of sign languages can perceive distinctive markers that signal event boundedness (telicity), suggesting that telicity is a cognitively natural semantic feature that can be marked iconically (Strickland et al., 2015). This study asks if non-signing children (5-year-olds) can also link telicity to iconic markers in sign. Experiment 1 attempted three close replications of Strickland et al. (2015) and found only limited success. However, Experiment 2 showed that children can both perceive the relevant visual feature and can succeed at linking the visual property to telicity semantics when allowed to filter their answer through their own linguistic choices. Children's performance demonstrates the cognitive naturalness and early availability of the semantics of telicity, supporting the idea that telicity helps guide the language acquisition process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of Lexical Aspect in Persian Complex Predicates has been a controversial topic in recent years. As far as telicity is concerned, there are two contrasting approaches in this field: one in which the "Preverbal elements", including nouns, adjectives, and prepositional phrases, are considered to be determinant of telicity; and the other, in which "Light Verbs" are considered to be determinant. The present research is aimed to study the aspectual properties of Persian Denominal Complex predicates, and the role and contribution of its constituents in the aspectual properties of theses verbs. For this purpose, the First Phase Syntax is been used to divide the eventive nominal preverbs into two main classes, including process and achievement nouns. Evidences have been provided showing that telicity in eventive denominal CPrs is determined by the event structure of the nominal preverb. Therefore, CPrs which benefit from a process preverb are all atelic, due to the non-bounded nature of the nominal, while those with achievement nominals are all telic, due to the bounded event structure of their preverbal element. The result of this study illustrates that light verbs are neutral in determining the telicity of Persian Complex Predicates. Moreover, it shows that some CPrs with eventive nominals are atelic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given that the notion of telicity was simply defined by English linguists as a situation which tends towards a goal, this paper will additionally explain and define telicity in the English language. Moreover, the issue of telicity in the Serbian and Romanian relevant linguistic literature has been scarcely analysed. This paper aims to ascertain and define telicity as an indispensable semantic characteristic of Serbian and Romanian verbs. Since the paper proves that the concept of telicity can be detected in languages other than English, telicity can and should be considered a linguistic universal.

This paper addresses aspectual se in Spanish. Building on the previous analyses that have been proposed in the literature to account for constructions with aspectual se that mainly focus on the syntax of these (see, e.g., MacDonald, Jonathan E. 2017. Spanish aspectual se as an indirect object reflexive: The import of atelicity, bare nouns, and leísta PCC repairs. Probus. International Journal of Romance Linguistics 29(1). 73–118), this paper provides a semantic account that makes explicit (i) why dynamic predicates must be telic in the presence of se, and (ii) why the very same se can appear with a limited number of stative predicates, which are atelic. The account is implemented in the Figure/Path Relation model in Beavers, John. 2011. On affectedness. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 29(2). 335–370, Figure/Path Relation model. I propose a maximization strategy that captures that dynamic predicates in constructions with se are always telic by indicating the conditions under which the theme has a fixed quantity and the scale/path that may be associated with the verb is bounded. This maximization strategy is then compared to and distinguished from the event maximization strategies proposed for Slavic languages (Filip, Hana. 2008. Events and maximalization: The case of telicity and perfectivity. In Susan Rothstein (ed.), Theoretical and crosslinguistic approaches to the semantics of aspect, 217–256. Amsterdam: John Benjamins) and Hungarian (Kardos, Éva. 2016. Telicity marking in Hungarian. Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics 1(1). 1–37), and to the scale/path maximization strategy proposed for Southern Aymara (Martínez Vera, Gabriel. 2021a. Degree achievements and degree morphemes in competition in Southern Aymara. Linguistics and Philosophy 44. 695–735). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Telicity is characterized by the presence of an endpoint of the event linguistically delimited in the sentence. One of the ways in which this delimitation can be made is through the insertion of determiners in the verbal complement. In Spanish, it is discussed whether plural determiners lead to a telic or atelic reading of the sentence. In that language, there is an aspectual particle known as the telic "se" that ratifies the telicity value of the sentence. Thus, it is used, in this research, as an instrument to verify the role that plural determiners have, when they head the verbal complement, for the delimitation of the event. In view of this, it was intended, with this work, to verify if the telic "se" could be combined with verbs that contained verbal complements headed by plural determiners in Spanish based on data from the varieties spoken in Colombia and Chile. For this purpose, a linguistic test, characterized as commented grammar judgment, was applied to native speakers of these regions. The results demonstrate that the association investigated in the study is possible in both varieties and that verbal complements headed by plural determiners lead to a telic reading of the sentence. In addition, it was possible to observe that the association of the telic "se" with verbs such as "beber" and with determiners such as "ciertos(as)" and "pocos(as)" seems infrequent in the language. It was argued that the telic "se" seems to combine more frequently with verbs that contain complements headed by plural determiners that have less contextual dependence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As in many other Germanic languages, Modern Danish combines the verb få 'get' and a semantic main verb in the supine form (the uninflected perfect participle). Three main types of the construction are found: an agentive type typically interpreted as expressing successful intentional action and two non-agentive types: one with a ditransitive main verb and promotion of the indirect object to subject status, and one with a non-valency-bound subject typically interpreted as a Beneficiary. Based on a functional framework, the paper presents a corpus study of the construction and an analysis unifying all three main types in a common Affactive Construction whose functional contribution is the specification of the subject as an Afficiary (Beneficiary or Maleficiary). The distinction between agentive and non-agentive interpretation is analysed as a voice distinction between active and passive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract:Of the influential features in determining the type of lexical aspect are dynamicity, durativity, telicity, homogeneity and atomicity of the verb. This qualitative and descriptive-analytical research is based on the data obtained by participatory observation and unstructured and semi-structured interviews with Laki speakers in Darehshahr (Ilam). Based on aspectual approaches of Rostein (2004), Filip (2004: 2012), and Croft (2012), the present study attempts to examine the impacts of these semantic features in determining aspect types in the given dialect. It focuses on those semantic features contributing into determining the lexical aspect types in Laki. It shows that in Laki dialect of Darehshahr, like many Indo-European languages, the mentioned features are influential in determining the lexical aspect type and based on them the situation aspect can be determined. It also shows that in order to explain the factors influencing the situational aspect type, not only the verb and its arguments, but in some cases the semantic and even the pragmatic context should be considered. Keywords: lexical (situational) aspect, dynamicity, durativity, telicity, homogeneity, atomicity, Laki dialect of Darehshahr IntroductionOne essential category, along with other categories formulated in the verb (such as mood, transitivity, and tense), is aspect. Aspect is usually considered as the way of looking at the internal temporal events in terms of their inception, realization, unfolding, or completion. In aspectual studies, a distinction is often made between two major types of aspect; while grammatical aspect is usually expressed with a definite inflectional or periphrastic element in VP, in lexical approaches to the aspect, without any specific grammatical sign, verbs inherently unfold the intrinsic aspectual properties indicating the beginning, continuation, or completion of the events. In recent approaches to lexical (situational) aspect, the intrinsic features of the verbs are considered to have influential impacts in determining the lexical aspectual type. Of the influential features in determining the type of lexical aspect are dynamicity, durativity, telicity, homogeneity, and atomicity of the verb. As a result, the study of these features as influencing factors is regarded to be of paramount importance in the grammar of natural languages.Materials and MethodsDue to the nature of the present study, it has been designed to be a qualitative, descriptive-analytical research based on observation and interviews with Lak speakers and the review of existing text documents. The statistical population of the study includes Lak speakers of Darehshahr villages located in the south of Ilam, Iran. To reduce the effects of language contact, speakers have been selected from villages whose inhabitants often do not speak a language other than Laki. Also, efforts were made to select speakers from families who do not speak a language other than Laki at home. In order to be a comprehensive research, an attempt was made to select speakers from a wide range of literate and illiterate, old, middle-aged and young, and of both male and female genders in a purposeful sampling method. The data collection method was through participatory observation and sometimes unstructured and semi-structured interviews. In this study, after ensuring the linguistic corpus of the study, with thematic analysis, the types of situational (lexical) aspect between the data and the linguistic body mentioned in the studied dialect of the studied Laki dialect have been investigated. Then, according to Croft model (2012) as a comprehensive model in explaining aspectual verb classes, verbs were identified and examined based on the criteria and characteristics considered in the framework of the model. Discussion of Results and Conclusions To distinguish the aspectual verbs, distinguishing features and components such as dynamicity, homogeneity, telicity, and atomicity have been used. Based on aspectual approaches of Krifka (1998), Rothstein (2004), Filip (2004: 2012), and Croft (2012), the present study attempts to examine the impacts of these semantic features to determine the aspect types in the given dialect. It tries the answers to the following questions: To what extent can the mentioned factors help in determining the lexical aspect types in Laki, which is one of the Northwestern Iranian languages? Are the mentioned features intrinsic to the verb and the lexical level? Or should the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic factors be also considered in analyzing the situational aspect? This study shows that in the Laki dialect of Darehshahr, the semantic features of dynamicity, durativity, telicity, homogeneity, and atomicity of the verbs are among the most influential factors in determining the lexical aspect type of the verbs, and therefore, based on these elements the situation aspect system can be determined in the given dialect of Laki. Contrary to some views that consider telicity as an intrinsic feature of the verb, it was observed that in order to explain the factors influencing the situational aspect type, not only the verb and its arguments but in some cases the semantic and even the pragmatic context should be considered. This is in line with the findings of Dowty (1986), Krifka (1998), and Filip (2004, 2009, and 2012). This study also showed that in the mentioned dialect of Laki, like many other Iranian languages, perfect verbs have a telic property and imperfect ones have an atelic property, which is consistent with the findings of Filip (2009) and Borer (2013). It has also been observed that in Laki, as in many Indo-European languages ​​(Comrie, 1976: 46), it is possible to create telic verbs from atelic ones using morphological rules. In addition, due to the unmarked nature of atelic verbs in Laki, it can be concluded that the demarcation of each atelic verb can be used as a basis for making a telic predicate, provided that the verb is combined with an appropriate incremental argument that characterizes the quantitative criterion (QC). This is consistent with the findings of Filip (1999).

The lexical aspect of contemporary Persian was studied in this article. The data which were extracted from Farhang-i-buzurg-i-soxan (Anvari, 2007) were investigated based on scalar approach. The traditional theories cannot differentiate and explain various aspectual events because of inadequate binary aspectual features. The investigation of data showed that scalar theory along with traditional features like [± duration], [± dynamicity], and [± telicity] provides a more comprehensive aspectual classification and clearer explanation of Persian verbs and events. The traditional theories cannot account for verbs of degree achievements which have the dual [+ telic] and [- telic] aspectual behavior. By following the scalar approach, Persian verbs are classified into scalar (open and closed) and non-scalar (semelfactive and activity) categories. The non-scalar activity and semelfactive verbs are respectively durative and punctual events. The open scalar verbs show the dual telicity whereas the closed ones have [+ telic] feature. The closed scalar verbs are classified into two-point scalar and multi-point scalar events. These two categories differ from each other based on the [± durative] feature. The two-point scalar verbs show punctual changes while the multi-point scalar ones undergo durative changes to achieve the endpoint.

Predicates like "coloring‐the‐star" denote events that have a temporal duration and a culmination point (telos). When combined with perfective aspect (e.g., "Valeria has colored the star"), a culmination inference arises implying that the action has stopped, and the star is fully colored. While the perfective aspect is known to constrain the conceptualization of the event as telic, many reading studies have demonstrated that readers do not make early commitments as to whether the event is bounded or unbounded. A few visual‐world studies tested the processing of telic predicates during online sentence processing, demonstrating an early integration of aspectual and temporal cues. By employing the visual‐world paradigm, we tested the incremental processing of the perfective aspect in Italian in two eye‐tracking studies in which listeners heard durative predicates in the perfective form in a scenario showing a completed and a non‐completed event. Differently from previous studies, we compared telic durative predicates such as "coloring‐the‐star" to punctual predicates such as "lighting‐the‐candle." While for punctual predicates, the inferences of telicity (the event has a telos) and of culmination (the telos is reached) are lexically encoded in the perfective verb, for durative predicates, the degree of event completion (visually encoded) needs to be integrated with perfective aspect (linguistically encoded) for the culmination inference derivation. By modulating the interaction of visual and linguistic stimuli across the two experiments, we show that the verb's perfective aspect triggers the culmination inference incrementally during sentence processing, offering novel evidence for the continuous integration of linguistic processing with real‐world visual information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]