Talk:Telicity

Merge with quantization

I think that this article should be merged into the stub article on quantization, along with the mass/count noun articles. Quantization explains both the mass/count noun distinction, as well as telicity, so it would make sense to put all three under that main article. Anyone disagree? 66.59.249.107 (talk) 21:10, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Definitely disagree. The current article is quite long as is, and, if the quantization article is added with more content, the result would be an even longer article. --vuo (talk) 23:59, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Telicity vs. aspect

Telicity is not a verb aspect. The reading of the notion of telicity, as described in the article, is somewhat strange for me. First of all, it does not seem to be (as described) a feature of a verb at all. Particularly, one cannot say that it is any aspect of a verb. Instead, it is marked on the object, not on the verb. So, it is a syntactical feature of a sentence, not a morphologic feature of a verb. I am very surprised because it looks like if someone undereducated had changed the meaning of the well-defined idea of telicity (as used in, for example, English and Polish).

The telic - atelic difference has in fact virtually nothing to do with aspect. One cannot also say that the Slavic prefix pre- (Polish prze-) is the telicity marker, and the statement that pre- is perfective, is also false. In fact, verbs with prefixes (including pre-) can be either imperfective and perfective, see verb aspect.

Telicity is a verb feature but not an aspect. Instead of the reading presented here, it is understood as having the aim included in the meaning of the verb. It has nothing to do with whether the aim was achieved or not. Instead, verbs denoted a completed action are termed perfective, not telic.

The telic - atelic division is present in English. As a rule, a given verb can be either telic or atelic. All state verbs (dream, love, believe, understand) are atelic, some action verbs are atelic as well (sing, walk, talk). Many action verbs are telic however (write, come, buy) - they all have an aim incorporated in their meaning.

Note that state verbs are not used, as a rule, in the Progressive aka Continuous Aspect (I am loving you now - ?). Similar restrictions can be observed for telic - atelic verbs. Namely, the Past Simple of telic verbs means they are viewed as completed while the Past Simple of atelic verbs means they are not vieved as completed: John wrote that article in 1950 (telic action) means a complete action but he worked there in 1950 (atelic action) does not mean a complete action and the same about he believed in democracy in his youth (atelic state).

To express the incompleteness of a past telic action, one must use the Continuous Aspect: John was writing an article in 1950 (we do not know if he finished or not). This sentence has a sharply different meaning that John wrote an article in 1950. In contrary, the sentences like I worked there in 1950 and I was working there in 1950 (an atelic verb) have the same or very similar meaning (even if the latter suggests an additional duration of the action).

A similar phenomenon can be observed in Perfect and Perfect Continuous Aspects: I have worked and I have been working (atelic) have very similar meanings while I have written and I have been writing (telic) differ (the latter does not seem to denote a completed action). And similarly, none of the two sentences I have lived here since 1960 and I have been living here since 1960 (atelic state) imply the end of the state.

And yet another example. I had been writing a book before I went abroad (both telic) needs the Perfect Continuous Aspect in first part. But a similar I had been working in Boston before I went abroad (the first verb is atelic action) can be replaced with I had worked in Boston before I went abroad.

The telic - atelic difference (as described here by me and not as described in the article) works in Slavic languages as well. The difference manifests itself on the morphologic level: there are differences in imperfective - perfective pairs between telic and atelic verbs.

There are papers on missunderstandings of the notion of telicity (and in particular, on mixing telicity with perfective aspect, just like in this article). They can possible be found on the Net. The source of most of the English examples above (changed partially by me) is An Introductory English-Polish Contrastive Grammar by J. Fisiak, M. Lipińska-Grzegorek and T. Zabrocki, PWN, Warszawa 1978.

-- Grzegorj 11:45, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

How about assuming the problem "using the same term across unrelated languages"? The difference between verb and "non-verb" aspect is a difference in marking. In Finnish, this marking is on the object, since that is what determines whether the action is successful or not. Furthermore, the perfective aspect opposition is lexical in Finnish, but the telicity is grammatical, which is different from English. When talking about specific verbs, consider the fact that verbs of emotion (dream, love, believe, understand) are partitive verbs, i.e. always atelic in Finnish, which mirrors the English case, and shows that it is the same thing. But, the action verbs (sing, walk, talk, write, come, buy) are not necessarily of either telicity, since if the object is not finished, they must be marked atelic. For example, Kävelen maratonia "I am walking a marathon". In these cases, the contrast resembles the perfectivity contrast, but is not "confused" with it as you accuse. --Vuo 13:39, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

I see virtually no reason for changing the original meaning of the term "telicity", and of course I'd like using the same term as widely as possible. In English telic / atelic is a verbal feature, that is a verb cannot be, as a rule, telic in one sentences, and atelic in others. The notion was introduced as early as in '50 in the meaning I described (and cited into the article). As far as I know, some scholars in their works on Slavic and Finnic aspect (like Filip), just changed the meaning of the term (for unknown reason) in order to find similarities between Germanic, Slavic and Finnic aspects. Which is more, they have been criticized lately as their argumentation was simply wrong, incorrect, inconsistant with facts, at least for Slavic. See Aspectual Pairing in Polish by Młynarczyk for more details (available here). Grzegorj 17:56, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

Speaking of references, this paper [1] describes the Finnic aspect as telicity. --Vuo 16:15, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

The OED Online's first definition for telic is "Gram. Of a conjunction or clause: Expressing end or purpose." Its first citation for this definition is from Joseph Emerson Worcester's 1846 Universal and Critical Dictionary of the English Language. So, it's not accurate to say that Howard Garey introduced the term, and it's possible that the term's different applications to verbs were developed independently, rather than by one group's misunderstanding of another. (Granted, Garey's use seems closer to the OED's definition, but still.) Ruakh 06:35, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

I wonder the example Luen kirjaa. "I am reading a book" or "I will be reading a book"; no indication is given for the time. In my opinion, the latter translation is unreal. 193.110.109.27 (talk) 11:10, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

The main problem with the 'telicity and aspect' section may derive from the fact that telicity is not a morphological category at all, but a semantic feature (verbs that somehow express or do not express an inherent goal of the action) that can have very different morphological realizations in different languages. Finnish marks objects differently for telic/atelic verbs. Swedish occasionally uses prepositions (äta, to eat, (atelic) vs. äta upp (telic)). Navaho uses a prefix na- to mark a category of verbs as atelic. The Navaho situation provides particularly good evidence that telicity and aspect have nothing to do with each other: Navaho distinguishes aspect by means of phonological changes of the verb root, and telicity by means of prefixes. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.226.87.165 (talk) 14:17, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

When reading the article, I instantly reflected Chinese perfective aspect particle 了. It means something was done completely. Similarly, isn't preteriti of Spanish something that has ended? Of course it is a temporal verb conjugation unlike Finnish total object (which is noun case), but the Chinese 了 kind of feels like it captures most of this "self-exhaustive" action. I'd kind of want to add some kind of reference to 了 in the article. Comments? --Sigmundur (talk) 22:31, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

Irregular Finnish verbs

I must dispute the claim that tuntea and nähdä are simply irregular. First, the verb tuntea is simply not irregular. It may take either telicity: Tunnen hänet niin hyvin means "I know him so completely well", but Tunnen häntä niin hyvin refers to "I know something relevant about his character" (implying "I don't say I know him completely"). This nuance is splitting hairs, but it's still a valid contrast. Second, the verb nähdä is actually irregular, but it's not just this simple. The telicity contrast acts as case government for distinguishing different verbs, much like distinguishing "look" from "look out". I am yet to see an actually irregular telicity — which is not case government — and I doubt its existence can be shown in a scientifically rigorious manner, because I think the claims necessary for proving this are not falsifiable. --Vuo 19:17, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

I can't fully agree with this. First, consider tuntea: while it is possible to introduce a telicity contrast to this verb in certain contexts, this does not remove the fact that it shows in its basic use irregular object marking. In a prototypical construction like tunnen Liisan it takes an accusative object despite the fact that the sentence is irresultative. There is no difference of resultativity between, say, rakastan Liisaa (regular marking) and tunnen Liisan (irregular marking); no result is involved in either case. As a further analogy: rakastaa can also be described as a (prototypically) irresultative verb just as tuntea regardless of the fact that it is possible to introduce a contrast in limited contexts (rakastan hänet kuoliaaksi and the like). Then as far as nähdä is concerned, it remains irregular (as you admit) even though it is true that the marking serves another function in this case.

As for methods for identifying irregular telicity, contrasting with other Finnic languages provides an interesting perspective. In Estonian tundma behaves differently from Finnish tuntea, taking a partitive object (ma tunnen teda, etc.). One of these must be semantically irregular, because they can't be both regular. --AAikio 22:14, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

English Examples may not be "bad"

I wanted to ask if anyone watching this page has considered the example of telicity given in the English *-expressions. One of the interesting effects of English being a language (virtually) without marking is that most recombinations are tractable. For instance, for the purposes of the demonstration of telicity, it is clear that the examples given ("John built a house in a month" / "*for a month") elucidate the principles described. However, while "J. built a house for a month" doesn't 'flow off the tongue', it also doesn't sound incorrect, per se. It certainly does have a different meaning than the counter example, but the utterance seems to emphasize certain information -- when I read it, it struck me that it was emphasizing the process of the building of a house. While this may or may not have anything to do with telicity, i.e., it may change the meaning sufficiently that it is no longer a telic/atelic test, it is still a resolvable sentence. Surely there is a better example. Perchance "John walked for month"/*"John walked in a month"? Gaedheal (talk) 00:09, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Something similar was troubling me. Surely simple verb tenses in English can often be either telic or atelic, depending on the context. "John walked to school." (telic?) John walked towards the school."(atelic?) I often notice speakers of languages with perfective forms getting confused with this in English, and over using the continuous aspect: e.g. "When I was 5 I was going to school" ( to stress that it is a repeated action, and not a single completed action.) Or am I way off the mark here? Toroboro (talk) 12:47, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

If you translate the *-expressions to Finnish, a language where marking of telicity is mandatory, and back, the results are these. *"John built a house for a month" could be John rakensi taloa kuukauden (atelic) that could be translated back with the emphasis "Within the space of a month, John spent his time building a house". It is expressly omitted what the result was. You could easily continue like "... and finished it." Then, *"John built houses in a month" could be John rakensi useamman talon (I know it's clunky) kuukaudessa (telic), or "John built several houses within a month". This is actually a subtly different statement, explicitly indicating a group of houses that were to be built. The simple translation John rakensi taloja kuukauden is necessarily atelic. There is no way to translate *"John built houses in a month" directly, because that would give the ungrammatical *John rakensi talot kuukauden, a statement that confuses the reader (just like "John built houses a month"). --Vuo (talk) 13:37, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

The two sentences have two very different English meanings; neither usage is "bad"; at least, not in the eyes of this native born English speaker.

"John built a house in a month" means that John started to build a house, worked for a while, and completed building the house in one month's time. The story continues on, one month later, with a house that is fully built.

"John built a house *for* a month" means that John started building a house, and kept building it for a month. After the month of building work is over, the story continues. John has not finished the house yet, and may never finish building it at all. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.205.241.254 (talk) 18:14, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

I concur with Gaedheal (19 September 2008) and the autosigned comment of 26 March 2010. In an account of a challenge he faced, “John built a house for a month” could be perfectly fine. (It carries a touch of irony: working on only one house for only one month suggests a lack of commitment on John’s part.) The difficulty of applying this grammatical test illustrates that attempting to use such tests is fraught with peril; the complexity of language defeats our attempts encage it. No less respected an authority than Longman fell into such a trap in at least one of its editions, citing plastic fork, as in “John ate with a plastic fork”, as an example of a noun (plastic) modifying a noun (fork), verified by applying the comparison test: if plastic is an adjective, it should be possible to say more plastic and most plastic: “John ate with a more plastic fork” seems unlikely, while “John ate with a more massive fork” is unexceptionable. The conclusion: plastic is a noun, while massive is an adjective. Of course the example is faulty because, in it, plastic is an adjective characterizing fork as being composed of plastic. Such adjectives (those that ascribe composition) lack comparative forms (compare “John ate with a plastic fork” with “John ate with a wooden fork” in which wooden is irrefutably an adjective; more wooden and most wooden, since they don't exist for the composition-ascribing meaning, force wooden to take on a meaning, such as stiff, that has comparative forms; similarly, more plastic and most plastic force plastic to take on a meaning that has comparative forms, such as pliable, flexible, bendable). The immediate lesson to be learned from these mishaps is to be very leery of grammatical tests. The ultimate lesson is to base grammatical analysis on semantics rather than on morphology and/or on syntax itself. Grosbach (talk) 06:21, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Another native SAE speaker here: I agree that both items are tractable. I don't think a note like (not intended meaning) along with a unsemantic # is more appropriate than a nongrammatical * Zachblume (talk) 04:24, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

wrong definition of telicity

Before making any changes to the article, I would like to hear your comments here.

I have just noticed that telicity is defined incorrectly in the article. I am aware of terminological differences but usually telicity is understood as an action that has a conceptual endpoint after which the action exhausts itself. Crucially, it is irrelevant whether the endpoint was achieved or not.

The way telicity is defined now in this article represents completive, or, in some theories, boundedness (completed vs. non-completed). --Russky1802 (talk) 01:48, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Can you come up with a contrasting example? As such your argument does not disprove that these are only alternative ways of saying the same thing. Perhaps this is even a psychological question - do people understand general conceptual endpoints and teleological success in a fundamentally different way, or, are they only casually conflated until finer distinction is necessary for a specific reason? --vuo (talk) 00:04, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

As a Finnish speaker, Russky's comment makes sense. If I eat an apple (syön omenan), it is telic. If I intend to eat an apple (aion syödä omenan), it's still telic whether I in the end eat it or not. Telicity in "apple" refers to self-exhaustion of eating in that apple can't be eaten any more after it's eaten. The common grammatic term I've seen is "total object" (vs "partial object"). I still didn't see anything wrong with the article as it is, but I didn't scan it super thoroughly. --Sigmundur (talk) 22:26, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

John drew a fractal

'Nuff said. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.31.60.217 (talk) 23:03, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

"I shot the bear"

The verb 'shoot' simply means releasing a projectile and hitting a target with it. Not hitting the target would usually involve the addition of 'at' (Pamour (talk) 13:54, 30 July 2013 (UTC)).

Tending towards a goal

The statement that Garey introduced the term telic in 1957 is nonsense. Telic has been used to indicate a verb having an end or a purpose (or a goal) since more than 100 years earlier than that, Worcester's Universal Dictionary of the English Language (published 1846) gave that definition for telic, quoting Prof Stuart. The OED ( has 8 examples of its use in that sense from 1846 to 1906 (I think they were all in the 1st, 1911, edition of the "telic" page), and will probably have more examples when newer editions get round to that page (the third edition hasn't yet come out for that page, and I don't know whether even the second edition has).Michealt (talk) 17:59, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

References