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- Title
Telicity and incremental theme.
- Authors
Paducheva, Elena Viktorovna
- Abstract
The paper deals with the notion of INCREMENTAL THEME and problems connected with the telicity/atelicity of Russian verbs and verb phrases (VPs). Verbs cannot be classified as telic or atelic once and for all—telicity must be determined on the level of a VP. The notion of incremental theme provides simple rules of ASPECTUAL COMPOSITION. For Russian, a definition of atelicity in terms of CUMULATIVITY (proposed in works of M. Krifka, D. Dowty and others) is helpful, while QUANTIZATION doesn’t capture all the subtleties in the semantics of telicity. The notions telic/atelic do not correspond to Russian предельный/ непредельный. Telic is better rendered in Russian as ограниченный (i.e. bounded, terminative). The notion of telicity erases the difference between Vendler’s accomplishments and achievements. This opposition corresponds to the important distinction of ПРЕДЕЛЬНОСТЬ/МОМЕНТАЛЬНОСТЬ and should be preserved. One of the most insightful notions in the semantics of Russian aspect is PERSPECTIVE, or VIEWPOINT (Падучева ; Smith ). Only VPs belonging to the class of accomplishments are compatible with both perspectives, SYNCHRONOUS (for the imperfective form) and RETROSPECTIVE (for the perfective form). Viewpoint determines the combinability with adverbials and, thus, the telicity of a VP belonging to the class of accomplishments.
- Subjects
RUSSIAN language; EASTERN Slavic languages; SEMANTICS; VERBS; VERB phrases; VERBALS (Grammar)
- Publication
Russian Linguistics, 2009, Vol 33, Issue 2, p109
- ISSN
0304-3487
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/s11185-008-9031-6