Rejlan Givens

Verb aspect is a complicated subject, I hope this discussion inspires you to further research this subject

Telicity is neither of that, and in English it is not even a property of a verb, the more reason to avoid referring to it as "verb aspect"

I didn't use any terminology outside the generally accepted terminology in current linguistics. I don't see the point thinking of "telicity" as verb aspect, if that is not what the term "aspect" is generally used for in linguistics. Verb aspect is the term linguists use to refer either to the properties inherent to the verb (lexical aspect) or the perspective the speaker takes in referring to the situation (viewpoint aspect)

It is okay, you are entitled to your opinion. I still suggest you get acquainted with the subject more before you choose to agree or disagree on the theoretical status of this concept.

Perfectivity and imperfectivity, which I commented on in this thread, refer to the viewpoint aspects of the situation.

My suggestion is you get acquainted with the concepts of lexical and situation aspects.

You need to read up on the verb aspect to get an idea of its purpose in language. There is a lexical aspect, which is concerned with the internal semantics of verbs (properties such as durative, stative, eventive, instantaneous etc.) and the viewpoint of aspect, which is concerned with the way you present the situation.

These verbs are morphologically simple (there are no identifiable morphemes attached to them or the base on which they are built on). Clearly, semantics of verbs can't be explained in such straighforward way, but it sure provides a starting point to think of the telicity and atelicity of verbs.

The verbs "kupiti" and "prodati" (buy and sell) are telic, and that comes from the semantics of these verbs. They imply the existence of a final state of a sort - you have something in possession or you got money for something you sold.

Of course there are, telicity is derived from the interplay of the verb's semantics and the morphology of the language. The base form of the verb is atelic or telic to start with, and whether it is one or the other depends solely on its semantics. If you can't decompose the verb into the morpheme + the base, it means that the telicity will be changed through the attachment of the appropriate morpheme.

The fact that the situations involving the verb "pojesti" will always be perfective, is due to the semantic constraints that the telicity of this verb imposes on the situation. It is always telic and always perfective. The verb "jesti" is always atelic but whether it contributes to the imperfective or perfective interpretation of the situation can't be figured out in isolation from the context in which the predication is used.

So, to answer your question, telicity is not a verb aspect - it is a property of either a verb (in Serbian) or a situation (in English).

Things are different with English verbs - nothing in the verb's semantics prevents you from presenting the situation as ongoing: you can eat something or be eating something, simply because there is nothing in the verb "eat" that prevents you from presenting the event as unfolding in time.

This fact affects aspectual representation of situations in myriad ways. For example, telicity of the verb blocks imperfective presentation of the situation. For example, you can't present a situation as ongoing if the verb tells you that the culmination point has been reached. If you have made something you can't in the same breath say that it is/was being made - you can't possibly take that viewpoint

There is a complicated relationship between the telicity and verb aspect, especially when you consider things cross linguistically. English verbs are neither telic nor atelic - the property of telicity is not in-built in the English verb - it is composite. By contrast, Serbian verbs are either telic or atelic - this property is part of the verb's semantics.

Telicity is not a verb aspect - it is a property of the situation. Verb aspect is about the way the situation unfolds in time or how you see that situation, and can be either lexical or viewpoint aspect. So the situation can be telic and inchoative, telic and iterative, telic and perfective, telic and imperfective etc. For example the situation of building a house is telic- it is about the semantics of the situation - there is a culmination point which is denoted by the verb's object

Yes, po can be used to express a sort of iterative aspect for example: Pokupovali su svo brašno i ulje. (kupovati - pokupovati (buy - buy over again), or inchoative aspect (verovati - poverovati (believe - start believing) and probably other aspectual meanings that might or might not be subsumed under these.

Here are some telicizing morphemes, off the top of my head: kuvati - skuvati (s), (cook - cook up (if we take "up" as an aspectual particle in English that can indicate completion of the event), graditi - sagraditi (sa) (build - build up), praviti - napraviti (na)(make - make up) , peglati - ispeglati (or opeglati) (is or o, two options) (iron - iron up) etc.

Po is far from being the only morpheme that is used to turn the atelic base verb into a telic one. There is a number of morphemes (prefixes) that serve the telicizing purpose, and a number of other ones for other sorts of verb aspects such as inchoative, iterative, temporary etc. Also, the same morpheme can be used to express different aspects - there is no one-to-one relation between the individual morphemes and the aspectual meanings

It would be more proper to say that telicity, inchoativity etc are "properties" of the verb, rather than "aspects" of the verb, not to confuse these concepts with the lexical and viewpoint verb aspects. "Jesti" is an atelic verb whose telic counterpart is "pojesti", with (obviously) the morpheme "po" turning the atelic stem into the form that expresses the completion of the eating event.

Telicity, inchoativity, durativity etc are semantic aspects of the verb that may or may not have grammatical expression in language. Serbian doesn't have separate grammatical forms for progressive/habitual/imperfective or perfective aspects. English has a dedicated progressive form, and its perfective counterpart, and it has would and used to as markers of habitual aspect.

The interaction of morphemes and verb meanings is very intricate so mastering the verb aspect can be a daunting task to those bent on learning a Slavic language. The semantics of the verb together with the set of morphemes define its telicity. To put it simply, the base form of the verb can be either telic or atelic (depends on the verb's semantics) and it is either prefixed or suffixed to get the telically opposite counterpart.

The key characteristic of Slavic languages is that they are morphologically very complex. The (a)telicity of the verb is partly inferable from the set of morphemes that "tweak" the stems of verbs, creating the telic/atelic counterparts to the base verb. Very roughly speaking, prefixes are telicizers and suffixes are atelicizers.

"I played football yesterday" refers to an atelic situation seen from a perfective viewpoint. Serbian "Igrao sam fudbal juče" can be either perfective or imperfective, we don't know that, simply because the verb doesn't give that kind of information.

@starckman You can't say, that was my whole point. You can say that your viewpoint is perfective in English: "I ate" is perfective without any doubt, irrespective of the context, which is why I said that English has this distinction grammaticalized, at least partially.

To give you satisfactory answers to your questions, I would have to delve deep into the verb aspect cross-linguistically, which is hardly possible in this form. Anyway, "Ja sam jela" can receive perfective or imperfective interpretation, without the context it is anyone's guess which one is in order. This verb form, erroneously understood as "imperfective", doesn't provide the information about the perfectivity of the situation.

..only as one single whole, if your description of the situation contains a clear indication of the culmination point. Serbian verbs are either telic or atelic: "jesti" is an atelic verb, "pojesti" is telic. Each verb can only be one or the other. This is not true of English verbs. The verbs eat or build that you mention, can head either telic or atelic situations, they are not either in themselves. "Build houses" is atelic, "build a house" is telic, "eat a cake" is telic, etc. Now, when it comes to perfectivity it is where English has an apparatus to express this dimension of verbs:

non-recurrent event verbs in the simple past tense are perfective, and those same verbs in the ing form are progressive and thus imperfective. There is no such distinction in the Serbian language: "Ručala sam u restoranu" can equally mean either "I was eating my lunch at a restaurant" or "I ate my lunch at a restaurant" and there is no way we can know which is the intended meaning without getting into the context. In my answer in another thread, I provided quotes from the Cambridge Grammar and another work on aspect, and the authors take a completely different position on this issue.

Here's from CGEL: "In languages such as Russian there are distinct verb-forms whose basic meanings correspond closely to these two aspectualities, and these languages are therefore said to have perfective and imperfective aspect. English, of course, is not such a language: the simple present and preterite can both be used either perfectively or imperfectively." I claim the opposite: English does have distinct verb forms which correspond to non-progressive and progressive aspects (the specific class of verbs). I doubt Russian verbs can be divided along that line, and I know that Serbian can't.

Just like the perfectly corresponding English translation "..have eaten" in "I have eaten", "jela" in "Ja sam jela" refers to a PERFECTIVE and ATELIC situation. The author clearly misunderstands and confuses the concepts of "completion" and "pastness", (cit. - ..that is to say with the use of imperfective forms in the situations that are perceived as COMPLETED at the time of speech) and it is a huge mistake. At the time of speech the event of eating is obviously finished, but not necessarily completed.

If the situation is telic there has to be a culmination point beyond which no development of that situation is possible any more. I may say "I have eaten" after finishing my meal but the completion of the situation is not unequivocally stated in words, and I could continue eating: "I have eaten but I'll eat some more". In other words "I have eaten" refers to an atelic situation. On the other hand, "I have eaten a cake" is a telic event that can't possibly go beyond the culmination point. I obviously cannot eat the cake and then continue eating it later.

Both "I have eaten" and "I have eaten a cake" are perfective events but only the latter is telic. "I have eaten" , or in Serbian "Ja sam jela" presents the situation of eating as a single whole, so it is perfective. The situation is also atelic - (a)telicity is another distinct dimension of the event, to be distinguished from the concept of perfectivity. Depending on our communication needs, atelic situations can be presented perfectively or imperfectively. Telic events can receive only perfective interpretation, simply because their culmination point is in-built - you can think of the event

Those "counterexamples" that authors use to point to "telic imperfective verbs", as a sort of anomaly in Slavic languages, are anything but exceptions. I wouldn't have to work hard to come up with any number of examples of such verbs - using those so called "imperfective verbs" to express perfective situations is a natural property of the Serbian language. By saying "Ja sam jela" I'm not making any sort of claim towards the telicity of the event of eating - but I certainly make a claim about the perfectivity of the event - it is a perfective event. Again, confusing telicity with perfectivity

..is bound to lead to a number of illogical conclusions. On the other hand, by saying "Pojela sam..." I make an explicit claim regarding the telicity of the event - the situation reached the culmination point. The point is that the distinction jesti/pojesti (or the analogue in Russian) does not concern the perfectivity vs imperfectivity of these verbs - it concern their telicity. Again, the telic/atelic dichotomy is in-built in the Serbian language, the telic part of the opposition pointing to the culmination of the event in question. There is an intricate mesh of morphemes and processes that

change the telicity of the verb. The naturally atelic verbs are turned into telic ones by a number of "telicizing" prefixes ( "pojesti" is best understood as the marked part of the opposition, formed by adding the prefix "po" to the unmarked, atelic "jesti"). There are verbs which are naturally telic, and the reverse process is in order if we want to make them atelic (roughly speaking, in such case, the telic form will be tweaked by a suffix of a sort (e.g prodati (sell) becomes "prodavati" (to be selling)).

The sentence "Ja sam jela" (in the given context translates perfectly as English "I have eaten" (existential perfect meaning)), perfectly illustrates the complexity of the problems that "perfective/imperfective" dichotomy of Slavic verbs leads to. The author of the cited work speaks of ".. ‘telic’ readings of imperfective verbs " discussing this and similar examples. The problem is that "jela" in this sentence is neither telic nor imperfective, it is the other way around.

Hi starckman! Unfortunately, I can't provide a competent answer on the nature of "inchoative" aspect in any of the languages, including my mother tongue of course. I just argued against the general understanding of the Slavic aspect. Slavic languages can hardly be thought of as "aspect prominent". English is far more so, as it obviously has a grammaticalized "perfective/progressive" opposition, as far as event verbs/single occurrence situations are concerned.

(63) Adapted from Forsyth (1970), Schoorlemmer (1995) and Borik (2002) a. Ja ne pojdu v kafe. Ja (uže) poela/ela . (I'm not a Russian speaker, but the languages are close enough, the same illustration could have been taken from Serbian). Instead of recognizing the fact that the perfective/imperfective division of Slavic verbs cannot be supported by the facts of language, the authors talk about "telicity of imperfective verbs" and provide "counterexamples", which are supposed (erroneously) to be thought of as exceptions to the unquestionable dichotomy.

Perfective/imperfective opposition is not grammaticalized/lexicalized in Serbian, and I'd guess the same is true of other Slavic languages. Unlike English, Serbian doesn't have a dedicated grammatical form for progressive meaning, or any other kind of verb aspect. What is lexicalized is the telicity of the verb - each verb is clearly telic or atelic (which of course contrasts with English where such opposition doesn't exist).

Of course, by virtue of being telic, the verb will by necessity be perfective, but it doesn't mean that the expression of perfectivity is restricted to these verbs. The verb form that is in popular literature erroneously labeled "imperfective" , is best named as "unmarked", since it can be used to express any aspectual meaning, including the perfective one. You might want to check my answer here linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/25742/…

Confusing the concepts of perfectivity and telicity and sticking to the obviously untenable claims of the lexicalized perfective/imperfective opposition in Slavic languages, led authors to logically inconsistent analyses. Here is a quote from a work on aspect escholarship.mcgill.ca/downloads/m326m213f.pdf : "....The apparent counterexamples that have been much discussed in the literature have to do with so-called ‘telic’ readings of imperfective verbs - that is to say with the use of imperfective forms in the situations that are perceived as completed at the time of speech (ST):

Thank you for the kind words Shoe, I may take your advice in the future. I am tight fotr time currently so my forum participation might have to wait though.

Acording to grammar book Pullum and Huddlestone, in non-finite participial clauses there is choice of his (genitive) or him (accusative) for subject of this clause. So we can say "Him smoking upset me." or "His smoking upset me." So his and him are interchangeable. genitive is more formal.

You're right that deverbal nouns exist, like in several readings of the same book, but how do you explain using him as the sentence subject if the third one is a participle? You cannot. Therefore him is merely the subject of the non finite clause, not of the finite one as that is forbidden. There is no participle the way there arguable is when you've got a smoldering campfire smoking after a wind kicks it up

Some comments worth noting:

english.stackexchange.com/questions/205390/… I stumbled upon this discussion and found the "smoking" example discussed all over the place

I don't have anything in this so I do not feel motivated to put up with anything that's bothering me. Hope we talk again Shoe, nice meeting you.

My point in forum discussions is not to show off my knowledge or to put anyone down. However, I've noticed that many people take it personally, and many again show zero respect for the effort I put in providing them help. I'll let gerund buffs take over from here. And I'll also let alone the fused heads on the other thread as well

The ing form and the ing clause are so versatile that we just cannot reduce it to this simplified half verb half noun waffle

Anyway, as I said earlier, we have to understand the big picture to be able to understand why this gerund analysis doesnt work. Or more generally, why we can't jumble the form and function together in no serious sentence or grammar analysis