Telicity

In linguistics, telicity (from the Greek τέλος, meaning 'end' or 'goal') is the property of a verb or verb phrase that presents an action or event as being complete in some sense. A verb or verb phrase with this property is said to be telic, while a verb or verb phrase that presents an action or event as being incomplete is said to be atelic. In linguistics, telicity (from the Greek τέλος, meaning 'end' or 'goal') is the property of a verb or verb phrase that presents an action or event as being complete in some sense. A verb or verb phrase with this property is said to be telic, while a verb or verb phrase that presents an action or event as being incomplete is said to be atelic. One common way to gauge whether an English verb phrase is telic is to see whether such a phrase as in an hour, in the sense of 'within an hour', (known as a time-frame adverbial) can be applied to it. Conversely, a common way to gauge whether the phrase is atelic is to see whether such a phrase as for an hour (a time-span adverbial) can be applied to it. This can be called the time-span/time-frame test. According to this test, the verb phrase built a house is telic, whereas the minimally different built houses is atelic: Other phrases can be tested similarly; for example, walked home is telic, because 'John walked home in an hour' is fine, while 'John walked home for an hour' is bad, and walked around is atelic, because 'John walked around in an hour' is bad, while 'John walked around for an hour' is fine.