A Theoretical Approach to Telicity
A Theoretical Approach to Telicity

Summary/Abstract: Starting from the generally admitted idea that telicity is an important concept in the study of aspect, this paper intends to offer a theoretical approach to the telic/ atelic and bounded/unbounded distinctions, which have had a long tradition in the linguistic literature. I highlighted the necessity of distinguishing between telicity, viewed as a pragmatic or semantic parameter, and boundedness, considered to be a lexico-grammatical parameter which may depend on the verb and on the semantic properties of the nominal constituents of the predication, showing that telicity also plays a role in sentence processing. In this paper I try to offer different definitions and opinions concerning aspectual distinctions in the linguistic literature, where the pair of terms “telic”/“atelic”, “bounded”/“unbounded” are frequently used as synonyms.

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