Information AboutAktionsart |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT AKTIONSART | |
| tense, aspect, aktionsart | |
| german loanwords | |
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For example, ''eat an apple'' differs from ''sit'' in that there is a natural endpoint or conclusion to eating an apple. There is a time at which the eating is finished, completed, or all done. By contrast, sitting can merely stop: unless we add more details, it makes no sense to say that someone ''finished'' sitting. This is a distinction of lexical aspect between the two verbs. Verbs that have natural endpoints are called ''telic'' (from Ancient Greek ''telos'', end); those without are called ''atelic''. Zeno Vendler (1957) classified s. Activities and accomplishments are distinguished from each other by boundedness: activities do not have a terminal point (a point before which the activity cannot be said to have taken place, and after which the activity cannot continue – for example ‘John drew a circle’) whereas accomplishments do. Of achievements and states, achievements are instantaneous whereas states are durative. In his discussion of Aktionsarten, Comrie (1976) included the category ‘semelfactive’. His divisions of the categories are as follows: states, activities, and accomplishments are durative, while semelfactives and achievements are punctual. Of the durative verbs, states are unique as they involve no change, and activities are atelic (that is, have no ‘terminal point’) whereas accomplishments are Telic . Of the punctual verbs, semelfactives are atelic, and achievements are telic. The following table exemplifies examples of Aktionsart in English that involve change (an example of a State is 'know'). SEE ALSO REFERENCES
Further reading
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