Inchoativity, change of state, and telicity: evidence from spanish reflexive psychological verbs

Marín, Rafael; McNally, Louise, 1965-

Inchoativity, change of state, and telicity: evidence from spanish reflexive psychological verbs

Citation

Marín R, McNally L. Inchoativity, change of state, and telicity: evidence from Spanish reflexive psychological verbs. Nat Lang & Linguist Th. 2011;29(2):467-502. DOI: 10.1007/s11049-011-9127-3.

Abstract

In this paper we argue that by making a careful distinction between the notions of inchoativity and telicity, we can gain new insight/ninto how changes of state can be expressed in natural language. Our argument is based on an analysis of Spanish reflexive psychological/nverbs (SRPVs) such as aburrirse‘ to be/become bored’ and enfadarse/n‘to become angry’. We present diagnostics that clearly support the claim that while these verbs are inchoative, they are not telic, nor do they denote changes of state. Additional tests indicate that these verbs are not dynamic, either; however, we show that they lack dynamicity for different reasons: aburrirse verbs, because they are stative;enfadarse verbs, because they denote truly punctual/neventualities. We present a formal semantic analysis using the event ontology proposed in Piñón (1997). This analysis allows us to capture very naturally the similarities and differences between the two subclasses of SRPVs, to characterize their inchoativity, and to distinguish it from telicity. In addition, it supports a view of the Vendlerian aspectual classes on which the achievement class describes truly punctual eventualities and excludes certain predicates/ncommonly (if not universally) assumed to belong to/nthis class, such as the so"called degree achievement verbs.