On the Occasional Evasiveness of “Reached Telos” As a Key Element of Perfectivity

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Pages: 163-176
DOI: https://doi.org/10.54664/PJFN7226

Abstract:

Reached telos as a key concept of perfectivity is difficult to identify due to the pragmatic (non-semantic) nature of telos. It is evasive with certain expressions across languages and requires the exclusion of certain entities from perfectivity, e.g., Slavic delimitative verbs – like Bulgarian поразходя се and the corresponding English have a walk phrase. These can either be interpreted as involving a reached telos, hence perfective, or lacking it, hence episodes. Episodes are typically represented by Bulgarian imperfective aorists – bounded with no reached telos, while perfective aorists are perfective – bounded with a reached telos. Because of the synonymity of, e.g., поразходих се and разходих се – perfective aorists, and разхождах се – imperfective aorist, all meaning ‘walked’, ascribing boundedness plus reached telos to all of them blurs the difference between prototypical perfectivity and episode.

Keywords:

reached telos, perfectivity-imperfectivity, aorist-imperfect, boundedness/ non-boundedness

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