On a frequent misunderstanding in the temporal-aspectual domain: The ‘Perfective = Telic Confusion’

The goal of this paper is to defend the view that Actionality (or Aktionsart) and Aspect should be considered to be independent, although non-orthogonal categories. Although they do interact, their interaction is ultimately amenable to a range of predictable behaviours, that may be understood on the basis of their respective properties. As suggested by a long-established doctrine, the paper adopts the view that Actionality has to do with the nature of the event type associated with a verbal predicate, and is ultimately rooted in the lexicon, while Aspect (more specifically, the perfective/imperfective contrast) has to do with the perspective adopted in reporting on the relevant event, and is typically expressed through functional devices (tenses), that are part of the computational system of natural grammars. From a theoretical point of view, it is suggested that Actionality has to be dealt with in terms of the inner composition of events, while Aspect is ultimately to be accounted for in terms of the notions of closed vs. open interval, where perfective events correspond to closed intervals, and viceversa. The role of the aspectual operators must be that of enforcing the open/closed interval interpretation, which is potentially available for every event type, most probably with respect to an appropriate understanding of the different quantificational properties of the various aspectual readings. The paper claims that Actionality and Aspect are often enough unduly conflated in the specialized literature, giving rise to what might be called the ‘Perfective ⇔ Telic Confusion’ (PTC), that wrongly assumes that a verb in the perfective Aspect can only express telic eventualities, and viceversa. It is shown instead that Actionality and Aspect are largely independent of one another (even though they do systematically interact with each other). Their independence may be particularly appreciated in languages with a sufficiently rich morphology, where these two categories manifest themselves in a very perspicuous way. But it may be shown that, even in less complex verbal systems, (im)perfectivity and (a)telicity should normally be kept apart, lest fundamental misunderstandings arise. After reviewing and refuting various versions of PTC, a simplified typology of possible actional-aspectual systems is sketched, with examples inspired by the Slavonic languages and Ancient Germanic. The aim of the paper is thus to show that what is at stake with the dichotomy Actionality / Aspect and more specifically (a)telicity / (im)perfectivity is an important foundational question, concerning the proper treatment of temporal-aspectual phenomena.