earticle

영어

In the studies of event telicity, it is well known that a property of an object such as quantity is associated with a telic interpretation of an event. In English, for example, an object with quantity like ‘four apples’ can contribute to event composition so that an event with such an object can be telic. However, there are some data from other languages that indicate that elements other than a quantity object can contribute to event composition. For example, in Slavic, a preverb that appears as a prefix on a verb is associated with a telic event. This paper discusses several languages that indicate telic events by means of linguistic elements different from English, namely Slavic, Korean, and Mandarin. In these languages, the role of a quantity object is found to be very minor in indicating a telic event, compared to English. In some cases, an event with a quantity object does not show an absolute telic interpretation. In others, the presence of a verbal morpheme such as a preverb or an auxiliary verb can indicate a telic event, even without an object. This paper also discusses how the different means discussed in this paper can mark the same semantic property of an event, telic. It is suggested that like a quantity object in English these different means mark a predicate with the feature [quantity].