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

Abstract

In this paper, we argue that by making a careful distinction between the notions of inchoativity and telicity, we can gain new insight into how changes of state can be expressed in natural language. Our argument is based on an analysis of Spanish reflexive psychological verbs (SRPVs) such as aburrirse ‘to be/become bored’ and enfadarse ‘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 eventualities. We present a formal semantic analysis using the event ontology proposed in Pinon (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 commonly (if not universally) assumed to belong to this class, such as the so-called degree achievement verbs.