Learn about telic and atelic predicates

Recently, I went to a talk on telicity in verbs. If the term is unfamiliar to you, you are not alone. It comes from the Greek “telos,” meaning “end goal,” which is also the root of the philosophical concept teleology. The terms telic and atelic were first applied to French verbs by a scholar named Howard Garey in a 1957 article in the journal Language. Telic refers to verbs that are directed toward an endpoint or goal, while atelic refers to verbs that are actions without goals. So, if you were to say Emily read The Handmaid’s Tale, you are implying that she finished it: there is an endpoint—that last page of the book. Similarly, if you say Emily walked home, the verb is also telic, the endpoint being home. However, if you say Emily read in front of the fire or Emily walked after dinner, the actions are atelic—there is no specific goal expressed and no endpoint to the reading or walking.

The distinction between telic and atelic can be made somewhat sharper if we add in some prepositional phrases to express timeframes and time spans. Saying Emily read War and Peace for an hour suggests that she did not complete the book, perhaps giving it up or pausing to do something else. However, if you say Emily read War and Peace in an hour, the verb is telic, expressing formidable speed-reading. Generally, atelic verbs stress some activity, while telic verbs stress an accomplishment. To play chess is atelic—an activity. To win a chess match is telic—an accomplishment.

Notice that, unlike the familiar verbal aspects of English, telicity is not marked on the verbs. In English, there is no auxiliary verb or suffix signaling telicity. And while there are some verbs—such as arrive, crash, disappear, or find—that are always telic, and some verbs that are always atelic—such as ponder, chat, loaf, or wander—the nature of the verb’s object plays a crucial part in whether a goal is expressed. Telicity is thus usually a property of verb phrases and the actions or states they express, rather than being a property of verbs themselves. 

Telicity is inherently interesting to linguists, of course, and there is a growing scholarly literature on ways to model the semantics of telic verbs and on some of the puzzles surrounding their interpretation. What, for example, are we to say about verbs that express actions that occur by degree, such as cool in The soup cooled? Is there an end state or not?

Telicity is of interest to writers as well, despite its esoteric nature. Being aware that some verb phrases imply end results provides a perspective on sentences such as these:

I’d like to dialog with you about your behavior.

I’d like to have a conversation about your behavior.

I’d like to explain the consequences of your behavior.

In the first, the verb dialog suggests talking with no endpoint in mind just a lot of back-and-forth talking. In the second, have a conversation implies that the conversation will not last indefinitely and will hopefully resolve something. In the third, the telicity is even more apparent: the explanation is the end goal. 

Or consider a bit of culinary advice like Cook the meat versus Cook the meat until the internal temperature is 165 degrees. There is a goal and end point in the second, and less room for guesswork.

And finally, if you are enumerating your goals for the upcoming year, you might say I will continue working on my book about Milton or I will finish chapters 3 and 4 of my book on Milton. Your dean will prefer the telic version, but you might want to leave some wiggle room with the atelic one.

Understanding telic and atelic predicates is a good goal for writers to have.

_{Featured image by Brett Jordan via Unsplash.}