R IVIS TA ITALIANA

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 I N H E RE N T T E LI C IT Y AN D
P ROTO- I N D O - E URO P E A N V E RBAL PARAD IG M S *
Annamaria Bartolotta

Abstract
In recent aspectual classifications telicity is described as a compositional syntactic prop-
erty, and verbs are analyzed as complex structures made up of completely neutral
roots. However, semantic changes due to both derivational processes and different syn-
tactic contexts could have obscured the relationship between root lexical aspect and
verb morphological paradigms. The purpose of this paper is to show that telicity can
be considered as an inherent lexical property: the co-occurrence in a sentence with ar-
guments, adverbials or specific pragmatic contexts which can (de)telicize the event de-
scribed by a verb has consequences at syntactic level, whereas the prototypical aspect
of the root is preserved at morphological, i.e. inflectional level. After comparing Vedic
Sanskrit and Homeric Greek verbs derived from roots belonging to the Proto-Indo-Eu-
ropean basic lexicon, I will argue how it is possible to determine inherent telicity ac-
cording to the distribution of inflected forms within earlier paradigms in a diachronic
perspective.

1. Introduction

T he scope of the term telicity is still a matter of debate. Despite the ex-
isting confusing array of terminological definitions,1 it refers to the most
stable semantic feature to determine lexical aspect. One of the main problems
concerns the object to which it can be applied, i.e. verbs, verbal phrases,
sentences, situations, processes (Declerck 1979: 762; Dahl 1981: 80). Assuming a
close connection between verb meaning and syntactic structure, recent aspec-
tual classifications (starting from Verkuyl 1972; 1993; 2005) focus on the role of
phrase or sentence-level properties, in order to demonstrate that Aktionsart
(i.e. lexical aspect) properties, and in particular telicity, never pertain to verbs
in isolation (see Levin & Rappaport 2005: 88 for some discussion). As a conse-
quence, the diagnostics used to determine telicity are exclusively syntactic,
while the morphological level has been widely ignored. However, a diachron-

* Part of the material in this paper was presented at the 19th International Conference on Historical
Linguistics, ichl 19 (Radboud University Nijmegen, 10-14 August 2009).
Keywords: inherent telicity; morphological diagnostics; unmarked root formations; injunctive; Pro-
to-Indo-European; Vedic Sanskrit; Ancient Greek. Abbreviations: inj = injunctive, subj = subjunc-
tive, prtc = participle, inf = infinitive, pres = present, impf = imperfect, aor = aorist, ppf =
plusquamperfect, sg = singular, pl = plural, nom = nominative, acc = accusative, gen = genitive, loc
= locative, part = particle, RV = Rigveda, Il. = Iliad, Od. = Odyssey, H.h. = Homeric Hymns.
1 For a discussion see, to quote just a few, Declerck (1979), Dahl (1981; 1985), Brinton (1988: 4),
Croft (2012).