Abstract

This article argues for a treatment of telicity that gives due space to intentionality, i.e., that recognizes the role intentionality may play in establishing the mutually manifest inherent or natural endpoint crucial to the definition of telicity. Sentences with numerical NP objects and for adverbials are shown not to be automatically telic. It is only if the constituents in question are contextually given as inherent endpoints that they are [+telic], intentionality being one of the extralinguistic factors that may bring about telicity.