The Aktionsart Properties of State Change Verbs in Turkish

Abstract

This paper analyzes aspectual characteristics of change of State verbs, specifically "degree achievements," based on gradable adjectives in Turkish. In terms of temporal properties, these verbs display variable behaviour: they can refer to either telic or atelic situations. Adopting the approach developed by Hay, Kennedy and Levin (1999), the reason of this ambivalence is searched in the gradable nature of the base adjectives which define a scale. It is the (non)boundedness of this scale that determines (a)telicity of the situations which is maintained by the deadjectival degree achievements. This paper also illustrates the effects of linguistic materials (degree modifiers, measure phrases) and contextual interpretations on the (a)telicity of these deadjectival degree achievements