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Interpretation of verb phrase telicity: sensitivity to verb type and determiner type.

PURPOSE
The authors examine how adults use linguistic information from verbs, direct objects, and particles to interpret an event description as encoding a logical endpoint to the event described (in which case, it is telic) or not (in which case, it is atelic). Current models of aspectual composition predict that quantity-sensitive verbs combined with quantized objects produce telic predicates. Behavioral results from previous experiments have not unequivocally confirmed this prediction. The study presents a more fine-grained analysis that examines the influence of partitive verbs, resultative particles, and different determiner types on listeners' evaluations of verb phrases as telic or atelic.


METHOD
Forty-eight English-speaking adults participated in a truth-value judgment task to determine whether they interpreted verb phrases with different types of verbs and direct objects as telic or atelic. Participants viewed short videos and responded to a yes/no question after each one.


RESULTS
The presence of partitive quantity-sensitive verbs and the presence of a definite determiner versus a cardinal number in quantized direct objects had a differential impact on listeners' interpretations of sentences as telic.


CONCLUSION
The results indicate that actual behavioral interpretations of telicity are meaningfully influenced by the presence of partitive verbs, resultative particles, and different types of determiners.