ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author reserves the term ‘aspect’ for the formal distinction and semantic correspondents and the term ‘telicity’ will be used for the telic-atelic distinction, or ‘(inherent) lexical aspect’. The crucial contribution of Bennett and Partee to the analysis of the progressive aspect is the idea that the truth of an atomic sentence is relative to an interval, rather than to a time point. Parsons assumes two basic aspectual relations between events and intervals: Hold and Culminate. Related to the difference in tense is the fact that only imperfective verbs, but not perfective ones, can have an on-going or ‘progressive’ reading in an appropriate context. Due to the interaction of perfective aspect with future tense, the tense in which the aspectual distinctions are most frequently and distinctly manifested is the past tense. Among the predictable and productive ‘shifts’ between eventuality types that accompany the change in aspect is the ‘shift’ between a process and a happening.
