The interaction of English particles, Bulgarian prefixes, and telicity

Abstract

The present work is a comparative analysis of English particles, Bulgarian prefixes, and the telicity effects they induce. Three classes of verbs are

investigated: creation-consumption verbs, degree

achievements/accomplishments, and the special "eat-drink" class.

The results show that in Bulgarian, prefixes induce telicity regardless of

the nature of the verbal object, whereas in English telicity is built

compositionally. More specifically, English predicates telicity

depends on the type of the verb, the presence/absence of a particle, as well

as the nature of the object and its quantization properties. On the other

hand, the "eat/drink" class turns out to have similar

characteristics both in English and Bulgarian in that those verbs require

quantization of the object in both languages. Thus, I show crucial

differences as well as similarities in the telicity effects induced by

English particles and Bulgarian prefixes.