Aspect and boundedness in English and Romanian

Abstract

This paper deals with the interaction of verbal aspect and the type of verb situation (Aktionsart) by analyzing the influence of semantic characteristics such as stativity, duration and telicity on aspect in English and Romanian. The paper argues that aspect is related to boundedness in the sense that perfective aspect “binds” the situation which has a goal, while imperfective aspect does not. Thus the semantic notion of boundedness provides a more detailed and deeper analysis of situations with the distinctive feature [+ goal] by pointing out whether the goal was actually reached or not.

Keywords

• aspect
• aktionsart
• boundedness
• goal