Boundedness (linguistics)
Encyclopedia
In linguistics
, boundedness is an aspectual
feature that describes a situation as having a definite beginning or end, or both, not as continuing indefinitely. Thus the clause "I ate fish" describes a unitary, bounded action, as it implies both the beginning ("I started eating fish") and the end ("I finished eating fish"). The clause "I was eating" does not express a bounded action, because the verb form does not express either the beginning or the end.
Similarly, "I set off for home" and "I arrived home" present the action as bounded, whereas "I was going home" and "I was at home" do not.
s express boundedness.
Boundedness is characteristic of perfective aspect
s such as the Ancient Greek
aorist
and the Spanish
preterite
. The simple past of English commonly expresses a bounded event ("I found out"), but sometimes expresses, for example, a stative
("I knew").
The perfective aspect often includes a contextual variation similar to an inchoative aspect or verb
, and expresses the beginning of a state
.
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
, boundedness is an aspectual
Grammatical aspect
In linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb is a grammatical category that defines the temporal flow in a given action, event, or state, from the point of view of the speaker...
feature that describes a situation as having a definite beginning or end, or both, not as continuing indefinitely. Thus the clause "I ate fish" describes a unitary, bounded action, as it implies both the beginning ("I started eating fish") and the end ("I finished eating fish"). The clause "I was eating" does not express a bounded action, because the verb form does not express either the beginning or the end.
Similarly, "I set off for home" and "I arrived home" present the action as bounded, whereas "I was going home" and "I was at home" do not.
Aspects
Certain grammatical aspectGrammatical aspect
In linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb is a grammatical category that defines the temporal flow in a given action, event, or state, from the point of view of the speaker...
s express boundedness.
Boundedness is characteristic of perfective aspect
Perfective aspect
The perfective aspect , sometimes called the aoristic aspect, is a grammatical aspect used to describe a situation viewed as a simple whole, whether that situation occurs in the past, present, or future. The perfective aspect is equivalent to the aspectual component of past perfective forms...
s such as the Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
aorist
Aorist (Ancient Greek)
In the grammar of Ancient Greek, including Koine, the aorist |voices]].-Terminology:In traditional grammatical terminology, the aorist is a "tense", a section of the verb paradigm formed with the same stem across all moods...
and the Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
preterite
Preterite
The preterite is the grammatical tense expressing actions that took place or were completed in the past...
. The simple past of English commonly expresses a bounded event ("I found out"), but sometimes expresses, for example, a stative
Stative verb
A stative verb is one that asserts that one of its arguments has a particular property . Statives differ from other aspectual classes of verbs in that they are static; that is, they have undefined duration...
("I knew").
The perfective aspect often includes a contextual variation similar to an inchoative aspect or verb
Inchoative verb
An inchoative verb, sometimes called an "inceptive" verb, shows a process of beginning or becoming. Productive inchoative infixes exist in several languages, including Latin and Ancient Greek, and consequently some Romance languages. Not all verbs with inchoative infixes have retained their...
, and expresses the beginning of a state
Stative verb
A stative verb is one that asserts that one of its arguments has a particular property . Statives differ from other aspectual classes of verbs in that they are static; that is, they have undefined duration...
.