Degree achievement verbs (cf. Dowty 1979, Abusch 1986, Hay, Kennedy & Levin 1999, Kennedy & Levin 2002, Kearns 2007, Ramchand 2008) are characterized by their ability to describe a gradual change of state. According to Rothstein (2008a), while a normal achievement involves a non-extended change from α to ¬α, a degree achievement involves a change in value on a scale (a set of points ordered along some dimension, e.g. size, length, etc., cf. Hay 1998, Kennedy & Levin 2002, Rothstein 2008a)49. As highlighted by Hay, Kennedy & Levin 1999, the basic semantic characteristics of degree achievement verbs is that their affected argument, as in the case of the Path object of a verb like eat (cf. 1.4.1.1.2), undergoes a change in some property (cf. also fn. 49). A significant part of degree achievement verbs is formed by deadjectival verbs (cf. Hay 1998, Ramchand 2008); according to Hay, Kennedy & Levin (1999), in the case of deadjectival degree achievement verbs, the change is related to the property associated with the meaning of the adjectival base.
One peculiarity of these verbs is that they display both telic and atelic behaviour according to standard diagnostics; this is the reason why L&RH (1995:172) state that, even though degree achievement verbs are verbs of change of state, nevertheless they are set apart from other verbs of change of state, since they do not necessarily entail the achievement of an endstate. According to Abusch (1986), the atelic sense of a deadjectival verb is ‘become A-er’, while the telic one is ‘become A’. L&RH
49 Kennedy and Levin (2002) point out that, like degree achievements, also other kind of verbs involve changes in the degree to which an object posses a gradable property, as for example directed motion verbs (e.g. the balloon ascended), and creation/destruction verbs (e.g. Kim ate rice/a bowl of rice). Moreover, while usually achievements and accomplishments, unlike states and activities, are associated with a change of state, there is not clear consensus on whether change of state is also involved in other situations. For example, Dowty (1979) distinguishes activities from achievements (single change of state) and accomplishments (complex change of state); however, according to him, activities also involve a change of state. The difference lies in the fact that while achievements and accomplishments involve a definite change of state over time, activities involve an indefinite change of state.
(1991:129-130) and Jackendoff (1996:331) share a similar view: they consider the change of state described by these verbs as a movement along a path constituted of degrees of a property indicated by the adjectival base. According to Jackendoff (1996), if the path has a boundary, reaching the property described by the adjective, the sentence is telic; if the path is unbounded, going on indefinitely in the direction described by the adjective, the sentence is atelic. Kennedy & Levin (2002) observe that verbs of gradual change have as a part of their meaning gradable properties; telicity is not determined by a lexical diacritic, as for example [±bounded] or by some morpho-syntactic feature. According to these authors, telicity is determined solely by the semantic properties of the degree of change.
There are different views on whether this ambiguity is related to the nature of the property of the scale denoted by the adjective or not. Hay, Kennedy & Levin (1999) propose that the kind of base adjective is crucial in determining the telicity of a degree achievement verb. Following Hay (1998), they divide adjectives into two subclasses: closed-range adjectives and open-range adjectives. Closed-range adjectives are those adjectives which have a scale with a maximal value, as e.g. full, empty, dry: in principle, for example, it is possible to think that something is so full that cannot be fuller. In contrast, open-range adjectives are those for which is not possible to find a maximal value on the scale, e.g. long, wide, short. According to Hay, Kennedy & Levin (1999), the two classes can be distinguished by the acceptability of modification by certain types of adverbials, such as completely, which is oriented to an endpoint: the bottle is completely empty vs. *the gap is completely widened50.
Hay, Kennedy & Levin (1999) propose that degree achievement verbs derived from closed-range adjectives normally behave as telic (The clothes are drying does not entail the clothes have dried), while degree achievement verbs derived from open- range adjectives normally behave as atelic (The snow is slowing entails the snow has
slowed). However, a measure phrase can provide an explicit bounded difference value
(i.e. the measure of the change undergone by the affected argument with respect to the
50 However, Kennedy and McNally (1999:178, fn.1) point out that modifiers like completely and totally have two different uses: they can refer to an endpoint or they can be used roughly as synonyms of very. Kearns (2007:42) makes the following example: I'm completely/totally uninterested in finances, and Bob is even less interested than me, where uninterested does not have a maximal value. In this case, completely modifies an open-scale expression and is not oriented to the upper bound of a property scale. According to Kearns (2007), in these contexts, completely is closer in force to unquestionably, definitely or indubitably rather than being a synonym of very. Therefore, Kearns questions that modification with completely can be a good test to distinguish open and closed-range adjectives.
179 subject in the property introduced by the adjectival base; cf. Jackendoff 1996, Tenny 1994), and thus no quantity implicature of completeness arises, regardless of the nature of the property scale (cf. Kearns 2007); the difference between open-range properties and closed-range properties in this case does not play a role. In other words, “when the difference value identifies a bound on the measure of change in the affected argument over the course of the event, the predicate is telic” (cf. Hay, Kennedy & Levin 1999:130), as in: Kim lengthened the rope five inches; they
widened the road 5 m.
Moreover, while deadjectival verbs based on closed-range adjectives, according to Hay, Kennedy & Levin (1999), have a ‘completely’ implicature (they assume that the most informative interpretation of a sentence like they straightened the rope is one in which the rope is straightened completely), this can be cancelled by adding a for- adverbial or an explicit denial, such as not completely (I strengthened the rope, but
not completely).
Furthermore, in particular collocations and contexts, verbs derived from open- range adjectives, which are usually atelic, may be associated with closed scales and behave telically: for example, in the tailor lengthened my pants, real-world knowledge imposes a conventional maximal length for pants. Hay, Kennedy & Levin (1999) assume a contextual telos also for a sentence like the soup cooled in ten
minutes; in this case, they claim that the insertion of an in-adverbial is possible
because the soup cooled is more informative on a telic interpretation: the soup cooled to some bounded degree, namely room temperature. To sum up, Hay, Kennedy & Levin (1999) propose that deadjectival verbs based on open range-adjectives are atelic, unless a bounded measure phrase is added or there is a contextual telos, in which case they are telic; in contrast, deadjectival verbs based on closed-range adjectives are telic, unless an adverbial or an explicit denial is added to cancel the ‘completely’ implicature.
Contrary to Hay, Kennedy & Levin (1999), Kearns (2007) argues that telicity in deadjectival degree achievement verbs is not dependent on the property nature of the scale. According to Kearns (2007), there are two kinds of telic sense for deadjectival verbs: an achievement sense and an accomplishment sense. The achievement sense is related to the state ‘become -er’. Kearns (2007) observes that all deadjectival verbs can express at least the change of state ‘become A-er’, which is entailed by all of the aspectual senses of a deadjectival verb; she terms it ‘comparative endstate’. Kearns
further observes that predicates which lexically entail an endstate are usually telic, and therefore one could conclude that all deadjectival verbs are telic, since they entail a comparative endstate. Actually, Bertinetto & Squartini (1995) make the same observation; they notice that comparative endstates occur in telic predicates, as e.g.
the temperature got colder in ten minutes, and therefore they claim that these change
of state verbs, which they term ‘gradual completion verbs’, are always telic, since they always entail a comparative endstate. Kearns (2007) notices that a verb like
widen used with in-adverbials (e.g. the gap widened in a few minutes) have a delay
reading, a characteristic feature of the achievement class, meaning ‘After a few minutes had passed the gap widened’. Moreover, when such a verb is used with a for- adverbial, it indicates the duration of the resultant state, e.g. the gap widened for ten
minutes (having widened, the gap was wider for a few minutes)51. Therefore, Kearns (2007) concludes that deadjectival verbs, in their comparative endstate sense, are telic. If the interpretation is durative, the denoted event consists of a series of minimal change achievements and is characterized as a process.
The other telic sense of deadjectival verbs, according to Kearns (2007), is the accomplishment sense, which is related to the state ‘become X’. Kearns (2007) points out that while deadjectival verbs like widen only have a comparative endstate, verbs like quiet, cool and clear have both the comparative endstate and a standard endstate, i.e. ‘X is A’. When they are modified by in-adverbials they can have either the delay reading or an event duration reading. Therefore, a sentence like the room quietened in
a few minutes can mean either ‘the room was becoming quieter throughout a period of
a few minutes, and at the end of that period the room was quiet’ (accomplishment, associated to the standard endstate; event duration) or ‘at the end of a few minutes the room became quieter’ (achievement, associated to the comparative endstate; event delay)52.
51 It should be noted that the use of for-adverbials is not always a diagnostics for atelicity; it can be used as a test for telicity as well, e.g. he left the country for two months (cf. Pustejovsky 1995).
52 Kearns (2007) also considers another reading of the sentence the room quietened in a few minutes, i.e. ‘At the end of a few minutes (during which the room was noisy) the room became quiet’, which has the event delay reading associated with achievements, but also the standard endstate reading associated with accomplishments. According to Kearns, examples like this should be considered as accomplishments. She notices that, even though a change of state transition can be considered as a single transition to an identifiable endstate (the comparative endstate), which can count as a telos, it is not uniquely specified: a whole series of transitions to comparative endstates can be expressed by the same predicate. This repeatability of the non-unique comparative endstate underlies the process interpretation of change of state verbs, e.g. the room quietened for a few minutes ‘throughout a period