This book studies the linguistic representation of events by examining the relevance of two salient event characteristics-- telicity and durativity-- to the grammatical system of natural language.

The study of events, and of event characteristics, is an important testing ground for theories on the boundary between extralinguistic and linguistic knowledge, and on the relation between semantics and syntax. Telicity and durativity are notions which have become increasingly influential in both the semantic and the syntactic, i.e., grammaticalized, representation of events.

The...