telicity of nähdä, tietää and muistaa

[PäähäniSattuu]

When I was first learning Finnish, the direct object of nähdä, tietää and muistaa always confused me. It's sen but my intuition always said sitä. I picked up on the sen/sitä distinction relatively easy compared to most people but this never made sense to me. I later learnt this quality was called telicity which describes whether or not an action is a process with a defined point of completion. In any other language, to see, to know and to remember are atelic in nature. However what is and isn't telic depends on the language. For instance in English saying 'I built a house' is telic in nature and implies that one has finished building it. In my native Dutch, the literal translation 'Ik bouwde een huis' carries no such implication, it is atelic and the sentence in fact is the semantic translation of 'I was building a house'. It doesn't imply completion at all.

Now, there exists something called the telecity test to determine if a phrase is telic by what kind of adverb you can use with it, a distinction of 'do it within an hour' and 'do it for an hour'. In some cases phrases can be interpreted as both telic and atelic and the use of such adverbs resolves the ambiguity. 'I read a book' in English can be interpreted both telic and atelic. This ambiguity in Finnish is resolved by 'luen kirjaa' vs 'luen kirjan'. In English one can say 'I read a book for an hour' or 'I read a book within an hour'. In Finnish, saying either *'luen kirjaa tunissa' or *'luen kirjan tunnin ajan' is apparently not possible. That's why such adverbs test the telicity of a phrase.

Now, I read everywhere that nähdä, tietää and muistaa as exception take the direct object in the accusative case dispite being atelic but for my own feeling they are in fact telic. As I said above, not every phrase is telic in different languages when translated literally. For my sense 'näin sen tunnin ajan' sounds a bit weird. But this could also be because as a non native I over-regularize the language and have assimilated the principle that a direct object in the accusative implies a telic action even where it does not. So, I'd like to know from a native speaker which of the following phrases sound more natural:

näin sen tunnin ajan / näin sen tunnissa
tiesin sen tunnin ajan / tiesin sen tunnissa
muistin sen tunnin ajan / muistin sen tunnissa

Finnish is complicated man.

[jahasjahas]

An interesting topic!

näin sen tunnin ajan / näin sen tunnissa
"I saw it for an hour." / "It took me an hour to see it."

tiesin sen tunnin ajan / tiesin sen tunnissa
"I knew it for an hour." / "It took me an hour to know it."

muistin sen tunnin ajan / muistin sen tunnissa
"I remembered it for an hour." / "It took me an hour to remember it."

The "tunnin ajan" variants seem a bit more natural, but I think that's only because of the meaning of the word "tunti". If we replace it with "hetki", "näin sen hetkessä" ("It only took me a moment/second to see it"; "I saw it immediately.") makes perfect sense.

[PäähäniSattuu]

True, maybe the hour was a bit weirdly chosen, hour is just standard.

However, for the hypothesis of the telicity to succeed tunnin ajan should just never work. But let me phrase it like this, how do these work for you:

katsoin filmin tunnin ajan / katsoin filmin tunnissa

söin leivän tunnin ajan / söin leivän tunnissa

[jahasjahas]

Yep, in these examples "tunnissa" is the right choice, and "tunnin ajan" would require "katsoin filmiÄ" and "söin leiPÄÄ".

[PäähäniSattuu]

Ah yes, and tunnin ajan can still be used with näin sen hetken ajan?

In that case näin sen does seem to be atelic yes.

[AldenG]

I think your head post illustrates nicely how focusing on each specific verb instead of a bunch of general-purpose rules about how to know or guess which case to use in which kinds of situations, yields better results and less uncertainty -- especially with regard to partitive vs accusative. The average Joe or Jane, especially low-skilled immigrants, will probably do better with unnamed examples than with named grammatical attributes like telicity. But your main point that verb A occurs in phrase X (and Y and Z and Å and Ä and Ö as well) is going to give people more assurance and better chance of using any given verb correctly on the street.

[PäähäniSattuu]

I wouldn't say that, give a man a fish vs teaching him how to fish etc. Focussing on each specific verb is like learning the conjugation of a verb per verb instead of just remembering the pattern and repeating it. Imagine having to memorize the verbal forms per verb. In general when you speak a language, you assume every part of speech is regular until proven otherwise which is a much more effective technique since the vast majority are regular. If you have to learn it on a per verb basis you spend waaay too much time.

Language itself only works as virtue of it being filled with patterns. There is a reason the vast majority of things in every language are regular and creoles that did not have time yet to erode are highly regular. If someone just explained to me at the start of Finnish was telicity meant and that the accusative was telic and the partitive atelic I would've mastered this a lot sooner with the exception of those three verbs. People should always be taught the regular pattern before the exceptions.

[Rob A.]

I don't think you will have any trouble unscrambling these two sentences....one telic, the other atelic....

Using those poor, old bears again...

Ammuin kahta karhua.
Ammuin kaksi karhua.

Although the objects are both in the partitive which would immediately suggest atelic....obviously there is a bit more to consider....

Telicity and the Meaning of Objective Case

The paper discusses, near the beginning, some of the work of that well-known Finnish linguist, Paul Kiparsky...

[Sami-Is-Boss]

PaahaniSattuu might not have any problems, but I do - is the first one 'I shot at two bears' and the second 'I shot (dead) two bears'?

[Upphew]

PaahaniSattuu might not have any problems, but I do - is the first one 'I shot at two bears' and the second 'I shot (dead) two bears'?

Correct.

[dflorin]

Some more explanations here (with some Finnish examples):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telicity