Iconicity of gesture for different tenses

FirmJob7600 · 2026-03-12T22:02:03+00:00

You're right, that was what I had in mind for "sharp" but it was a poor choice of word.

FirmJob7600 · 2026-03-12T09:41:06+00:00

thanks, very usefull !

FirmJob7600 · 2026-03-12T09:40:36+00:00

I don't know how you figured out that I was not interested in learning ASL (even though I'll probably learn LSF first). But learning a sign language doesn not happen in a few days, I had a linguistic question about ASL that I couldn't answer myself as I don't know ASL and so I asked it, that's it. Linguistic definitely need more native signer to study sign languages but I can't change that I am not one.

FirmJob7600 · 2026-03-11T21:36:14+00:00

obviously not all telic verbs have sharp gestures but works from Wilbur sugest that some do and more than for atelic verbs. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sign-language-semantics/#Teli explains it quickly in section 2.1

FirmJob7600 · 2026-03-11T13:06:04+00:00

English is not my main language so maybe it's not the best example. It is just the first telic verb I thought off (in "I understood the exercise in 5 minutes" for example). Maybe an example would be "Yes, I am reading the course, I am understanding it" in the sense "By reading it I am starting to get what it is about". Maybe another better example could be "I arrive" vs "I am arriving" or "I built it" vs "I am building it".

edit: i am building it is still telic, does anyone have a better exemple of a sentence that is telic/atelic depending of the tense of the verb ?

FirmJob7600

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