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The aspectual notion of telicity is connected with prototypical transitivity. Traditionally speaking, transitivity is understood as a global transfer of an activity from an Agent to a Patient, carrying out a number of effects on the Patient. Dating from the work by Hopper & Thompson (1980), this traditional notion of transitivity has been analyzed into the various parameters displayed in Table 3. The higher the degree reached by each parameter in Table 3, the higher or the more prototypical is the transitivity of a certain sentence.

TRANSITIVITY
	HIGH	LOW
(A) PARTICIPANTS	2 or more participants, A and O	1 participant
(B) KINESIS	action	non-action
(C) ASPECT (ACTIONALITY)	telic	atelic
(D) PUNCTUALITY	punctual	non-punctual
(E) VOLITIONALITY	volitional	non-volitional
(F) AFFIRMATION	affirmative	negative
(G) MODE	realis	irrealis
(H) AGENCY	A high in potency	A low in potency
(I) AFFECTEDNESS OF O	O totally affected	O not affected
(J) INDIVIDUATION OF O	O highly individuated	O non-individuated

Tab. 3: Hopper & Thompson’s parameters of transitivity (adapted from Hopper & Thompson 1980: 252)2

Among such parameters, telicity (parameter (c), highlighted in grey in Table 3) also plays a role, which is explained in the following terms: “An action viewed from its endpoint, i.e. a telic action, is more effectively transferred to a Patient than one not provided with such an endpoint. In the telic sentence I ate up, the activity is viewed as completed, and the transferral is carried out in its entirety; but in the atelic I am eating it, the transferral is only partially carried out” (Hopper & Thompson 1980: 252). In addition, with telic predicates, given the entirety of transferral, the object is also strongly affected (parameter (i)), and individuated (parameter (j)). Both completeness and individuation in turn contribute to linking telicity and transitivity with topicality, as argued in Viti (2008a, 2008b). This linkage is crucial to account for the pragmatic properties of and the grammaticalization undergone by ancient Indo-European preverbs, which find a thorough general discussion in Chapter 3, language-specific treatments in Chapters from 4 to 7, and a summary in Chapter 8.