On the telic senses of the Serbian verb <i>stići</i> and its French equivalent<i>arriver</i>

Abstract This article analyzes the specific temporal uses of the Serbian verb stići , when it denotes the act of overcoming a spatial obstacle, or reaching the end point of a movement at a predetermined time. The study examines the relationship between the spatial (basic) use of this verb and its derived telic sense, and describes the process of its grammaticalization, in which this lexeme loses its semantic and syntactic autonomy and becomes part of a complex predicate. The contrastive section of the study compares the non-spatial uses of stići with the corresponding uses of its French equivalent, the verb arriver .