Page "Telicity" Paragraph 1

One common way to gauge whether an English verb phrase is telic is to see whether such a phrase as in an hour, in the sense of " within an hour ", ( known as a time-frame adverbial ) can be applied to it.

Conversely, a common way to gauge whether the phrase is atelic is to see whether such a phrase as for an hour ( a time-span adverbial ) can be applied to it.

This can be called the time-span / time-frame test.

According to this test, the verb phrase built a house is telic, whereas the minimally different built houses is atelic: