Chapter 2
“Universal” readings of perfects and iamitives in typological
perspective
In Dahl &
Wälchli (2016), we investigate the relationship between
perfects and iamitives – i.e. items whose semantics combines
features of perfects and words like already – using
statistical techniques on data from a multilingual parallel corpus
of Bible texts. This paper looks at the same grammatical domain with
focus on so-called “universal readings” of perfects, several
different subtypes are identified and the cross-linguistic variation
of the distribution of perfects and iamitives as well as other kinds
of marking within them is studied. The types looked at are
combinations with adverbs labeled as duration-quantifying
(for three hours), left-boundary indicating
(since Monday), and universally quantifying
adverbials (always). An overt marking may be
already-related, a non-already-related perfect or non-perfect. In
duration-quantifying and left-boundary contexts, both
already-related and non-already-related markings are found with
variable frequency and zero-marking is common, but already-related
markings in general seldom appear together with perfects. Zero
marking is common. In universally quantifying contexts
already-related marking is rare, but languages in which
non-already-markings are otherwise optional or obligatory tend to
use them obligatorily here.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.The corpora
- 3.The gram sets
- 4.Universal readings of perfects
- 5.European perfects in duration-quantifying contexts
- 6.‘Already’ and iamitives in duration-quantifying contexts
- 7.Left boundary adverbials
- 8.Universally quantifying adverbials
- 9.Discussion and conclusions
-
Acknowledgements
-
Notes
-
Abbreviations
-
References
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