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
References (15)
References
Comrie, Bernard. 1976. Aspect: An Introduction to the Study of Verbal Aspect
and Related Problems. Cambridge: CUP.
Dahl, Östen & Wälchli, Bernhard. 2016. Perfects and iamitives: Two gram types in one
grammatical space. Letras de Hoje 51(3): 325. 

Declerck, Renaat, Reed, Susan & Cappelle, Bert. 2006. The Grammar of the English Tense System. A Comprehensive
Analysis [Topics in English Linguistics 60.1). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 

Dowty, David R. 1979. Word Meaning and Montague Grammar: The Semantics of
Verbs and Times in Generative Semantics and in Montague’s
PTQ. Dordrecht: Reidel. 

Iatridou, Sabine, Anagnostopoulou, Elena & Izvorski, Roumyana. 2003. Observations about the form and meaning of the
perfect. In Perfect Explorations [Interface Explorations 2], Artemis Alexiadou, Monika Rathert & Arnim von Stechow (eds), 153–204. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 

Jespersen, Otto. 1924. The Philosophy of Grammar. London: George Allen & Unwin.
Lewis, M. Paul, Simons, Gary F. & Fennig, Charles D. (eds). 2016. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 19th edn. Dallas TX: SIL International. <[URL]> (28 October 2020).
McCawley, James D. 1971. Tense and time reference in
English. In Studies in Linguistic Semantics, Charles J. Fillmore & D. Terence Langėndoen (eds), 96–113. New York NY: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
McCoard, Robert W. 1978. The English Perfect: Tense-choice and Pragmatic
Inferences. Amsterdam: North-Holland.
Nishiyama, Atsuko & Koenig, Jean-Pierre. 2010. What is a perfect state? Language 86(3): 611–646. 

Olsson, Bruno. 2013. Iamitives: Perfects in Southeast Asia and
Beyond. MA thesis, University of Stockholm. <[URL]> (13 February 2015).
Portner, Paul. 2003. The (temporal) semantics and (modal) pragmatics
of the perfect. Linguistics and Philosophy 26(4): 459–510. 

Thackeray, William Makepeace. 1862. The Four Georges. London: Smith, Elder and Co.
Visser, Fredericus Theodorus. 1963. An Historical Syntax of the English Language, Part 1:
Syntactical Units with One Verb. Leiden: Brill.
Cited by (2)
Cited by two other publications
Bernander, Rasmus, Antti Laine, Tim Roth & Lotta Aunio
Dahl, Östen
2022.
Perfects Across Languages.
Annual Review of Linguistics 8:1
► pp. 279 ff.

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 29 december 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.