Article published in:
World Englishes: New theoretical and methodological considerations
Edited by Elena Seoane and Cristina Suárez-Gómez
[Varieties of English Around the World G57] 2016
► pp. 113–142

Overlap and divergence – aspects of the present perfect in World Englishes

This study provides an analysis of the Present Perfect (PrPf; have + V-en) in World Englishes. To this end, I extract occurrences of the PrPf from the International Corpus of English and annotate them manually for various factors (such as semantics, Aktionsart, temporal adverbials). I analyze the distributions of these factors and define a central PrPf context, while I also explore a multidimensional aggregative approach as a means to establish measures of similarity between the different varieties. In addition, I present a measure of PrPf-friendliness and examine alternative surface forms appearing in perfect contexts. Eventually I relate the findings to existing models of World Englishes, whose applicability I critically review in the light of the findings for the feature under investigation.
Keywords: aggregative analysis, International Corpus of English, models of World Englishes, morphosyntax, present perfect
Published online: 25 May 2016
https://doi.org/10.1075/veaw.g57.06wer
Cited by

Cited by 1 other publications

Buschfeld, Sarah, Alexander Kautzsch & Edgar W. Schneider
2018.  In Modeling World Englishes [Varieties of English Around the World, G61], ► pp. 15 ff. Crossref logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 06 may 2021. 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.

References
Bardovi-Harlig, Kathleen
1997 Another piece of the puzzle: The emergence of the present perfect. Language Learning 47: 375–422. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bauer, Gero
1970 The English ‘Perfect’ reconsidered. Journal of Linguistics 6: 189–198. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Biber, Douglas, Johansson, Stig, Leech, Geoffrey, Conrad, Susan & Finegan, Edward
1999 Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Harlow: Longman.Google Scholar
Biber, Douglas & Conrad, Susan
2009 Register, Genre, and Style. Cambridge: CUP. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bongartz, Christiane M. & Buschfeld, Sarah
2011 English in Cyprus: Second language variety or learner English? In Exploring Second-Language Varieties of English and Learner Englishes: Bridging a Paradigm Gap [Studies in Corpus Linguistics 44], Joybrato Mukherjee & ­Marianne Hundt (eds), 35–54. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bowie, Jill & Aarts, Bas
2012 Change in the English infinitival perfect construction. In The Oxford Handbook of the History of English, Terttu Nevalainen & Elizabeth Closs Traugott (eds), 200–210. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Bowie, Jill, Wallis, Sean & Aarts, Bas
2013 The perfect in spoken British English. In The Verb Phrase in English: Investigating Recent Language Change with Corpora, Bas Aarts, Joanne Close, Geoffrey Leech & Sean Wallis (eds), 318–350. Cambridge: CUP. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Brinton, Laurel J.
1988 The Development of English Aspectual Systems: Aspectualizers and Post-Verbal Particles. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
Comrie, Bernard
1976 Aspect. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
Davydova, Julia
2011 The Present Perfect in Non-Native Englishes: A Corpus-Based Study of Variation. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Edwards, Alison & Laporte, Samantha
2015 Outer and Expanding Circle Englishes: The competing roles of norm orientation and proficiency levels. English World-Wide 36(2): 135–169. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Elsness, Johann
1997 The Perfect and the Preterite in Contemporary and Earlier English. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2009 The present perfect and the preterite. In One Language, Two Grammars? Differences between British and American English, Günther Rohdenburg & Julia Schlüter (eds), 228–245. Cambridge: CUP. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Filppula, Markku
2004 Irish English: Morphology and syntax. In A Handbook of Varieties of English, Vol. 2: Morphology & Syntax, Bernd Kortmann, Edgar W. Schneider, Kate Burridge, Rajend Mesthrie & Clive Upton (eds), 73–101. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
Fuchs, Robert & Gut, Ulrike
2016 Register variation in intensifier usage across Asian Englishes. In Discourse-Pragmatic Variation and Change in English: New Methods and Insights, Heike Pichler (ed.). Cambridge: CUP. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Gries, Stefan T. & Deshors, Sandra C.
2015 EFL and/vs. ESL? A multi-level regression modeling perspective on bridging the paradigm gap. International Journal of Learner Corpus Research 1(1): 130–159. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hoffmann, Thomas & Siebers, Lucia
(eds) World Englishes – Problems, Properties and Prospects Varieties of English Around the World G40 Amsterdam John Benjamins Crossref
Huddleston, Rodney
2002 The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
Hundt, Marianne
2009 Global feature – local norms? A case study on the progressive passive. In Hoffmann & Siebers (eds), 287–308.Google Scholar
Hundt, Marianne & Biewer, Carolin
2007 The dynamics of inner and outer circle varieties in the South Pacific and Asia. In Corpus Linguistics and the Web, Marianne Hundt, Nadja Nesselhauf & Carolin Biewer (eds), 249–269. Amsterdam: Rodopi. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hundt, Marianne & Smith, Nicholas
2009 The present perfect in British and American English: Has there been a change, recently? ICAME Journal 33: 45–63.Google Scholar
Hundt, Marianne & Vogel, Katrin
2011 Overuse of the progressive in ESL and learner Englishes – fact or fiction? In Exploring Second-Language Varieties of English and Learner Englishes: Bridging a Paradigm Gap [Studies in Corpus Linguistics 44], Joybrato Mukherjee & Marianne Hundt (eds), 145–165. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Huson, Daniel H. & Bryant, David
2006 Application of phylogenetic networks in evolutionary studies. Molecular Biology and Evolution 23(2): 254–267. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kachru, Yamuna & Nelson, Cecil L.
2006 World Englishes in Asian Contexts. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.Google Scholar
Klein, Wolfgang & Vater, Heinz
1998 The perfect in English and German. In Typology of Verbal Categories, Leonid I. Kulikov & Heinz Vater (eds), 215–235. Tübingen: Niemeyer. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kortmann, Bernd & Lunkenheimer, Kerstin
(eds) 2013 The Electronic World Atlas of Varieties of English. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. http://​ewave​-atlas​.org (16 September 2014).Google Scholar
Kortmann, Bernd & Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt
2009 World Englishes between simplification and complexification. In World Englishes – Problems, Properties and Prospects [Varieties of English Around the World G40], Thomas Hoffmann & Lucia Siebers (eds), 265–285. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2011 Parameters of morphosyntactic variation in World Englishes: Prospects and limitations of searching for universals. In Linguistic Universals and Language Variation, Peter Siemund (ed.), 264–290. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kortmann, Bernd & Wolk, Christoph
2012 Morphosyntactic variation in the anglophone world: A global perspective. In The Mouton World Atlas of Variation in English, Bernd Kortmann & Kerstin Lunkenheimer (eds), 906–936. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Liszka, Sarah A.
2003 The Development of Tense and the Present Perfect in Second Language English. PhD dissertation, University of Essex.
Lunkenheimer, Kerstin
2012 Tense and aspect. In Areal Features of the Anglophone World, Raymond Hickey (ed.), 329–353. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Mair, Christian
2013 The World System of Englishes: Accounting for the transnational importance of mobile and mediated vernaculars. English World-Wide 34(3): 253–278. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
McCoard, Robert W.
1978 The English Perfect: Tense-Choice and Pragmatic Inferences. Amsterdam: North-Holland.Google Scholar
Miller, Jim
2000 The perfect in spoken and written English. Transactions of the Philological Society 98(2): 323–352. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Mindt, Dieter
2000 An Empirical Grammar of the English Verb System. Berlin: Cornelsen.Google Scholar
Modiano, Marko
1999 Standard English(es) and educational practices for the world’s lingua franca. English Today 15(4): 3–13. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Mukherjee, Joybrato & Schilk, Marco
2012 Exploring variation and change in New Englishes: Looking into the International Corpus of English (ICE) and beyond. In The Oxford Handbook of the History of English, Terttu Nevalainen & Elizabeth Closs Traugott (eds), 189–199. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Nelson, Gerald
1996 The design of the corpus. In Comparing English Worldwide: The International Corpus of English, Sidney Greenbaum (ed.), 27–35. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Portner, Paul
2003 The (temporal) semantics and (modal) pragmatics of the perfect. Linguistics and Philosophy 26: 459–510. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Quirk, Randolph, Greenbaum, Sidney, Leech, Geoffrey & Svartvik, Jan
1985 A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. Harlow: Longman.Google Scholar
Sand, Andrea
1999 Linguistic Variation in Jamaica: A Corpus-Based Study of Radio and Newspaper Usage. Tübingen: Narr.Google Scholar
2005 The effects of language contact on the morphosyntax of English. In Proceedings Anglistentag 2004 Aachen, Lilo Moessner & Christa M. Schmidt (eds), 449–460. Trier: WVT.Google Scholar
Schlüter, Norbert
2002 Present Perfect: Eine korpuslinguistische Analyse des englischen Perfekts mit Vermittlungsvorschlägen für den Sprachunterricht. Tübingen: Narr.Google Scholar
Schneider, Edgar W.
2000 Feature diffusion vs. contact effects in the evolution of New Englishes: A typological case study of negation patterns. English World-Wide 21(2): 201–230. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2007 Postcolonial English: Varieties around the World. Cambridge: CUP. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2012 Exploring the interface between World Englishes and second language acquisition – and implications for English as a lingua franca. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca 1(1): 57–91. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2014 New reflections on the evolutionary dynamics of world Englishes. World Englishes 33(1): 9–32. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Schneider, Gerold
2012 ‘Off with their heads’: Profiling TAM in ICE corpora. In Mapping Unity and Diversity World-Wide: Corpus-Based Studies of New Englishes [Varieties of English around the World G43], Marianne Hundt & Ulrike Gut (eds.), 1–34. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Schreier, Daniel
2010 The consequences of migration and colonialism, II: Overseas varieties. In Language and Space: An International Handbook of Linguistic Variation. Theories and Methods, Peter Auer & Jürgen E. Schmidt (eds), 451–467. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
2012 Varieties resistant to standardization. In Standards of English: Codified Varieties around the World, Raymond Hickey (ed.), 354–368. Cambridge: CUP. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Scott, Mike
2011 WordSmith Tools. Liverpool: Lexical Analysis Software.Google Scholar
Seoane, Elena & Suárez-Gómez, Cristina
2013 The expression of the perfect in South-East Asian Englishes. English World-Wide 34(1): 1–25. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Suárez-Gómez, Cristina & Seoane, Elena
2013 “They have published a new cultural policy that just come out”: Competing forms in spoken and written New Englishes. In English Corpus Linguistics: Variation in Time, Space and Genre, Kristin Bech & Gisle Andersen (eds), 163–182. Amsterdam: Rodopi. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt & Wolk, Christoph
2011 Holistic corpus-based dialectology. Brazilian Journal of Applied Linguistics 11(2): 561–592.Google Scholar
Van Herk, Gerard
2008 Letter perfect: The present perfect in early African American correspondence. English World-Wide 29(1): 45–69. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
van Rooy, Bertus
2009 The shared core of the perfect across Englishes: A corpus-based analysis. In World Englishes – Problems, Properties and Prospects [Varieties of English Around the World G40], Thomas Hoffmann & Lucia Siebers (eds), 309–330.Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Vanneck, Gerard
1958 The colloquial preterite in Modern American English. Word 14(2/3): 237–242. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Vendler, Zeno
1957 Verbs and times. The Philosophical Review 66(2): 143–160. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
1967 Linguistics in Philosophy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Weinrich, Harald
2001 Tempus: Besprochene und erzählte Welt. München: Beck.Google Scholar
Werner, Valentin
2013 Temporal adverbials and the present perfect/past tense alternation. English World-Wide 34(2): 202–240. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2014 The Present Perfect in World Englishes: Charting Unity and Diversity. Bamberg: University of Bamberg Press.Google Scholar
Forthcoming. The present perfect as a core feature of World Englishes. In Changing English: Global and Local Perspectives Berlin
Werner, Valentin, Seoane, Elena & Suárez-Gómez, Cristina
(eds) 2016 Re-assessing the Present Perfect [Topics in English Linguistics]. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Winford, Donald
1993 Variability in the use of perfect have in Trinidadian English: A problem of categorical and semantic mismatch. Language Variation and Change 5: 141–187. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Wright, Susan
1986 Tense, Aspect and Text: Processes of Grammaticalization in the History of the English Auxiliary. PhD dissertation, University of Cambridge.
Wynne, Terence
2000 The Present Perfect: A Corpus-Based Investigation. PhD dissertation, University of Stirling.
Yao, Xinyue
2014 The Present Perfect in English: Meaning, Interpretation, and Use. PhD dissertation, University of New South Wales.
Yao, Xinyue. & Collins, Peter
2012 The present perfect in World Englishes. World Englishes 31(3): 386–403. CrossrefGoogle Scholar