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The Perfect Time Span: On the Present Perfect in German, Swedish and English (Linguistik Aktuell Linguistics Today) PDF

189 Pages·2008·3.03 MB·English
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The Perfect Time Span Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today (LA) Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today (LA) provides a platform for original monograph studies into synchronic and diachronic linguistics. Studies in LA confront empirical and theoretical problems as these are currently discussed in syntax, semantics, morphology, phonology, and systematic pragmatics with the aim to establish robust empirical generalizations within a universalistic perspective. General Editors Werner Abraham Elly van Gelderen University of Vienna / Rijksuniversiteit Arizona State University Groningen Advisory Editorial Board Cedric Boeckx Christer Platzack Harvard University University of Lund Guglielmo Cinque Ian Roberts University of Venice Cambridge University Günther Grewendorf Lisa deMena Travis J.W. Goethe-University, Frankfurt McGill University Liliane Haegeman Sten Vikner University of Lille, France University of Aarhus Hubert Haider C. Jan-Wouter Zwart University of Salzburg University of Groningen Volume 125 The Perfect Time Span. On the present perfect in German, Swedish and English by Björn Rothstein The Perfect Time Span On the present perfect in German, Swedish and English Björn Rothstein Universities of Stuttgart and Tübingen John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam / Philadelphia TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of 8 American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rothstein, Björn. The perfect time span : on the present perfect in German, Swedish and English / by Björn Rothstein. p. cm. (Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, issn 0166-0829 ; v. 125) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Languages, Modern--Tense. I. Title. PB159.R68 2008 415'.6--dc22 2008008201 isbn 978 90 272 5508 2 (Hb; alk. paper) © 2008 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O. Box 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands John Benjamins North America · P.O. Box 27519 · Philadelphia pa 19118-0519 · usa Table of contents Acknowledgements ix Abbreviations xi chapter 1 Preliminaries 1 1. Outline 1 2. Time and tense 4 3. On Reichenbach’s approach to tense 4 4. Different notions of the reference time 6 5. Why there is a reference time in the present perfect 13 6. On tense again 14 7. On the formal implementation of tense 15 8. Conclusion 21 chapter 2 The components of the perfect meaning 23 1. The present perfect 23 2. The German data 24 3. The Swedish data 27 4. The English data 29 5. Former approaches to the German present perfect 29 5.1 Introduction: Tense and aspect approaches to the perfect 29 5.2 Anteriority-approaches 31 5.3 ExtendedNow-theories 32 6. Former approaches to the Swedish present perfect 33 7. Former approaches to the English present perfect 34 8. A (new) ExtendedNow-analysis for the present perfect 34 9. Identifying the stative component 40 9.1 Introduction 40 9.2 The present perfect as a stative construction 41 9.3 The present perfect as a non-stative construction 46 9.4 Conclusion so far 48 9.5 Accounting for stative and non-stative uses 48 9.6 A short note on the pluperfect 51 vi The perfect time span: On the present perfect in German, Swedish and English 9.7 Conclusion 54 10. Why the present perfect differs cross-linguistically 55 11. The perfect conclusion 65 chapter 3 Adverbials and the perfect 67 1. Introduction 67 2. Prior analyses 68 3. The meaning of the present perfect 72 4. On temporal adverbials 74 5. On the present perfect puzzle 75 6. Conclusion 77 chapter 4 The inferential present perfect in swedish 79 1. Introduction 79 2. Former approaches 81 3. On the status of the inferential present perfect 82 3.1 The inferential present perfect is not a present perfect 82 3.2 The inferential present perfect is not a past tense 83 4. The inferential meaning of the present perfect 84 5. The meaning contribution of evidential markers 86 6. The inferential present perfect is an infinitival perfect 87 7. On parasitic morphology in Swedish 91 7.1 Parasitic morphology sheds light on architecture of grammar 91 7.2 Distributed morphology 92 7.3 An account to parasitic morphology in the framework of DM 96 8. Perfect parasitism in inferential contexts 101 9. The null modal hypothesis 105 10. The lost present perfect puzzle 106 11. DRT and DM 108 12. Conclusion 109 chapter 5 Perfect readings 111 1. Introduction 111 2. The meaning of the present perfect 113 3. The readings of the present perfect 114 4. The approach by Musan (1999, 2002) 121 5. Present perfect and event time modification 124 Table of contents vii 6. Preterite reading and situation type aspect (Aktionsart) 124 7. Present perfect in discourse 125 8. Present perfect that is followed by a present perfect/past tense 135 9. Present perfect that is followed by a present tense 138 10. The present perfect in a context without context 142 11. Universal and experiential readings of the present perfect 146 11.1 Introduction 146 11.2 Semantic vs. pragmatic accounts of the perfect perfect readings 147 11.3 Situation type aspect, adverbials and the perfect readings 149 11.4 The readings are context sensitive 152 12. Conclusion 155 chapter 6 Conclusion 159 References 167 Index 171 Acknowledgements A Vévé A couple of years ago, my first teacher in linguistics, Veronika Ehrich, suggested that I write a short term paper on the Swedish present perfect. Now, it has become a book (being brief has never been my strong point). I am very much indebted to her. This book is a revised version of my doctoral dissertation. I wish to thank Artemis Alexiadou and Hans Kamp, who supervised the thesis. I thank Sabine Iatridou, Roumyana Pancheva and Elena Anagnostopoulou for permitting me to use their scientific term as the title. I’d like to thank the editors of Linguistik Aktuell Werner Abraham and Elly van Gelderen for their comments and their help. Many thanks go to my perfect colleagues and friends at “my” graduate school as well as to the members of the linguistic faculties in Stuttgart. Thanks as well to the perfect audiences at the conferences and workshops in Basel, Stuttgart, Helsinki, Québec, Washington, Växjö, Göteborg, Geneva, Paris, Nijmegen, Cologne, Montréal, Tübingen, Bergen, Rome, Trondheim and in the Kleinwalsertal. During these confer- ences and my stay at Stuttgart, I had the opportunity to discuss my work with so many people that it is impossible to list all of them here. I’d therefore like to thank everyone who has contributed to this study in one way or another. I thank Kirsten Brock for the proof-reading. Thank you Achim, Artemis, Brenda, Carola, Elisabeth, Hans, Johannes, Karoline, Ljudmila, Marga, Martin, Nele, and Veronika for everything you have done for me. Merci à mes parents, my family, Anne-Lise, Karine, Nathalie, Olivier, Regine, Jakob and Erwaa, Martina, Christine, Christelle and Balu, les giraffes & co. My daughter Cor- alie (six months at that time) helped me a lot during the last stage of the thesis: her smile made me forget that not everything is as perfect as I would like it to be. Around the time I was starting work on the thesis, I met Véronique. We got mar- ried rather quickly. I would not have finished this study without her support. Being a linguist, it is hard to admit that I can’t find the words to express my gratitude and love.

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