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

189 Pages·2008·3.03 MB·English

by  Bjorn Rothstein

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
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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.