Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði


Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.1992, Page 134

Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.1992, Page 134
132 Jóhannes Gísli Jónsson to have to rely on what I remember from reading it in high school. On its own, a sentence like (3) is most naturally understood as an existential perfect according to McCawley, but embedded in a context like (4) it is clearly to be understood as a resultative perfect. These examples demonstrate the close affinity between existential and resultative perfects and thus cast some doubt on the usefulness of this distinction. In fact, McCawley (1981) concludes that the resultative perfect is nothing more than the existential perfect plus an implicature about the present effect of a past event. This is a natural conclusion for English, but as we will see the distinction between existential and resultative perfects plays an important role in the use of the two perfect types in Icelandic. 13 Aspectual classes Another important factor in the use of the present perfect is the aspectual class of the main verb. For our purposes it is enough to distinguish between event verbs and state verbs.3 These two classes differ e.g. in that only the former can occur in the progressive: (5) a John is painting the house. (event) b *John is knowing the answer. (state) Perfects of event verbs can be either existential or resultative as shown in (6): (6) John has painted the house. Whether (6) is interpreted as an existential or a resultative perfect depends on the context. On the other hand, (6) cannot be a universal 3 Process verbs are ignored here because they are known to be strange in the non- progressive perfect: (i) John has run (since 7.00). As noted by Mittwoch (1988), run in (i) must be interpreted as an event verb and not as a process verb. For more discussion on the aspectual classes of verbs see e.g. Dowty (1979).
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Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði

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