Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.1992, Side 146

144
Jóhannes Gísli Jónsson
(28) a Jón er farinn til Boston.
John is gone to Boston
b Jón er búinn að fara til Boston.
John is finished to go to Boston
The difference between (28a) and (28b) is that (28a) can only be
uttered if John is in Boston or at least on his way to Boston at the
utterance time. In the first case, we clearly have a resultative reading.
However, (28b) is also resultative but in a broader sense of the word.
Thus, (28b) could be used to describe a situation where John is back
home but his trip to Boston has put him in a state of having fulfilled
some requirement. There are many other possible scenarios, but the
important thing to note is that (28b) cannot be used to indicate that John
is in Boston. Presumably, this is blocked because the be-construction
is used for that purpose.
REFERENCES
Abusch, Dorit and Mats Rooth. 1990. Temporal Adverbs and the English Perfect. NELS
20:1-15.
Bauer, Gero. 1970. The English ‘Perfect’ Reconsidered. Journal of Linguistics. 6:
189-198.
Bennett, Michael, and Barbara Hall Partee. 1978. Toward the Logic ofTense andAspect
in English. Indiana University Linguistics Club, Indianapolis.
Dahl, Östen. 1985. Tense and Aspect Systems. Basil Blackwell.
Dowty, David. 1979. Word Meaning and Montague Grammar. D. Reidel Publishing
Company, Dordrecht.
Friðjónsson, Jón. 1989. Samsettar myndir sagna. Málvísindastofnun Háskóla íslands,
Reykjavík.
Inoue, Kyoko. 1978. How many senses does the English Perfect Have? CLS 14:167"
178.
Kress, Bruno. 1982. Islandische Grammatik. Max Hueber Verlag, Leipzig.
Lakoff, Robin. 1970. Tense and its Relation to Participants. Language 46:838-849.
McCawley, James D. 1971. Tense and Time Reference in English. C.J. Fillmore and
D.T. Langendoen (eds.): Studies in Linguistic Semantics. Holt, Rinehart and Win'
ston, New York.
—. 1981. Notes on the English Present Perfect. Australian Journal of LinguisttcS
1:81-90.