Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2008, Page 55

IDA LARSSON
Becoming Perfect:
Observations on Icelandic vera búinn að
0. Introduction1
In Icelandic, there are three different constructions that roughly corre-
spond to the English perfect with have\ the perfect with hafa ‘have’ +
perfect participle, vera ‘be’ + resultative participle of an unaccusative
verb, and vera búinn að lit. ‘be finished to’ + infinitive:2’3
(l)a. Fríða hefur farið til Kína.
Frida has gone to China
‘Frida has gone to China.’
b. Fríða er farin til Kína.
Frida is gone to China
‘Frida has gone to China.’
1 This study would have been impossible without the patience and knowledge of
tny Icelandic informants. I am grateful to Þórhallur Eyþórsson, Anna Hannesdóttir,
Knstinn Jóhannesson, Jóhannes Gísli Jónsson, Theódóra Anna Torfadóttir and Hösk-
uldur Þráinsson. Thanks also to Östen Dahl, Elisabet Engdahl, Rósa Marta Guðnadóttir,
Bo Ralph, Michael Scháfer and Ásta Svavarsdóttir for help at various stages. 1 am grate-
ful for extensive comments Irom two anonymous reviewers and from the editor
Höskuldur Þráinsson. Needless to say, any remaining errors are my own responsibility.
Finally, I am indebted to Málvísindastofnun Háskóla íslands, Höskuldur Þráinsson and
STINT, The Swedish Foundation for Intemational Cooperation in Research and Higher
Education, who made possible my visit at the University of Iceland in the Fall 2006.
2 The relevant parts of the lcelandic examples are given in boldface. Authentic
examples are followed either by an Intemet address (for examples taken from the
Intemet) or by a reference to a spoken language corpus. The corpora are abbreviated
Alþingi (Discussions in Parliament), Ístal (Corpus of Spoken Icelandic) and Samtöl
(Conversations between Adolescents). They are available online (http://www.lexis.
hi.is/corpus/leit.pl).
3 I follow Jóhannes Gísli Jónsson (1992) and gloss vera búinn að as ‘be finished
to\ even though the construction is perfectly compatible with a reading where the
event holds at the reference time (see e.g. (1 lb) below).
Íslenskt mál 30 (2008), 53-92. © 2009 íslenska málfrœðifélagið, Reykjavík