Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2008, Side 57

Becoming Perfect: Observations on Icelandic vera búinn að 55
1. The different meanings of the perfect
The perfect tense is ofiten said to express the relevance of a past event
to a later time (see e.g. Comrie 1976:52). Consider the difference
between the simple past and the past perfect in (2) below.
(2) a. At two o’clock, Frida ate an apple.
b. At two o’clock, Frida had eaten an apple.
In both examples is the event of eating an apple anterior to the speech
time. However, in the simple past the adverbial at two o ’clock gives
the time of the eating, whereas in the past perfect it specifíes a time
to which the eating is anterior. In this way, the past perfect involves
three times: the moment of speech (which lies after two o’clock), the
time of the eating event (which lies before to two o’clock) and a third
time (two o’clock). Reichenbach (1947) terms this third time the ref-
erence time. Hence, whereas the simple past places the event time
before the time of speech, the perfect places it before the reference
time. In the present perfect, the speech time and the reference time
coincide, whereas in the past perfect, the reference time precedes the
speech time. In this respect, the past perfect involves two relations of
anteriority where the simple past and the present perfect only involve
one.
The tenses can be represented as in (3), where E is the event time,
R the reference time and S the time of speech; a comma represents
coincidence (cf. e.g. Reichenbach 1947, Homstein 1990, Giorgi and
Pianesi 1997).
(3) a. The present tense (e.g. she lives here now)\
■---------S, E-»
b. The simple past (e.g. she lived here then):
-----E----S-»
c. The present perfect (e.g. she has lived here before):
-----E----S, R-»
d. The past perfect (e.g. she had lived here before then):
-----E----R------S^