Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2008, Page 58
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Ida Larsson
In Icelandic, both the perfect with hafa and the construction with vera
búinn að have an interpretation similar to the English perfect; cf. the
examples in (4) which both state that the event of eating precedes the
reference time specified by the adverbial. There are also differences
between the two constructions and the hafa-perfect in (4a) is, in fact,
slightly degraded or semantically odd for many speakers; we retum to
this below.
(4) a. ?Klukkan tvö hafði Fríða borðað eplið.
the clock two had Frida eaten the apple
‘At two o’clock, Frida had eaten the apple.’
b. Klukkan tvö var Fríða búin að borða eplið.
the clock two was Frida finished to eat the apple
‘At two o’clock, Frida had eaten the apple.’
In addition, the constmction with vera + active participle expresses a
similar meaning; in (5) the event of going precedes the time set by the
adverbial:
(5) Klukkan tvö var Fríða farin.
the clock two was Frida gone
‘At two o’clock, Frida had gone.’
When the auxiliary (hafa or vera) is in the present tense, none of three
constmctions allows the so-called positional past time adverbials like
í gær ‘yesterday’; see (6).5 Present tense adverbials like núna ‘now’,
on the other hand, are fine; cf. (7). In these respects, all three con-
stmctions behave like the English present perfect, and unlike the sim-
ple past tense; compare the English examples in (8) and (9): 6
5 Positional past time adverbials are possible in the so-called inferential perfect
with hafa. The inferential perfects express that the event is inferred by the speaker, and
not a fact (cf. Jóhannes Gísli Jónsson 1992, Höskuldur Þráinsson 2005:363); cf. (i);
(i) Jón hefur verið fullur þegar hann sagði þetta. (Höskuldur Þráinsson 2005:363)
John has been dmnk when he said this
‘John was probably dmnk when he said this.’
The inferential perfect is different froni the tme present perfect tense (see e.g.
Izvorski 1997 for discussion). Hence it is disregarded in the following.
6 There are cases where a scene-setting present tense adverbial like ‘now’ can be