Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2008, Page 61

Becoming Perfect: Observations on Icelandic vera búinn að 59
(11 )a. Fríða hefur verið héma í viku.
Frida has been here in week
‘Frida has been here for a week.’
b. Fríða er búin að vera héma í viku.
Frida is finished to be here in week
‘Frida has been here for a week.’
In the following the focus is on the distinction between the resultative
and the experiential reading; we retum to the universal reading in sec-
tion 4.2 below. Importantly, the resultative perfect, as it is understood
here, requires a telic predicate, or more precisely a predicate that spec-
ifies a target state. The tenn target state (from Parsons 1990) is used
to refer to the state which a telic event leads to and which is specified
by the verb phrase; it should not be confused with resultant state
which is a state that follows from any kind of event (also atelic
events); see (12). Parsons (1990) suggests that all perfects express
resultant states, but not necessarily target states (cf. also e.g. Giorgi
and Pianesi 1997, Kratzer 2000).
(12)a. Resultant state:
“For every event e that culminates, there is a corresponding
state that holds forever after. [...] If Mary eats lunch, then
there is a state that holds forever after: the state of Mary’s hav-
ing eaten lunch.”
b. Target state:
“It is important not to identify the Resultant-state of an event
with its ‘target’ state. If I throw a ball onto the roof, the target
state of this event is the ball’s being on the roof, a state that
may or may not last for a long time” (Parsons 1990:234f.).
The distinction between the experiential and resultative reading
accounts for the distinction between hafa and vera with unaccusative
verbs lika koma ‘come’ and fara ‘go’. For a resultative reading, a con-
struction with vera + participle is generally required (or at least much
preferred). Hence, the example in (la) above (repeated as (13a)
below) expresses that there is a past event of Frida’s going to China,