Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2008, Page 66

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Ida Larsson
the state of the setting; that is, the participants have come to the point
where the adult has had enough (see Wide 2002:96). The result in (21)
is a state that follows from the event of the child falling often (falling
once would result in a different state), and it is understood from the
wider context of the discourse. With a definition of the resultative per-
fect this wide, there is nothing that excludes that they can be formed
with atelic events; the result in (20) and (21) clearly does not corre-
spond to the target state of a telic event:
(21) nú ertu búinn að detta svo ofl (0.2)
now are-you finished to fall so often
nú skaltu ekki detta meira
now shall-you not fall anymore
‘now you have fallen so oflen, now you shouldn’t fall any-
more (adapted from Wide 2002:96)
Compare also the example with vera búinn að in (22a) and the cor-
responding perfect with hafa in (22b). In (22a), the question is
whether Ingi has eaten recently, or, implicitly, if he needs something
to eat. The example in (22b), on the other hand, is an awkward ques-
tion, since it asks whether you have the experience of eating; it does
not make any claims about the present situation. Since the verb
borða ‘eat’ is atelic (i.e. does not specify an endpoint or a target
state), the difference between (22a) and (22b) cannot be understood
in terms of a distinction between a resultative and an experiential
perfect:
(22) a. Ingi minn, ertu búinn að borða? (ístal)
Ingi mine are-you fmished to eat
Tngi dear, have you eaten?’
b. #Hefur þú borðað?
have you eaten
‘Have you eaten?’
Notably, the wider definition of result state assumed by Jóhannes
Gísli Jónsson (1992) and Wide (2002), largely corresponds to Par-