Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2008, Qupperneq 68

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Ida Larsson
2. Not a perfect
In languages like English, counterfactuals with pluperfect morpholo-
gy have a past tense reading, whereas preterite morphology yields a
present tense counterfactual; cf. (23) (Iatridou 2000:239 ff.):
(23) a. I wish I had had a car back then.
b. I wish I had a car at present. (Iatridou 2000:239)
Sentences which are normally disallowed in the pluperfect are per-
fectly fine in pluperfect counterfactuals where they have a past tense
and not a past perfect reading; cf. (24) (from Iatridou 2000:245):
(24) a. *Napoleon had been tall.
b. Napoleon was tall.
c. If Napoleon had been tall, he would have defeated Wellington.
(Iatridou 2000:245)
Icelandic pluperfects with hafa behave just like the English (but note
the (past) subjunctive form of the verb in the counterfactual in
Icelandic):
(25) a. *Hann hafði verið hár.
he had(ind.) been tall
b. Hann var hár.
he was tall
‘He was tall.’
c. Ef hann hefði verið hár, þá hefði hann unnið.
if he had(sbjnct.) been tall then had(sbjnct.) he won
‘If he had been tall, he would have won.’
Iatridou (2000) refers to the past morphology in counterfactuals as
fake past since it does not receive a temporal past interpretation. She
proposes that the morphology still makes a real contribution to the
counterfactual, namely the counterfactual semantics itself. The sug-
gestion is that past morphology does not directly encode past tense
semantics in languages such as Greek and English (and Icelandic), but
rather spells out a more abstract feature which can be utilised to ex-