Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2008, Síða 69

Becoming Perfect: Observations on Icelandic vera búinn að 67
press counterfactuality. This feature, which Iatridou calls Exclusion
feature, has the basic meaning given in (26), where x can range over
either times or worlds. When it ranges over times we get a past tense,
when it ranges over worlds we have a counterfactual (i.e., the worlds
we are talking about exclude the actual world). A counterfactual, then,
has the semantics of (27):
(26) T(x) excludes C(x).
T(x) stands for ‘Topic (x)’ (i.e., ‘the x that we are talking about’).
C(x) stands for ‘the x that for all we know is the x of the speaker’
(Iatridou 2000:246)
(27) Counterfactual: The topic worlds exclude the actual world.
(Iatridou 2000:247)
The past tense, on the other hand, has the semantics given in (28):
(28) Past tense: The topic time excludes the utterance time.
(Iatridou 2000:246)
Perfects can be analyzed as constructions that carry double tense mor-
phology; present perfects have both present tense morphology and
past tense morphology, whereas past perfects have two layers of past
niorphology (see e.g. Julien 2001, Larsson forthcoming). Hence, a
past perfect carries two Exclusion features; in a counterfactual, one
Exclusion feature ranges over worlds, but the other expresses a past
tense. A preterite form, on the other hand, only has one Exclusion fea-
tnre, and therefore gets a present tense reading in a counterfactual.
Unlike the /20/á-perfect, the construction with vera búinn að can-
n°t have a past tense reading in a past counterfactual; cf. the ungram-
rnatical past counterfactual in (29a) vs. (29b), which is fme, but has a
Present tense reading:
(29) a. *Ef hann væri búinn að baka köku í gær, þá væri nóg að borða.
if he were finished to bake cake yesterday then were enough to eat
O- Ef hann væri búinn að baka köku núna, þá væri nóg að borða.
if he were ftnished to bake cake now then were enough to eat
‘If he had baked a cake now, there would be enough to eat.’