Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2008, Page 74

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Ida Larsson
for different speakers and there are sometimes also differences in
grammaticality judgements. When asked to choose between hafa and
vera búinn að, younger speakers prefer vera búinn að more often than
older speakers do. As far as I know, there is, however, no variation
between speakers with regard to the acceptability of vera búinn að in
past counterfactuals.
In the following, we consider contexts where /zaya-perfects are pre-
ferred, given the distribution in the spoken language corpora, and
where the two constructions have slightly different semantics. We
look in tum at negation, iteration, and at verbs that express instanta-
neous transitions (achievements like ‘arrive’ or ‘quit’).
3.2 Negation
In negated perfects, hafa is preferred as shown in Table 2.
% Vera búinn að
in negated perfects
The Corpus of Spoken Icelandic, ístal (1999-2000) 14% (27/188)
Discussions in Parliament, Alþingisumræður (2004-2005) 2% (1/56)
Conversations between Adolescents, Samtöl (2006) 16% (5/32)
Table 2: Perfects with hafa and vera búinn að with negation.
The cases with vera búinn að + negation typically involve telic events,
as in (35). The connotation is often that the result state does not hold
yet but is planned or expected to hold at some point. The examples in
(35) could in fact be considered negated resultative perfects, rather
than negated experiential perfects:
(35)a. ég er ekki búin að finna námið
I am not fínished to find the studies
sem mig langar að eyða þrjú ár í (Samtöl)
that me wish to spend three years in
‘I have not found the studies that I wish to spend three years
on’