Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2008, Page 76

74 Ida Larsson
(38) Jón hefur aldrei hitað kaffí.
John has never heated coffee
‘John has never made coffee.’
There are no cases of aldrei ‘never’ with vera búinn að in the spoken
language corpora, but they are sometimes heard (Theódóra A.
Torfadóttir, p.c.), and they can be found on the Intemet. Without con-
text, examples like (39) and (40) are generally considered ungram-
matical by adult speakers (just like (37b) above), but they are accept-
ed to some extent by some (younger) speakers (Rósa Marta
Guðnadóttir and Scháfer 2006). In fact, some adult speakers can also
accept examples like (39) when given a context where the using of the
program is planned, and, typically, is a task that needs to be carried
out (Michael Scháfer, p.c.). Hence it might be the case that the differ-
ence between speakers is again partly a question of different sensitiv-
ity to contextual constraints rather than of pure grammaticality:
(39) Ég er aldrei búin að nota þetta forrit.
I am never fmished to use this program
‘I have never used this program.’
(40) a. að ég var i rauninni aldrei búin að fá neitt svar frá þeim
that I was in reality never finished to get any answer from them
‘that I had in reality never got any answer from them’
(drfreylitle.blogspot.com/2006_02_01 _drfreylitle_archive.html)
b. Ég var aldrei búin að sjá hana
I was never fínished to see her
‘I had never seen her.’
(http://ran.is/2003/12/h-h-h.htm)
As McCawley (1981) points out, it is difficult to distinguish between
negated resultative perfects and negated experiential perfects, since
the result cannot be negated without the process/transition being
negated at the same time Thus, (41) below does not mean that the
result of my breaking the ann does not hold at the moment of speech
but rather that the arm has not recently been broken — though it could
well have been broken in some more distant past. Following