Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2008, Page 78

76
lda Larsson
b. #Hefur þú borðað?
have you eaten
‘Have you eaten?’
As noted, the difference between the construction with vera búinn að
and the úaya-perfect in (44) cannot be accounted for in terms of a dis-
tinction between resultative and experiential perfects. Instead of relat-
ing to the extension of the event time, the difference arguably con-
cems the time span of which the assertion is made: the hafa-perfect
expresses that there is an event of eating at some point in the past,
whereas the construction with vera búinn að places the eating in the
recent past. If the construction with vera búinn að and the hafa-per-
fect more generally differs with regards to the duration of the asser-
tion time, we can account for the different behaviour of vera búinn að
with negation with ekki ‘not’ and aldrei ‘never’. Unlike ekki, aldrei
generally requires an assertion time that extends over all past times.
3.3 Iteration
As noted, resultative and universal readings are excluded in iterative
contexts. The construction with vera búinn að is, nevertheless, often
possible, as in (45):
(45) Skipið er búið að blása tvisvar.
the ship is fmished to whistle twice
‘The ship has whistled twice.’ (Kress 1982:154 ff.)
The interpretation of examples like (45) is, however, not completely
equivalent to the corresponding perfect with hafa, or to the English
translation with have. Instead, it has connotations that resemble those
of the examples with negation discussed above, where the require-
ment was that the negated event was planned or expected; (45) con-
veys that two specific events of whistling have taken place and not
just that the boat has whistled twice at some points in the past. The
most salient reading is that the whistlings have just preceded reference
time and that they have consequences bearing on the present (cf. Wide