Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2008, Page 87

Becoming Perfect: Observations on Icelandic vera búinn að 85
necessary to make m-adverbials (which require perfective aspect) pos-
sible with active atelic predicates in Swedish; the example in (60)
below requires the same context as the passives in (59):
(60) Hon klappade katten pá tvá minuter.
she petted the cat in two minutes
‘She managed to pet the cat within two minutes.’
On this account, the historical development of vera búinn að can be
viewed as a grammaticalization of a resultant state or, arguably, a (sta-
tive) perfective aspect. According to Wide (2002:211), the early
examples of vera búinn að with a perfect-like meaning do not neces-
sarily have resultative or universal readings but can express comple-
tion in a wider sense. In the present terminology, they have a resultant
state reading. Consider for instance the 16th century example in (61),
with the atelic verb brenna ‘bum’. It is expected that the modem con-
struction originates in this kind of examples, since the participle búinn
has preserved lexical meaning:20
(61) Þá búið var að brenna, féll í öskuog folskaðist allt saman
when finished was to bum fell in ash and subsided all together
‘When the buming had stopped evetything fell into ashes and
subsided’
(Biskupa sögur II, written in 1593; from Wide 2002:211)
Assuming that the participle búinn expresses a resultant state also in
oaodem Icelandic accounts for the similarities between the constmc-
tion with vera búinn að and certain stative passives, as well as for the
fact that búinn retains some lexical properties also in the perfect-like
constmction. The assumption is, however, problematic for an account
°f the universal reading. The universal perfect has been one of the key
arguments against the analysis of the perfect as resultant state con-
struction (see above). If the construction with vera búinn að express-
ln Old Icelandic, vera búinn + infinitive does not express resultativity or ante-
riority, but can be translated with ‘be ready or prepared to’ (see Mörður Ámason
1977, Wide 2002). The construction with vera búinn að occurs with a perfect-like
reading in the 16th century records (see Mörður Árnason 1977, Wide 2002:64).