Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2008, Page 88

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Ida Larsson
es a resultant state, we would expect the universal reading to be
unavailable, contrary to fact.
4.2 The universal reading
As noted in section 1 above, vera búinn að can have a universal read-
ing. Jóhannes Gísli Jónsson (1992) even argues that the example in
(62) only has the universal reading. That is, it necessarily asserts that
the state of being sick holds at the present:
(62) Róbert er búinn að vera veikur.
Robert is finished to be sick
‘Robert has been sick.’ (Jóhannes Gísli Jónsson 1992:136)
However, many speakers of modem Icelandic rather understand it as
a perfect of recent past; for them, it does not assert that Robert is sick
at the moment of speech but only that he has been sick lately, without
making an assertion about the present state. Following e.g. Iatridou et
al. (2001), I will therefore assume that the universal reading requires
a durative adverbial also with vera búinn að, as in (63):
(63) Síðan á mánudaginn er Róbert búinn að vera veikur.
since on the Monday is Robert finished to be sick
‘Since Monday, Robert has been sick.’
(Jóhannes Gísli Jónsson 1992:136)
Regardless of what reading is primary, an analysis of vera búinn að
must clearly account for the availability of the universal reading in
modem Icelandic. In order to do so, we need to take into account that
búinn can embed an infinitive with independent aspectual meaning; in
(64) , it embeds a progressive:
(64) að hún er búin að vera að gera einhver video (ístal)
that she is fínished to be to make some videos
‘that she has been making some videos’
Pancheva (2003) suggests that the universal perfect is a consequence
of the combination of perfect semantics and imperfective morpholo-