Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2008, Page 128

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Alexander Andrason
disappear and does not turn into a stabilized language, its variety, its
structure and its characteristics do not lose in significance. On the
contrary, the importance of this jargon remains enormous both for
the Icelandic studies as well as for language contact linguistics in
general.
In the next section I will briefly describe the main properties of the
SI construction vera búinn aó + infinitive, setting the stage for the
subsequent discussion of the characteristics of the PI BÚNA-con-
struction.
3. The Standard Iceiandic source of the BÚNA-construction
As pointed out above, the Pidgin Icelandic BÚNA-construction has its
obvious formal origin in the Standard Icelandic vera búinn að-con-
struction (B-perfect10) that consists of the verb vera ‘be’ (inflected in
person, number, and tense), the adjective/participle búinn (inflected in
number and gender), and the preposition or the infinitive marker að,11
together with the infinitive as the complement. Typical examples are
given in (2):
(2)a. Ég er búinn að kaupa miðann.
I be(lsg.pres.) finished(m.sg.) to buy(inf.) the-ticket
‘I have bought the ticket.’
b. Þær voru búnar að kaupa miðann.
they(f.pk) are(3pl.past) finished(f.pl.) to buy(inf.) the-ticket
‘They had bought the ticket.’
10 I will use the label chosen by Jóhannes Gísli Jónsson (1992:129-145), call-
ing the vera búinn ad-construction a perfect. The B-perfect is also labeled perfec-
tive construction (Jakub 1970:163) or resultative (Kress 1982:154-156). Finally, in
some Icelandic manuals and grammar books the name ‘perfective aspect’ lokið horf
is preferred (Jón Friðjónsson 1989:97-107 and Höskuldur Þráinsson 2005:363, 587,
615).
11 The author of this article will follow the convention used by Jóhannes Gísli
Jónsson (1992:129-145) who glossed his examples as “be finished to + infmitive”-
Jón Friðjónsson (1989:103) describes the B-perfect as the verb ‘be’ + participle búinn
+ að + infmitive.