Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2008, Page 129

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The BÚNA-construction in Pidgin Icelandic
As indicated here, there is considerable inflection and agreement in
the B-perfect, i.e. person and number agreement and tense inílection
in the auxiliary ‘be’ (er vs. voru) and gender and number agreement
the participle/adjective (búinn vs. búnar). As we shall see below, all
of this is lost in the PI BÚNA-construction.
The B-perfect is already partially grammaticalized and even
though it is a direct descendent of a lexical periphrasis, its meaning is
not a simple sum of all lexemes that form it. Put differently, it does
not mean literally ‘I am fínished with doing something’. As far as the
meaning and function are concemed, and whatever label one chooses
(perfect, resultative, perfective, perfective aspect), the vera búinn að-
construction can for instance be an expression of the so-called resul-
tative (3a) and universal (3b) perfects. According to Jóhannes Gísli
Jónsson (1997:142, 145), these two main functions may be illustrated
by the following examples (in the following, morphological cate-
gories of the inflected forms will only be specified in the glosses when
they are particularly relevant and not easily deductable from the Eng-
bsh forms):
(3) a. Jón er búinn að týna lyklunum.
John is finished(m.sg.) to lose(inf.) the-keys
‘John has lost the keys.’
b. Jón er búinn að þekkja Maríu síðan 1980.
John is finished(m.sg.) to know(inf.) Mary since 1980
‘John has known Mary since 1980.’
Interestingly, the B-perfect is incompatible with the existential mean-
lng, contrary to the úq/a-perfect (Jóhannes Gísli Jónsson 1992:136):
(4) a. *ET er besta mynd sem ég er nokkur tímann búinn að sjá.
ET is best movie that I am any time fínished(m.sg.) to see(inf.)
b. ET er besta mynd sem ég hef nokkum tímann séð.
EG is best movie that I have any time seen(past part.)
‘ET is the best movie that I have ever seen.’
Moreover, the B-perfect (with the auxiliary vera ‘be’ in the present
tense) cannot refer to explicit past events and thus display preterite