| description |
Jan-Wouter Zwart. 2008. Almost perfect: some notes on the present perfect puzzle.
In Kees Dekker, Alasdair A. MacDonald, and Hermann Niebaum, eds., Northern voices: essays on Old Germanic and related topics, offered to Professor Tette Hofstra (Germania Latina VI). Leuven: Peeters. Pp. 399-404. Mediaevalia Groningana New Series, Vol. 11. |
| type | Festschrift article |
| ID | 2008a | 133 | April 25, 2007 |
| origin | Invited contribution to the Festschrift produced at the occasion of the retirement of Tette Hofstra, professor of Old Germanic at the University of Groningen. Spin-off of research into the tense of infinitives, inspired by Janneke ter Beek's dissertation research and by Anna-Lena Wiklund's dissertation. |
| keywords | tense; aspect; perfectivity; present perfect puzzle; Dutch vs. English; infinitives |
| summary | Discusses the question why the perfect in Dutch, but not in English, may be combined with past denoting adverbials (the 'present perfect puzzle', cf. Klein in Language 1992). The perfect in Dutch (unlike English) cannot be used to describe a situation/event that holds at the here and now (U-perfect), so that no clash with past denoting adverbials arises. In infinitives, the perfect may be the morphological realization of past tense, again avoiding a clash with past denoting adverbials. |
| related |
full text Publications: 131 Presentations: TIN-dag 02/2007; CGSW 06/2007 |
