Abstract
This paper proposes a new look at the so-called ‘present-perfect puzzle’. I suggest that it is in fact part of a bigger problem, which also involves simple past tenses. I argue that present perfects compete with simple past tenses, and that the distribution of these tenses shows signs of the impact of this competition. The outcome of the competition is argued to be heavily dependent on which of the two tense-forms is the default. A pragmatic theory is proposed which accounts for the reduced distribution of the present perfect in languages like English and (American) Spanish, and the reduced distribution of the simple past tense in languages like French and German.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Alexiadou, A., Rathert, M., von Stechow, A. (eds) (2003) Perfect explorations. Mouton de Gruyter. G. Schaden, Berlin
Arnauld, A., & Lancelot, C. (1754). Grammaire générale et raisonnée. Paris: Prault fils l’aîné, Available at http://gallica.bnf.fr.
Benveniste, E. (1966/1974). Problèmes de linguistique générale I + II. Paris: Gallimard.
Burgos, D. (2004). Anteriority marking in British English, standard German and Argentinean Spanish. An empirical examination with special emphasis on temporal adverbials. Lincom.
Bybee J., Dahl O. (1989) The creation of tense and aspect systems in the languages of the world. Studies in Language 13(1): 51–103
Bybee J., Perkins R., Pagliuca W. (1994) The evolution of grammar. Tense, aspect and modality in the languages of the world. University of Chicago Press, Chicago
Dahl O. (1985) Tense and aspect systems. Blackwell, Oxford
de Swart H. (1998) Aspect shift and coercion. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 16(2): 347–385
Giorgi A., Pianesi F. (1997) Tense and aspect. From semantics to morphosyntax. Oxford University Press, New York
Grice H.P. (1975) Logic and conversation. In: Cole P., Morgan J.L. (eds) Syntax and semantics. Speech acts Vol. 3. Academic Press, New York, pp 41–58
Inoue K. (1979) An analysis of the English present perfect. Linguistics 17: 561–589
Kamp H., Reyle U. (1993) From discourse to logic. Introduction to modeltheoretic semantics of natural language, formal logic and discourse representation theory. Kluwer, Dordrecht
Klein W. (1992) The present perfect puzzle. Language 68: 525–552
Klein W. (2000) An analysis of the German Perfekt. Language 76(2): 358–382
Kratzer, A. (1998). More structural analogies betweens pronouns and tenses. In D. Strolovitch & A. Lawson (Eds.), Proceedings of Salt 8. Ithaca: CLC Publications.
Levinson S.C. (2000) Presumptive meanings. The theory of generalized conversational implicature. MIT Press, Cambridge
Lindgren K.B. (1957). Über den Oberdeutschen Präteritumschwund (Annales Academi Scientiarum Fennicæ 112). Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia.
Maurice W. (1935) Discrimination between past and present. Neuphilologische Monatsschrift 6: 312–330
McCoard R.W. (1978) The English perfect: Tense-choice and pragmatic inferences. North Holland, Amsterdam
Meillet, A. (1912/1982). L’évolution des formes grammaticales. In Linguistique historique et linguistique générale (pp. 130–148). GenÉve/Paris: Slatkine/Champion.
Müller S. (2005) Zur Analyse der scheinbar mehrfachen Vorfeldbesetzung. Linguistische Berichte 203: 297–330
Musan R. (2002) The German perfect. Its semantic composition and its interaction with temporal adverbials. Kluwer, Dordrecht
Nishiyama, A., & Koenig, J.-P. (2004). What is a perfect state? In B. Schmeiser, V. Chand, A. Kelleher, & A. Rodriguez (Eds.), WCCFL 23 Proceedings (pp. 101–113). Somerville: Cascadilla Press.
Pancheva, R., & von Stechow, A. (2004). On the present perfect puzzle. Ms, University of Southern California and Universität Tübingen.
Portner P. (2003) The (Temporal) semantics and (Modal) pragmatics of the perfect. Linguistics and Philosophy 26: 459–510
Rathert, M. (2001). Anteriority versus extended now: theories of the German perfect. In Audiatur Vox Sapientiae. A Festschrift for Arnim von Stechow (pp. 410–426). Berlin: Akademie Verlag.
Reichenbach, H. (1947/1966). Elements of symbolic logic. Toronto: Collier-MacMillan.
Rothstein, B. (2006). The perfect time span. On the present perfect in German, Swedish and English. Ph.D. thesis, Universität Stuttgart.
Weinrich H. (1986) Grammaire textuelle du français. Alliance Française, Paris
Weinrich H. (1993) Textgrammatik der deutschen Sprache. Mannheim, Duden
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Schaden, G. Present perfects compete. Linguist and Philos 32, 115–141 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-009-9056-3
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-009-9056-3