Academic literature on the topic 'English past perfective'

The previous literature established the set of ‘perfect’ readings, including experiential/existential, resultative, recent past, hot news, the Present Perfect Puzzle, the lifetime effect, and the lack of narrative progression. On the other hand, it has been noted that the present perfect in some languages other than English, as well as similar tense/aspect constructions in other languages, falls into the category of a ‘general-purpose past perfective’, namely a tense-aspect constructionsharing some properties with the English present perfect while not being subject to constraints such as the lifetime effect and the Present Perfect Puzzle. In this paper, I propose that the general-purpose past perfectives are presuppositionally neutral tense/aspect constructions that allow the standard past perfective reading. If a language has presuppositionally stronger alternatives for the past perfective (presupposing anaphoricity, uniqueness, etc.), by the Presupposed Ignorance Principle (PIP), the presuppositionally neutral past perfective form will be felicitous only if the presuppositionally stronger alternatives cannot be used. Otherwise, the presuppositionally neutral past perfective will behave like a general-purpose past perfective in the above sense. I argue that this competition is the source of many of the perfect readings observed. I further argue that the cross-linguistic variation in this respect follows from the available alternatives languages have. I illustrate this idea with three groups of languages: (i) English; (ii) French, German, Italian; and (iii) Mandarin Chinese, each illustrating a different set of alternatives available, in both the temporal and aspectual domains. This analysis allows me to decompose various perfect readings that come from different sources and make better predictions regarding which of these readings a tense/aspect construction in a given language has.

AbstractThis paper investigates use of ain't in a corpus of naturalistic speech from forty-two African-American Philadelphians. Use of ain't in past/perfective contexts where it varies with didn't is considered a unique feature of AAE. This use is compared in apparent time to uses of ain't in tense-aspect environments shared with other English varieties. Results show that past/perfective uses of ain't increased during the twentieth century while use in other contexts remained stable, supporting the hypothesis that past/perfective uses resulted from recent change. Generalized linear models for ain't in past/perfective and other contexts show that sociostylistic and linguistic constraints are otherwise the same across contexts. Finally, evidence that a past/perfective use of ain't resulted from either the phonetic reduction of didn't or a shift in meaning from uses of ain't in anterior contexts is examined.

Se propone que cada frase Inglés no contiene sólo el tiempo (pasado y no pasado), sino también de aspecto (perfectivo y imperfectivo). Mientras que otros idiomas pueden marcar aspecto formal, en Inglés es con frecuencia una categoría encubierta y puede dar lugar a ambigüedades, sobre todo en el lenguaje escrito. La interacción de aspecto y el tiempo con los diferentes modales se muestra en un esfuerzo para describir la forma en que los diferentes modales se han de interpretar semánticamente. It is proposed that every English sentence contains not only time (past and non-past) but also aspect (perfective and imperfective). Whereas other languages may mark aspect formally, in English it is frequently a covert category and may give rise to ambiguities, especially in the written language. The interaction of aspect and time with the different modals is shown in an effort to describe the way the different modals are to be interpreted semantically.

The absence of a parallel equivalence in the grammar of past tense and perfective aspect in English and Echie is significantly responsible for the errors that occur in the related sentences of the Echie second language learners of English. This article is a contrastive analysis of the grammar of past tense and present perfect tense in English and Echie and it highlighted the structural specifics of each of the languages. Using the descriptive research design, the data for this study were gathered through the primary sources (ten competent native speakers of Echie were interviewed) and the secondary sources (examples generated from textual materials). Our description showed a complete range of morphological differences in past tense and present perfect tense of English and Echie as seen in the use of 1st, 2nd and 3rd persons singular and plural respectively. The paper concludes that the parametric variation in the past tense and perfective aspect of English and Echie languages show that every language is unique in some sort.
 Key Words: Contrastive, grammar, tense, parametric, descriptive, interference; language.

Abstract The present study examines the influence of L2 English on the acquisition of perfective and imperfective aspect in L3 Spanish among German-speaking learners. We will argue that English will be activated as the default transfer source due to principles of acquisition, which are similar for both the L2 and the L3, and because of structural similarities between both languages. The analysis is based on data from 36 German-speaking learners with varying levels of knowledge of aspect in English, their L2, and learning Spanish. For data elicitation, two semantic interpretation tasks were used. The findings show that aspectual knowledge in L2 English affects the acquisition of L3 Spanish past tenses. However, the positive effect is not comprehensive, but rather, restricted to certain semantic contexts (e.g., past/perfective contexts). The discussion points to the possible effects of oversimplified one-to-one-mappings of form and meaning between L2 English and L3 Spanish.

Abstract The present study aims to examine the claim that the preverbal particle qad in the perfective is an aspectual marker of near past in Arabic, hence it corresponds to the present perfect in English. The authentic translational corpus drawn from two works (journalistic/scientific and literary discourse) clearly indicates that the preverbal qad is employed as a cohesive marker whose main function is to smooth and naturalize Arabic discourse. The study demonstrates that the translator’s choice between an Arabic simple past with or without qad is governed by the requirements of the flow of discourse rather than by aspectual marking. Failure to account for this discursive function of qad when translating from English into Arabic would in Arabic translations produce cohesion gaps which in English are usually taken care of by punctuation.

In English grammar, verbs have two important characteristics--tense and aspect. Grammatically tense is marked in two ways: Present and Past. English verbs can have another property called aspect, applicable in both present and past forms of verbs. There are two major types of morphologically marked aspects in English verbs: progressive and perfective. While present and past tenses are morphologically marked by the forms verb+s/es (as in He plays) and verb+d/ed (as in He played) respectively, the morphological representations of progressive and perfective aspects in the tenses are verb+ing (He is/was playing) and verb+d/ed/n/en (He has/had played) respectively. This paper focuses only on one type of aspectual feature of verbs--present progressive. It analyses the use of present progressive in terms of semantics and explains its use in different contexts for durative conclusive and non-conclusive use, for its use in relation to time of reference, and for its use in some special cases. Then it considers the restrictions on the use of progressive aspect in both present and past tenses based on the nature of verbs and duration of time. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/sje.v7i0.14464 Stamford Journal of English; Volume 7; Page 87-97

The aim of this paper, which has an explanatory character, is to present the English perfective (past) TA-construction vs. the present-perfect TA-construction by means of image schemas of PATH and LINK, respectively, since the said constructions pose a contrast that is absent from the Polish language. Five examples of English text are juxtaposed with two Polish versions for comparison of how the two English constructions can be instantiated in Polish, the lexical means used in the Polish versions vary. Hence Polish learners of English are encouraged herein to look for hints which will sensitize them to the usage of the past-simple construction vs. the present-perfect construction, in association with the semantic schemas of PATH and LINK in relation to said grammar constructions.

Research studies on second language (L2) morphosyntactic variation that include multiple learner course or experience levels often conduct separate statistical analyses of the factors affecting variation, one per learner level, and compare significant constraints and their coefficients across these groups as an indication of L2 development. This method of comparing across multiple regression analyses can lead to the perception of differences across participant groups that may not be statistically significant. Thus, the current study reanalyzes the data from Author (forthcoming), who investigated the development of past perfective form variation by 105 English-speaking L2 learners of Spanish from six course levels. Participants selected between the preterit and PP on a written contextualized task, in which 32 discursive contexts in a narrative were manipulated for four linguistic variables known to affect preterit-PP variation in the Spanish-speaking world: time of action, verb lexical aspect, sequencing, and presence of a temporal adverb. In our analysis, we combined the data from the six distinct Spanish L2 course levels into one model, and included an interaction between course level and each of the linguistic constraints manipulated in the task. We then compared our findings to Author (forthcoming) who conducted separate regression analyses for each course level. Findings indicate that only time of action and sequencing demonstrated significantly different effects across course levels, and that separate regression analyses across learner levels may lead to an overestimation of differences among these levels.

This paper deals with the “hot news” use of the English present perfect. Previous research has suggested that this use marks the end point of the perfect category, paving the way for further grammaticalisation to a perfective or past tense. To examine its historical development in Modern English, verb forms in the leads of hard news reports in the New York Times and the Sydney Morning Herald were examined, with comparison made between two time periods, 1851–1900 and 1951–2000. Attention was given to contextual influence on the choice between the present perfect and the past tense for expressing hot news meanings. The quantitative findings show that the hot news perfect has not taken over the ground of other tense forms, but has become increasingly associated with unspecified, recent past time. The evolution of the English present perfect in general is characterised by register-mediated functional specialisation.