Topic: HUMAN SEMANTICS
Until and the Present Perfect
Anastasia Giannakidou wrote a paper about the (im-)possibility of sentences combining a present perfect and an UNTIL connective, like the ones below from Greek and English. In her words, Until and its Greek counterpart mexri produce odd results when they modify an eventuality in the present perfect:
(1) *I Ariadne exi zisi sto Parisi mexri tora.
Ariadne has lived in Paris until now.
(2) *I Ariadne exi xasi ta klidia tis mexri tora.
Ariadne has lost her keys until now.
(3) *Ariadne has lived in Paris until 1998.
This is a puzzle in the light of two common assumptions that predict no incompatibility between the use of an UNTIL term and a form of Present Perfect:
(i) perfect eventualities denote result states (McCoard 1978, Dowty 1979, Vlach 1983, Kamp and Reyle 1993),
(ii) UNTIL is a stative modifier
I sense no such incompatibilities when using any equivalent Portuguese tenses in the first case:
(4) Ariadne viveu/ tem vivido/vem vivendo em Paris ate agora.
But in the second case there is a distinction between using the real participle and an adjective form:
(5) *Ariadne tem perdido (participle) as chaves ate agora.
(6) Ariadne tem perdidas (adjective) as chaves ate agora.
Perhaps, these are extra evidences to the known fact that not all languages have Perfect Tenses like English has.
See also this other post about Roumyana Pancheva's paper on the present perfect tense puzzle.
Posted by Tony Marmo
at 06:43 BST
Updated: Thursday, 12 August 2004 06:48 BST
