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Chapter 8. More on hodiernality

  • Teresa M. Xiqués
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The Perfect Volume
This chapter is in the book The Perfect Volume

Abstract

This paper builds on previous work and aims to examine one of the most striking differences between the uses of the present perfect in languages such as Catalan and English, namely, a hodiernal (‘today’) reading of the perfect available under certain conditions in these Romance languages but not in English. I will specifically look into (1) the competition between tenses, (2) the role of temporal modification, and (3) the present tense. Taking into account the semantics of the present tense and a split of the perfect time interval and the reference time as in Pancheva & von Stechow (2004), I will claim that the main difference that distinguishes the hodiernal reading is due to a possible specification of the event time on a fixed position on the time line.

Abstract

This paper builds on previous work and aims to examine one of the most striking differences between the uses of the present perfect in languages such as Catalan and English, namely, a hodiernal (‘today’) reading of the perfect available under certain conditions in these Romance languages but not in English. I will specifically look into (1) the competition between tenses, (2) the role of temporal modification, and (3) the present tense. Taking into account the semantics of the present tense and a split of the perfect time interval and the reference time as in Pancheva & von Stechow (2004), I will claim that the main difference that distinguishes the hodiernal reading is due to a possible specification of the event time on a fixed position on the time line.

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