Home General Interest Chapter 14. The Swedish perfect and periphrasis
Chapter
Licensed
Unlicensed Requires Authentication

Chapter 14. The Swedish perfect and periphrasis

  • Fredrik Heinat
View more publications by John Benjamins Publishing Company
To Publisher Page
The Perfect Volume
This chapter is in the book The Perfect Volume

Abstract

This paper investigates the apparent near-optionality of the perfect auxiliary ha (‘have’) in Swedish. Restrictions on the near-optionality of ha-omission are typically recognized in the previous literature as lexical or structural. The paper scrutinizes the viability of these restrictions by means of corpus data. Most of these restrictions are shown not to hold. Instead, the paper defends the view that the optionality of the perfect auxiliary ha in Swedish is linked to whether the clause it occurs in requires a finite feature or not, and whether ha is the only element that can supply a value for this feature. The phenomenon of ha-omission is accounted for in the syntactic frame work LFG. It is shown that ha can only be omitted if another element in the clause can provide a value for the finite feature.

Abstract

This paper investigates the apparent near-optionality of the perfect auxiliary ha (‘have’) in Swedish. Restrictions on the near-optionality of ha-omission are typically recognized in the previous literature as lexical or structural. The paper scrutinizes the viability of these restrictions by means of corpus data. Most of these restrictions are shown not to hold. Instead, the paper defends the view that the optionality of the perfect auxiliary ha in Swedish is linked to whether the clause it occurs in requires a finite feature or not, and whether ha is the only element that can supply a value for this feature. The phenomenon of ha-omission is accounted for in the syntactic frame work LFG. It is shown that ha can only be omitted if another element in the clause can provide a value for the finite feature.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Chapter 1. The perfect volume 1
  4. Part I. Perfects and their relatives
  5. Chapter 2. “Universal” readings of perfects and iamitives in typological perspective 43
  6. Chapter 3. Perfect and its relatives in Atayal 65
  7. Chapter 4. Structural and functional variations of the perfect in the Lezgic languages 87
  8. Chapter 5. Cross-linguistic parallels and contrasts in a contact language perfect construction 117
  9. Chapter 6. Perfect and negation 137
  10. Chapter 7. The diachrony of the perfect in Zapotec 163
  11. Part II. Perfect extensions, hodiernality and aoristic drift
  12. Chapter 8. More on hodiernality 181
  13. Chapter 9. The impact of the simultaneity vector on the temporal-aspectual development of the perfect tense in Romance languages 213
  14. Chapter 10. Gauging expansion in synchrony 241
  15. Part III. Morphology of perfects
  16. Chapter 11. The rise of the periphrastic perfect tense in the continental West Germanic languages 261
  17. Chapter 12. On the emergence of auxiliary selection in Germanic 291
  18. Chapter 13. Language contact and competition in the periphrastic perfect in Early English 319
  19. Chapter 14. The Swedish perfect and periphrasis 343
  20. Chapter 15. “ Have -less perfects” in Norwegian 365
  21. Chapter 16. From have -omission to supercompounds 397
  22. Chapter 17. Auxiliary reduction in secondary grammaticalization 439
  23. Chapter 18. The functions of the auxiliary ‘have’ in Australian English vivid narratives 461
  24. Index 479
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.217.14hei

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Chapter 1. The perfect volume 1
  4. Part I. Perfects and their relatives
  5. Chapter 2. “Universal” readings of perfects and iamitives in typological perspective 43
  6. Chapter 3. Perfect and its relatives in Atayal 65
  7. Chapter 4. Structural and functional variations of the perfect in the Lezgic languages 87
  8. Chapter 5. Cross-linguistic parallels and contrasts in a contact language perfect construction 117
  9. Chapter 6. Perfect and negation 137
  10. Chapter 7. The diachrony of the perfect in Zapotec 163
  11. Part II. Perfect extensions, hodiernality and aoristic drift
  12. Chapter 8. More on hodiernality 181
  13. Chapter 9. The impact of the simultaneity vector on the temporal-aspectual development of the perfect tense in Romance languages 213
  14. Chapter 10. Gauging expansion in synchrony 241
  15. Part III. Morphology of perfects
  16. Chapter 11. The rise of the periphrastic perfect tense in the continental West Germanic languages 261
  17. Chapter 12. On the emergence of auxiliary selection in Germanic 291
  18. Chapter 13. Language contact and competition in the periphrastic perfect in Early English 319
  19. Chapter 14. The Swedish perfect and periphrasis 343
  20. Chapter 15. “ Have -less perfects” in Norwegian 365
  21. Chapter 16. From have -omission to supercompounds 397
  22. Chapter 17. Auxiliary reduction in secondary grammaticalization 439
  23. Chapter 18. The functions of the auxiliary ‘have’ in Australian English vivid narratives 461
  24. Index 479
Sign up now to receive a 20% welcome discount
Institutional Access
How does access work?
Have an idea on how to improve our website?
Please write us.
© 2026 De Gruyter Brill
Downloaded on 14.2.2026 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1075/slcs.217.14hei/html
Scroll to top button