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Perfect usage across languages

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QAL_2016_3_2_Paper_5.pdf (355.39 KB)

Publication date

2016-11

Authors

de Swart, H.E.ISNI 0000000108671085

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DOI

https://doi.org/10.1515/qal-2016-0007

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Article

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Abstract

The PERFECT constitutes a puzzling category for typologists, historical linguists and formal semanticists alike. Is it a tense? Is it an aspect? Which grammatical forms qualify as PERFECTS? What is the core of the PERFECT meaning? This short paper suggests that progress can be made if we start using the wealth of digitized language data that has become available to uncover the semantics of the PERFECT through its contextual usages across languages.

Keywords

perfect, aspect, cross-linguistic semantics, tense

Citation

de Swart, H E 2016, 'Perfect usage across languages', Questions and Answers in Linguistics, vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 57-62 . https://doi.org/10.1515/qal-2016-0007

URI

https://dspace.library.uu.nl/handle/1874/345575