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Article published In: Linguistics in the Netherlands 2019
Edited by Janine Berns and Elena Tribushinina
[Linguistics in the Netherlands 36] 2019
► pp. 162–175

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Part II: Selected papers presented at the Dutch Annual Linguistics Day of 2019

The Perfect in dialogue

Evidence from Dutch

 | Universiteit Utrecht, UIL-OTS
 | Universiteit Utrecht, UIL-OTS
 | Universiteit Utrecht, UIL-OTS
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Published online: 5 November 2019
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https://doi.org/10.1075/avt.00030.bru
Abstract
We investigate the use of the perfect in dialogue in Dutch and – for comparison – report on data from Dutch narrative discourse as well as on data from both registers in English. Our approach is corpus-based with data drawn from Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone and its translation to Dutch. Our data reveal that the Dutch perfect is sensitive to the dialogue/narrative discourse distinction and competes with the past in dialogue along the event/state distinction. This is in line with earlier findings by Boogaart, Ronny. 1999. Aspect and temporal ordering: A constrastive analysis of Dutch and English. LOT.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar and Swart, Henriëtte de. 2007. “A Cross-Linguistic Discourse Analysis of the Perfect.” Journal of Pragmatics 391 (12): 2273–2307. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar and lays the foundation for an analysis of the perfect in which we bridge the gap between the English/dialogue oriented literature (Portner, Paul. 2003. “The (Temporal) Semantics and (Modal) Pragmatics of the Perfect.” Linguistics and Philosophy 26 (4): 459–510. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Atsuko, Nishiyama, and Jean-Pierre Koenig. 2010. “What Is a Perfect State?” Language 86 (3): 611–46. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) and the variationist/narrative discourse oriented literature (Swart, Henriëtte de. 2007. “A Cross-Linguistic Discourse Analysis of the Perfect.” Journal of Pragmatics 391 (12): 2273–2307. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Schaden, Gerhard. 2009. “Present Perfects Compete.” Linguistics and Philosophy 32 (2): 115–41. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar).
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Methodology
    • 2.1The corpus
    • 2.2Preparing the corpus
    • 2.3Corpus size
  • 3.Results
    • 3.1Corpus HP‑A
    • 3.2Corpus HP‑B
      • 3.2.1Events in the past
      • 3.2.2States in the perfect
      • 3.2.3A note on the continuous perfect in English and its translation in Dutch
  • 4.Discussion and conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (14)
References
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Schaden, Gerhard. 2009. “Present Perfects Compete.” Linguistics and Philosophy 32 (2): 115–41. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
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Cited by (5)

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Haans, Harvey & Helen de Hoop
2023. Past tense reference to future eventualities. Linguistics in the Netherlands 40 ► pp. 55 ff. DOI logo
Fuchs, Martín & Paz González
2022. Perfect-Perfective Variation across Spanish Dialects: A Parallel-Corpus Study. Languages 7:3 ► pp. 166 ff. DOI logo
Le Bruyn, Bert, Martín Fuchs, Martijn van der Klis, Jianan Liu, Chou Mo, Jos Tellings & Henriëtte de Swart
2022. Parallel Corpus Research and Target Language Representativeness: The Contrastive, Typological, and Translation Mining Traditions. Languages 7:3 ► pp. 176 ff. DOI logo
Mulder, Gijs, Gert-Jan Schoenmakers, Olaf Hoenselaar & Helen de Hoop
2022. Tense and Aspect in a Spanish Literary Work and Its Translations. Languages 7:3 ► pp. 217 ff. DOI logo
VAN DER KLIS, MARTIJN, BERT LE BRUYN & HENRIËTTE DE SWART
2022. A multilingual corpus study of the competition betweenpastandperfectin narrative discourse. Journal of Linguistics 58:2 ► pp. 423 ff. DOI logo

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