From Ireland to Newfoundland

Irish English is well-known for its extensive range of perfect equivalents, including the after-perfect and the medial-object perfect. Yet the literature displays no consensus on either the precise semantics of the former or the origins of the latter (along with those of the “extended present”, the be-perfect, and the simple past as perfect equivalent). This paper attempts to shed light on both issues, using corpus data from Newfoundland, among the earliest of Britain’s transatlantic colonies. These data suggest that the after-perfect was brought to Newfoundland with a full range of perfect meanings, not simply that of “hot news”. They also cast serious doubt on the role played by an Irish substrate in the path of grammaticalisation of the medial-object perfect. Keywords: Newfoundland English; Irish English; perfect forms; after-perfect; medial-object perfect