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What is a Perfect State?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2026

Atsuko Nishiyama  and
Jean-Pierre Koenig
Atsuko Nishiyama*
Affiliation:
Ritsumeikan University
Jean-Pierre Koenig*
Affiliation:
University at Buffalo
*
Nishiyama Language Education Center Ritsumeikan University 56–1 Kita-machi Toji-in Kita-ku Kyoto, 603–8577, Japan, [atsuko.nishiyama@gmail.com]
Koenig Linguistics Department University at Buffalo Buffalo, NY 14260-1030, [jpkoenig@buffalo.edu]
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Abstract

Although many previous studies have tried to explain the English perfect's various readings, none of them have been entirely successful. In this article, we argue that the perfect is pragmatically, rather than semantically, ambiguous. The meaning of the perfect introduces a base eventuality and a perfect state whose category is underspecified semantically. Neo-Gricean reasoning leads hearers to appropriately fill in the value of that variable. We present the results of a corpus study of over 600 present perfect examples. The results of this study suggest that (i) most English present perfects receive entailed resultative or continuative readings, (ii) the English perfect need not elaborate on a preexisting topic, and (iii) the English perfect plays a role in establishing discourse coherence by helping hearers establish discourse relations between discourse segments.

Keywords

present perfectpragmatic ambiguityaspectdiscourse coherencesemantic under-specificationpragmatic enrichment

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 86 , Issue 3 , September 2010 , pp. 611 - 646
Copyright
Copyright © 2010 Linguistic Society of America

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