'Perfect Tense Forms in English, German and French' is the title of the seminar in the series Linguistics Circle Seminar Series that will be held on Wednesday 29 March at 12:00 in Room 156 M.A. Vassalli Conference Centre - Gateway Building (GW156), University of Malta Msida Campus. The speaker is Uwe Reyle, from the University of Stuttgart.
Abstract
Most of the literature on English tense and aspect (and therewith of tense and aspect simpliciter) is on the English Present Perfect. The facts that makes this form so special and for the theorist outstanding almost as a sore thumb are easy to describe, but to come up with a theoretically satisfactory account of it is much more involved. We will present a result-state based, compositional analysis that accounts for the peculiarities of the English Present Perfect and explains why this form is different from other perfect forms in English on the one hand and its counterpart in German and French on the other.
Most of the literature on English tense and aspect (and therewith of tense and aspect simpliciter) is on the English Present Perfect. The facts that makes this form so special and for the theorist outstanding almost as a sore thumb are easy to describe, but to come up with a theoretically satisfactory account of it is much more involved. We will present a result-state based, compositional analysis that accounts for the peculiarities of the English Present Perfect and explains why this form is different from other perfect forms in English on the one hand and its counterpart in German and French on the other.
