Developing a new perfect: the rise of the Icelandic vera búinn að-perfect

Abstract

Icelandic is basically a “straight-have-perfect” language, where constructions with be + participle are virtually restricted to stative expressions like er farinn “is gone”. But since around 1600, Icelandic has been developing a new perfect consisting of the verb “be” together with the adjective (or participle) búinn + infinitive. The word búinn normally means “finished, done” so it is not surprising that the earliest examples of this construction typically involved transitive telic predicates and animate agentive subjects and had a clear resultative reading. Gradually, the construction developed into a more general perfect, which today can be used with predicates of different types and have a universal and even to some extent experiential (existential) reading. This development is traced and the restrictions on this new perfect in the modern language are described. It is shown that this new perfect has been gaining ground for centuries and is apparently still on the rise, as can be seen from the fact that it is more popular among young speakers than with the older generations. It is also acquired early and apparently more frequent in child language than the standard have-perfect.