Abstract
Perfect predicates have usually been defined as stative. The purpose of this paper is to explain why. I will pay attention to both the resultative and the experiential Perfects. Contrary to Katz (2003), Nishiyama & Koenig (2004, 2010), Michaelis (2011) and Piñón (2014), the stativity of the Perfect will be derived from its nature as a content of grammatical Aspect. More precisely, I will assume that the Perfect allows us to make assertions regarding the state of affairs that follows an event that culminates or ceases (Klein 1992, 1994). In the case that we are dealing with the resultative Perfect, that state of affairs will be equated with the goal state of the subeventive structure of a telic predicate. But if we are dealing with the experiential Perfect, the state of affairs will be equated with the final state of a process which ends up characterizing the subject as a participant in the type of event denoted by the verbal predicate.
Highlights
The aim of this paper is to clarify why the Perfect is characterized as stative
My proposal is that the experiential Perfect is a grammatical procedure to obtain changes of state caused by the participation of the subject in the type of event denoted by the verbal predicate
Both explanations are meant to transform a content of grammatical Aspect into a content of lexical Aspect
Summary
The aim of this paper is to clarify why the Perfect is characterized as stative. The studies that address the stativity of the Perfect are not very numerous. According to Michaelis (2011) the Perfect is a grammatical mechanism of aspectual coercion to obtain stative predicates. These approaches immediately lead us to pose some questions. My hypothesis is that the Perfect always brings into focus final or goal states that take part in the subeventive structure of the verbal predicates This approach is original with respect to the explanation of the stativity of the Perfect. My proposal is that the experiential Perfect is a grammatical procedure to obtain changes of state caused by the participation of the subject in the type of event denoted by the verbal predicate.
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