MAubrey wrote:Stephen Carlson wrote:Could it be a universal perfect: "I have been believing (for some time?) that..."? That's one of the cross-linguistic functions of a perfect, though Greek usually does this function with the present plus an adverb. Without the adverb, though, I wonder if a perfect of a stative verb might work too....
Well, I'd say that generally fits with Bybee's observation about
still, though perhaps from a different angle...?
I think so. I'd have to check to be sure. "Universal" is also called "persistent" or "persisting" or "continuative." I think the term "universal" is favored among those who call the experiential perfect, "existential."
MAubrey wrote:Do you have a reference to this "universal perfect ... [being] one of the cross-linguistic functions of a perfect"? That's not an idea (or a category that I've come across.
Hey, it's in English, so it's cross-linguistic!
All kidding aside, take a look at:
- Klaas Bentein, "The Periphrastic Perfect in Ancient Greek: A Diachronic Mental Space Analysis," Transactions of the Philological Society 110:2 (2012) 171–211 (as "perfect of persistence").
- Dag Haug, "From Resultatives to Anteriors in Ancient Greek: On the Role of Paradigmaticity in Semantic Change" in Thórhallur Eythórsson, ed., Grammatical Change and Linguistic Theory: The Rosendal papers (Benjamins, 2008), 285-305 (see p. 292 citing Comrie 1976).
- Paul Kiparsky, "Event Structure and the Perfect" (2002), citing McCawley 1971, 1981
- Eva-Carin Gerö
and Arnim von Stechow, "Tense in Time: The Greek Perfect" (Draft 2002, publ. 2003).
Other possible cases of this universal / persisting / continuative perfect (all with states so far) are:
John 5:45 wrote:Μὴ δοκεῖτε ὅτι ἐγὼ κατηγορήσω ὑμῶν πρὸς τὸν πατέρα · ἔστιν ὁ κατηγορῶν ὑμῶν Μωϋσῆς, εἰς ὃν ὑμεῖς ἠλπίκατε.
John 17:6 wrote:Ἐφανέρωσά σου τὸ ὄνομα τοῖς ἀνθρώποις οὓς ἔδωκάς μοι ἐκ τοῦ κόσμου. σοὶ ἦσαν κἀμοὶ αὐτοὺς ἔδωκας καὶ τὸν λόγον σου τετήρηκαν.
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D. (Duke)
Post-Doctoral Fellow, Faculty of Theology, Uppsala