Die Lesarten des Perfekts

SummaryThe present perfect in German displays a large variety of readings, which are a challenge to any account of the construction. Based on a uniform semantics for the present perfect, it is argued that the different readings are due to a set of well-defined principles and mechanisms that are mainly of a pragmatic nature. More specifically, both the situation time of the resultant-state of the verb and the situation time of the verb itself are associated with frame times, each of which can be assigned topical status or not. Moreover, they can get time values by a variety of factors in the linguistic or nonlinguistic context. A pragmatic principle requires the two time intervals to differ in some relevant way so that the reference to the two distinct time intervals is licensed by informativity. Finally, there is a strong tendency to align the duration of situation times and their time frames. The possible interactions of these principles and mechanisms with the semantics of verbs and the semantics of the perfect construction accounts for the variety of readings that perfect constructions can have.