The aspectual makeup of Perfect participles and the interpretations of the Perfect

1. The types of perfect Interpretation-wise, several types of perfect expressions have been recognized in the literature (e. To illustrate, a present perfect can have one of at least three interpretations: (1) a. Since 2000, Alexandra has lived in LA. UNIVERSAL b. Alexandra has been in LA (before). EXPERIENTIAL c. Alexandra has (just) arrived in LA. RESULTATIVE The three types of perfect make different claims about the temporal location of the underlying eventuality, i.e., of live in LA in (1a), be in LA in (1b), arrive in LA in (1c), with respect to a reference time. The UNIVERSAL perfect, as in (1a), asserts that the underlying eventuality holds throughout an interval, delimited by the time of utterance and a certain time in the past (in this case, the year 2000). The EXPERIENTIAL perfect, as in (1b), asserts that the underlying eventuality holds at a proper subset of an interval, extending back from the utterance time. The RESULTATIVE perfect makes the same assertion as the Experiential perfect, with the added meaning that the result of the underlying eventuality (be in LA is the result of arrive in LA) holds at the utterance time. The distinction between the Experiential and the Resultative perfects is rather subtle. The two are commonly grouped together as the EXISTENTIAL perfect (McCawley 1971, Mittwoch 1988) and this terminology is adopted here as well. 1 Two related questions arise: (i) Is the distinction between the three types of perfect grammatically based? (ii) If indeed so, then is it still possible to posit a common representation for the perfect – a uniform structure with a single meaning – which, in combination with certain other syntactic components , each with a specialized meaning, results in the three different readings? This paper suggests that the answer to both questions is yes. To start addressing these questions, let us look at some of the known factors behind the various interpretations of the perfect. It has to be noted that the different perfect readings are not a peculiarity of the present perfect despite the fact that they are primarily discussed in relation to that form. The same interpretations are available to the past, future and nonfinite per