Astrid De Wit
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780198759539
- eISBN:
- 9780191820250
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198759539.003.0004
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Theoretical Linguistics, Semantics and Pragmatics
This chapter discusses the manifestation and resolution of the present perfective paradox in English. It is demonstrated that, with the exception of a few special contexts of use (such as ...
More
This chapter discusses the manifestation and resolution of the present perfective paradox in English. It is demonstrated that, with the exception of a few special contexts of use (such as performative utterances), the English simple present cannot be used to report present-time events. This observation has been the topic of many existing analyses, but none of them explicitly concentrates on the present perfective meaning of the simple present. While such a present perfective construal is unproblematic for states, it causes epistemic problems with events, which typically cannot be conceived of in their entirety at the time of speaking. These problems are resolved by means of the progressive, whose use has therefore become obligatory in English, or by assigning a habitual/generic interpretation to simple-present dynamic verbs. English thus makes use of the ‘structural strategy’ in response to the present perfective paradox.Less
This chapter discusses the manifestation and resolution of the present perfective paradox in English. It is demonstrated that, with the exception of a few special contexts of use (such as performative utterances), the English simple present cannot be used to report present-time events. This observation has been the topic of many existing analyses, but none of them explicitly concentrates on the present perfective meaning of the simple present. While such a present perfective construal is unproblematic for states, it causes epistemic problems with events, which typically cannot be conceived of in their entirety at the time of speaking. These problems are resolved by means of the progressive, whose use has therefore become obligatory in English, or by assigning a habitual/generic interpretation to simple-present dynamic verbs. English thus makes use of the ‘structural strategy’ in response to the present perfective paradox.
Elizabeth Harlan
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300104172
- eISBN:
- 9780300130560
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300104172.003.0025
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This chapter focuses on George Sand's novel Confession of a Young Girl, in which the protagonist, Lucienne de Valangis, makes a pronouncement similar to the one made by Sand in Story of My Life. ...
More
This chapter focuses on George Sand's novel Confession of a Young Girl, in which the protagonist, Lucienne de Valangis, makes a pronouncement similar to the one made by Sand in Story of My Life. Valangis's pronouncement goes thus: “I want to give you an account of my life and myself with the most scrupulous sincerity.” This similarity in itself would not be particularly meaningful but for the special context in which it occurs: Confession of a Young Girl, the first novel Sand wrote in the first-person voice of a woman, constitutes a deeply personal fictional account of what Sand believed was her life story. This novel is written seventeen years after Story of My Life.Less
This chapter focuses on George Sand's novel Confession of a Young Girl, in which the protagonist, Lucienne de Valangis, makes a pronouncement similar to the one made by Sand in Story of My Life. Valangis's pronouncement goes thus: “I want to give you an account of my life and myself with the most scrupulous sincerity.” This similarity in itself would not be particularly meaningful but for the special context in which it occurs: Confession of a Young Girl, the first novel Sand wrote in the first-person voice of a woman, constitutes a deeply personal fictional account of what Sand believed was her life story. This novel is written seventeen years after Story of My Life.
