Adverbial realizations of universal perfect in American English

Abstract

The object of study of this research is the universal perfect aspect, which, when associated with the present tense, indicates a situation that began at some point in the past and continues until the present moment. The aim of this research is to investigate how native speakers of American English use adverbial expressions to convey the universal perfect associated with the present tense.. Our hypothesis is that the present associated with the universal perfect is exclusively conveyed in American English by the adverbs "still," "lately," "always," and "never," by adverbial expressions headed by "for," "since," "to," and "until/till," and by adverbial expressions that indicate a time interval between the past and the present, such as "this year" and "this month." The methodology involves the application of a linguistically elicited production test to native speakers of American English. A total of 92 volunteers were recruited, geographically distributed throughout the country, with varying levels of education. In the target stimuli, sentences conveying the universal perfect with adverbial expressions headed by "since" (288), "from" (23), "for" (11), and "till/to" (3), and with the adverb "still" (12) were obtained. It was observed that all adverbial expressions headed by "from" were structured as "from X time to X time." Obtaining these adverbial expressions led to the refutation of our hypothesis. It was discussed that such expressions are more complex than those anticipated in the hypothesis because they simultaneously mark the boundaries on the left and right of the perfect time span.