Journal | Balcania et Slavia
Journal issue | 1 | 1 | 2021
Research Article | It’s All Under Control!
It’s All Under Control!
On Perfective Present Forms in BCS Main Clauses
Abstract
This study aims to provide a unified analysis of the syntax-pragmatics interface of the (allegedly) anomalous licensing of the perfective present (PresPF) in BCS present-tensed main clauses. Although PresPF forms cannot usually refer to eventualities that are anchored to the time of utterance UT, there seem to be three apparent exceptions to this structural constraint. They are as follows: 1) abusive metonymic performatives; 2) live demonstrations; and 3) nonveridical contexts introduced by the epistemic operator možda ‘maybe’. It is claimed that for PresPF forms to be licensed in BCS main clauses, control needs to be specified as a variable at the level of the so-called Seat of Knowledge in the SpeechActP layer.
Submitted: July 20, 2021 | Accepted: Oct. 15, 2021 | Published Dec. 20, 2021 | Language: en
Keywords Perfective present • Speech act phrase • Syntax-pragmatics interface • Štokavian • Control • Verbal aspect
Copyright © 2021 Marco Biasio. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/BES/0/2021/01/002
