Journal of Linguistics

Table of Contents - 1970 - Volume 6, Issue 02  

Articles

The English ‘Perfect’ reconsidered

Gero Bauera1

a1 Department of English, University of Vienna

In an article in this Journal (Specification and English tenses) Crystal has pointed out the hitherto neglected role that adverbial determiners may play in giving unambiguous indication of time where the verbal tense-form itself is not specific enough: ‘It is [in such cases] not a question of tense-form alone giving the relevant distinguishing indication of time, as has been traditionally assumed, but of tense-form with or without adverbial specification which gives unambiguous indication’ (Crystal, 1966: 5). Adverbials may thus become ‘non-omissible determiners’ (a term borrowed by Crystal from Ivić, 1962).

(Received December 05 1969)