2002 Volume 19 Issue 2 Pages 335-365
Few previous studies have systematically examined the fact that the English present perfect and the German Perfekt behave differently with respect to co-occurrence with adverbials referring to a definite time position (DTP adverbials) in the past such as yesterday/gestern and ten years ago/vor 10 Jahren. This paper aims to explain this fact systematically on the basis of the revised P (osition)-Definiteness Constraint, which is originally proposed to account for the incompatibility of the English present perfect and the DTP adverbials. It is demonstrated that the reason why the German Perfekt, unlike its English morphological counterpart, can occur with the DTP adverbials is due to the interaction between the revised P-Definiteness Constraint and certain characteristics of the German Perfekt. It is also shown that the proposed account provides an explanatory basis for the following two issues: (i) why the German Perfekt can go with DTP adverbials referring to future time, whereas the English present perfect cannot, and (ii) why the German Perfekt has a wider semantic range than the English present perfect.
