Open AccessIt’s All Under Control! On Perfective Present Forms in BCS Main Clauses
Author(s) -
Marco Biasio
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
ca' foscari japanese studies. religion and thought/ca' foscari japanese studies. religion and thought
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2610-900X
pISSN - 2610-9417
DOI - 10.30687/bes/0/2021/01/002
Subject(s) - linguistics , pragmatics , utterance , syntax , metonymy , constraint (computer aided design) , semantics (computer science) , control (management) , operator (biology) , computer science , philosophy , mathematics , programming language , artificial intelligence , biochemistry , geometry , chemistry , repressor , transcription factor , gene , metaphor
This study aims to provide a unified analysis of the syntax-pragmatics interface of the (allegedly) anomalous licensing of the perfective present (Pres PF ) in BCS present-tensed main clauses. Although Pres PF 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 Pres PF 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.