The grammar of the english verb phrase part 38 potx

252 5. The absolute use of the present perfect
5.17.2 Sentences receiving the up-to-now reading may serve various func-
tions. This means that within the up-to-now reading (which is a temporal W-
reading) we can distinguish several functional types. Each of these functional
types represents a use of a present perfect clause which is meant to convey a
particular interpretation (reading). This means that the terms ‘interpretation’
(or ‘W-interpretation’) and ‘reading’ (or W-reading’ will not only be applied to
the three temporal W-interpretations (W-readings) of the present perfect (viz.
‘indefinite’, ‘up-to-now’ and ‘continuative’), but also to readings produced by
a particular functional use.
Within the up-to-now reading, we first of all distinguish between the ‘un-
marked up-to-now reading’ and the ‘constitution reading’. Within the latter,
we can distinguish further between a ‘nonquantificational constitution reading’
and a ‘quantificational constitution reading’. A quantificational constitution
reading can be either ‘duration-specifying’ or ‘number-specifying’. In the fol-
lowing sections these various categories and subcategories of readings will be
defined and examined.
5.18 The unmarked up-to-now reading
This functional version of the up-to-now reading is not concerned with the temporal
or situational constitution of the pre-present. In this respect it differs from the func-
tional version which we call the ‘constitution reading’ Ϫ see 5.19. In [At last you’re
here!] I’ve been trying to get in touch with you for days, the second sentence receives
an unmarked up-to-now reading, i. e. the situation referred to has lasted until right
before the moment of speech.
Sentences which receive an unmarked up-to-now reading are often used with an
‘explanatory-resultative’ function. This means that they explain the bygone origin of a
present result. For example: [Sorry I’m dirty.] I’ve been cleaning the cellar.
5.18.1 The
unmarked up-to-now reading can be defined negatively as being
the up-to-now reading which is not concerned with the temporal or situational
constitution of the pre-present. The latter kind of up-to-now reading is the

‘constitution reading’. As will be shown in 5.19, it is typical of a constitution
reading that the clause in the present perfect is concerned with how a pre-
present period (i. e. a period leading up to t
0
but not including t
0
) is constituted
or filled ‘situationwise’. This means that the speaker is concerned either with
characterizing or accounting for the entire relevant pre-present period (e. g. I’ve
been telling her for years that I would never leave her) or with ‘measuring’
V. More on the up-to-now reading of the perfect 253
that period, either by using a clause whose situation indicates its duration (e. g.
Five years have elapsed since then) or by counting the number of times that
the same situation (or kind of situation) has actualized within that period (e. g.
I’ve seen her three times so far). We will refer to the non-measuring reading as
the ‘nonquantificational constitution reading’ and to the two measuring read-
ings as ‘quantificational constitution readings’. What they have in common is
that the speaker is concerned with how the pre-present is constituted in terms
of one or more situations.
In the unmarked up-to-now reading the speaker is not concerned with the
constitution of the period leading up to now but merely represents a situation
as actualizing throughout this period. As shown in Figure 5.5, this means that
(a) the situation time is conceived of as ‘up to now’, i. e. as including the
terminal point of the pre-present (which is adjacent to t
0
), (b) the time of the
full situation coincides with the situation time, (c) the time of the full situation
does not include t
0
, (d) the time of the full situation is definite (because it is

adjacent to t
0
), and (e) the full situation is bounded (nonhomogeneous).
5.18.2 In the following examples the relevant clause in the present perfect
receives (or can receive) such an unmarked up-to-now reading:
Since I left for school I’ve been telling my mom that I would show her how to use
the computer and send e-mail, so she could keep in touch with me. (www) (Both a
continuative reading and an unmarked up-to-now reading make sense: the repetitive
hypersituation of telling may or may not be still continuing at t
0
.)
And for years I’ve been telling people that someday noise would be assimilated into
mainstream pop music, and it’s already starting to happen. (www) (similar)
(said by someone coming in from the garden) [I’m going to wash my hands.] I’ve
been working in the garden.
[Representative Jo Ann Emerson recently announced Dec. 13 as the day traffic is
anticipated to cross the new Bill Emerson Memorial Bridge. “We couldn’t be more
excited about this,” said MoDOT District Engineer Scott Meyer.] “We’ve been telling
the public the bridge would be opened by the end of the year [and we are very
pleased to finally have an anticipated date for the bridge completion].” (www)
(The speaker suddenly interrupts his story and says:) You’ve been thinking of some-
thing else all the time I’ve been talking to you.
[At last you’re here!] I’ve been trying to get in touch with you for days.
Are you the idiot who has been blowing his horn for the last ten minutes?
(uttered during the examination) The boys have been preparing for this examination
for the last fortnight.
(George Bush Jr. speaking about the CIA-boss who has just resigned) He has been
a very good and diligent boss of the agency. (www)
5.18.3 Sentences which receive an unmarked up-to-now reading are often
used with an

explanatory-resultative function. (As we will see below, sen-
254 5. The absolute use of the present perfect
tences with a nonquantificational constitution reading can also have this func-
tion.) For example:
[Sorry I’m dirty.] I’ve been cleaning the cellar.
Such sentences explain the origin of a present result. The result in question is
not a ‘direct result’ (see 5.37.1) which follows from the completion of the telic
situation of cleaning the cellar. This direct present result (ϭ the cellar is clean
now) can only be suggested by I’ve cleaned the cellar, which receives an indefi-
nite interpretation. If the progressive is used, which is seldom possible on an
indefinite reading (see 5.25) but obligatory (with dynamic verbs) on an un-
marked up-to-now reading, the implicated present result is one which does not
presuppose completion of the situation but which comes into being while the
pre-present situation is unfolding. Thus, I’ve been cleaning the cellar does not
convey the message ‘The cellar is clean now’ (though it implies approachment
to that direct result, i. e. the cellar is cleaner now than it was) but is used to
explain an indirect result, e. g. why my hands are dirty, or why I am feeling
cold, etc. That is, the reference is to a situation that has recently actualized
and has produced an indirect result which is still apparent at t
0
. The indirect
result in question does not follow from the completion of the situation, but is
produced by the pre-present situation while it is in progress. (This explains
why the perfect has to be progressive in this use Ϫ see also 5.26.2.) In most
cases the indirect result is an unintended side-effect.
This use of the up-to-now perfect is called explanatory-resultative because
the sentence in question normally has the discourse function of an explanation
or excuse, or of a reproach in which the speaker gives his own interpretation
(explanation) of what has happened. The following are further examples of
this use. (The indirect result indicated within brackets is not necessarily the

only one possible.)
It’s been snowing! (ϭ Look, the road is covered with snow.)
You’ve been working too fast. (That’s why the result is not good.)
I’ve been waiting for Jack. (That’s why I am late.)
You’ve been drinking again! (reproach: ‘You’re drunk again!’)
[“You look tired.”] Ϫ “Yes, I’ve been working too hard lately.” (explaining)
5.18.4 When it is a wh-question or provides an answer to a wh-question, a
sentence with an explanatory-resultative function belongs to the ‘nonquantifi-
cational constitution’ type rather than the ‘unmarked up-to-now’ type. This is
because wh-questions always have a ‘specificational’ function: the wh-word
represents a variable for which a value should be specified. As will be pointed
out in 5.20, a constitution reading is automatically a specificational up-to-now
reading, as in the following examples:
V. More on the up-to-now reading of the perfect 255
What have you been using this knife for? [It’s got blunt and rusty.]
“Why have you been in the kitchen so long?” Ϫ “[The dishes were dirty.] I have
been washing them up.”
Who’s been watering the plants? [There’s water spilt on the floor.]
“Why have you been crying?” Ϫ “I haven’t been crying.I’ve been cutting onions.”
(All three sentences have an explanatory-resultative function.)
There are also present perfect sentences with an explanatory-resultative func-
tion which respond to an anticipated request to account for a period up to now:
(said by someone passing Tom while he is sitting on a chair in his front garden)
[“Hello Tom. How are you?” Ϫ “I’m exhausted.] I’ve been raking leaves for three
hours.”
Here the speaker (ϭ Tom) sets up a ‘need to account’ by asserting that he is
exhausted, and then gives the reason for the exhaustion. In doing so he sets up
an implicit period leading up to now in which the cause for the exhaustion has
come about and then locates the causal situation in it.
5.19 The constitution readings

An up-to-now interpretation of a present perfect clause is a ‘constitution reading’ if the
speaker is taken to be concerned with one of the following three questions: (a) ‘How
much time has elapsed between a bygone time and t
0
?’ (e. g. Two weeks have gone by
since then); (b) ‘How many actualizations have there been in the period up to now?’
(e. g. Meg has washed the elephants three times this week); (c) ‘How has the pre-
present been filled “situationwise”?’ (e. g. [Oh, you’re back at last!] What have you
been doing?).
Readings (a) and (b) are ‘quantificational constitution readings’: they are ‘duration-
quantifying’ and ‘number-quantifying’, respectively. Reading (c) is the ‘nonquantifica-
tional constitution reading’.
5.19.1 An up-to-now reading is a
constitution reading if the speaker is
taken to be concerned with one of the following questions:
(a) ‘How much time has elapsed between a bygone time and t
0
?’. This question
is answered by using the present perfect of a sentence whose situation is
‘duration-specifying’:
Three years have gone by since that accident [and I still haven’t seen a penny!]
In such sentences the situation is duration-quantifying, i. e. the situation
referred to in the sentence is the specification of the duration of the interval
256 5. The absolute use of the present perfect
separating two times. (In this case the times in question are the time of the
accident, which is also the beginning of the conceptualized pre-present zone,
and t
0
.)
(b) ‘How many actualizations have there been in the period up to now?’

You are the third colleague who has asked me this question today. (The speaker is
concerned with the situational constitution of the pre-present, more specifically
with the question how many times a particular kind of situation has actualized
in it.)
In such sentences the situation is number-quantifying.
(c) ‘How has the pre-present been filled ‘situationwise’?’
[Oh, you’re back at last!] What have you been doing? (The speaker wants to know
what action(s) of the addressee has/have filled the pre-present. This action or these
actions is or are viewed as leading up to t
0
but without continuing at t
0
.)
[Ah, there you are!] Where have you been? (The question concerns the addressee’s
whereabouts during the complete pre-present period that the speaker has in mind,
but the state of the addressee being somewhere else is not viewed as continuing
at t
0
.)
[Jim appears to be suffering from culture shock because he’s just come home from
Africa.] He has been travelling through Ethiopia, Sudan and Chad. (The speaker
is concerned with the nature of the situations constituting the pre-present trip
which has led to Jim’s present suffering from culture shock. Since the pre-present
zone is conceived of as the time of the trip, the speaker can be said to be concerned
with the situational constitution of the pre-present zone.)
In each of these three cases (a)Ϫ(c), the speaker ‘looks back on’ the pre-present
(from his own temporal standpoint, i. e. t
0
) and evaluates it. This evaluation
may be a measuring of the pre-present by indicating either its length or the

number of subsituations making up the (hyper)situation that coincides with the
pre-present. It may also be a specification of the nature of the situation(s) that
has/have filled the pre-present. In all three cases the speaker is concerned with
the situational constitution of the pre-present zone. We will therefore refer to
a reading of one of these kinds as a
constitution reading. This sort of read-
ing is a kind of up-to-now reading. This means that it differs from the indefinite
and the continuative readings in that the time of the full situation fills the entire
pre-present but does not include t
0
. (As is typical of up-to-now readings Ϫ see
Figure 5.5 Ϫa constitution reading is always a bounded reading: the (single or
repetitive) full situation is taken to come to an end before t
0
, with no relevant
time interval between the end of the situation and t
0
.) Since the above readings
(a) and (b) have to do with ‘measuring’ the pre-present situation (and the pre-
present period with which it coincides), we will call these readings
quantifica-
tional constitution readings
. Reading (c) will be referred to as the non-
V. More on the up-to-now reading of the perfect 257
quantificational constitution reading. As will be explained in 5.20.1, the
latter reading differs from the unmarked up-to-now reading in that it is ‘specifi-
cational’.
5.19.2 The following examples further illustrate the
nonquantificational
subtype:

“[Oh, there you are.] What have you been doing?” Ϫ “I’ve been putting the children
to bed.” (Both the question and the answer concern the nature of speaker B’s ac-
tion(s) during the pre-present period when he was absent.)
“[Oh, there you are.] Where have you been?” Ϫ “I’ve been in the attic. [It needed
cleaning.]” (similar)
(uttered at a school reunion) “What have you been doing for the last twenty
years?” Ϫ “I’ve been raising three children and establishing a multinational corpora-
tion.”
[“After years of hard soil (…) my front lawn has become very soft. (…) Is it possible
that critters like say red ants has [sic] colonized my yard and loosened up the ground
soil in the process?”] Ϫ “Aside from the ants what have you been doing to that soil
that might make it that way? If you have been adding organic matter over the years
that may help explain what is going on.” (www)
In each of these examples, the questions form a request to account for a pre-
present period. The perfect forms in both the questions and the replies refer to
situations which, possibly in combination with other situations, have ‘filled’
the relevant period.
5.19.3 The
quantificational uses of a present perfect yielding a constitution
reading are illustrated by the following:
Nearly four years have elapsed since his accident. (duration-quantifying)
[“How many times have you met him?”] Ϫ “So far I’ve met him {once / three
times}. (number-quantifying)
[“How many times have you met him?”] Ϫ “So far I {have never met him / haven’t
met him} at all.” (number-quantifying; the number is zero)
That is the first word he has said to me today. (number-quantifying)
You’re the third student who’s fallen asleep in the library this week. (number-quanti-
fying)
[“How many students have fallen asleep in the library this week?”] Ϫ “
Three stu-

dents have fallen asleep in the library this week.” (number-quantifying)
There are a couple of things to be noted here. First, as is clear from the second
and third examples, the number of times that a situation has actualized in the
relevant period leading up to now may be zero, one or more. Secondly, the
claim that the constitution reading (which is one of the functional readings
compatible with the temporal up-to-now W-interpretation) and the indefinite
258 5. The absolute use of the present perfect
W-interpretation are context-dependent interpretations (like the continuative
W-interpretation) is corroborated by the fact that the same sentence can receive
different (temporal or functional) interpretations in different contexts:
[“Have you ever met John?”] Ϫ “So far {I’ve never met him/Ihaven’t met him}.”
(indefinite interpretation)
[“How many times have you met John?”] Ϫ “So far I {I’ve never met him/Ihaven’t
met him} at all.” (quantificational constitution reading)
In the former example, speaker A is only concerned with the question whether
or not the situation of speaker B’s meeting John has actualized at some time(s)
in an implicit pre-present period. B’s answer is ‘no’. In the second example,
speaker A presupposes that B has met John in the pre-present and asks him
how many times this has happened. Speaker B’s reply is that scanning the pre-
present does not reveal a single instance of such an encounter, which implies
that speaker A is wrong to presuppose that at least one such encounter has
taken place.
5.19.4 All constitution readings share the characteristic that the situation fill-
ing the pre-present may consist of a number of
subsituations forming one
hypersituation:
[“What have you been up to since I last saw you?” Ϫ “Quite a lot.] I’ve been raising
three adopted children and running a small company. And I’ve had holidays in Italy,
Greece and Sweden. And, most of all, I’ve been looking after my husband, [who
would be totally lost without me.]” (nonquantificational constitution reading; what

situationally constitutes the pre-present is actually a set of subsituations.)
Three years have passed since the child went missing, [and the police haven’t found
out anything at all.] (duration-quantifying constitution reading: we can say that
Three years have passed refers to a hypersituation consisting of three subsituations
of one year passing. The speaker treats the three years as ‘one period’, viz. the length
of the hypersituation, rather than as three individual years.)
[“How many books has she written?”] Ϫ “So far she’s written four.” (number-quan-
tifying constitution reading)
Of course, the hypersituation may contain gaps between the subsituations, but
these gaps are considered negligible. (In this respect, pre-present hypersitu-
ations are like habits: I always go to school on foot does not imply that the
speaker is actually walking at t
0
.) Moreover, we can speak of a ‘hypersituation’
the moment there is at least one subsituation and one gap. Let us illustrate this
with the sentence I have published only one article so far. This sentence (which
receives a number-quantifying reading) refers to a hypersituation because not
only the actualization of the one situation referred to but also the nonactualiza-
tion of other (potential) subsituations is taken into account. This is because
this number-quantifying constitution reading is paraphrasable as ‘There are n