The German Perfect: Its Semantic Composition and Its Interactions with Temporal Adverbials (review)

This book provides an in-depth overview of perfect constructions in German and offers an extensive account of their uses from the perspective of a formal semantic framework. It also considers many pragmatic factors as well as particular characteristics of German syntax. The work is divided into eight chapters, starting with an introduction dealing with the basic framework of formal semantics, in the tradition of Rainer Bäuerle, Angelika Kratzer, and Arnim von Stechow. The remaining chapters can be grouped into two thematic units: the semantic effects of the present perfect (Chs. 2–3) and a description of the temporal adverbials, from the point of view of their interaction with perfect constructions (Chs. 4–8).

For the most part, the study focuses on the present perfect, based on the assumption that the semantics of the past and future perfect should fall out automatically as a by-product of the semantics of the present perfect. The composition of this uniform semantics works as follows: Any perfect construction as a whole denotes a post-state of the embedded VP, which is combined with the aspect and the tense of the clause. This is historically anchored in the past participle morpheme and is synchronically expressed by the combination of this morpheme with a present auxiliary, which locates the post-state component relative to the time of utterance. Musan’s account makes substantial changes to the picture of perfect constructions that has been advocated in the past, for example, accounts that try to relate the anteriority component with the auxiliary rather than with the participle morpheme or that put forward the idea that perfect constructions are ambiguous between a ‘past tense’ reading and an ‘aspectual’ reading.

As to the different semantic effects of the present perfect, M argues they can be best explained by a series of pragmatic factors and their interaction with the uniform semantics. More specifically, both the situation time of the resultant state of the verb and the situation time of the construction as a whole are associated with frame times, each of which can be assigned topical status or not. Thus, the various effects of perfect constructions are not described as different readings based on semantic ambiguity but rather as effects of filling vague components of the construction with content (achieved by interaction). After giving a classification of temporal adverbials into quantificational vs. nonquantificational (expressing position or duration) types, M investigates their respective interaction with all levels of perfect clauses (tense–aspect–participle). Building on these insights, M demonstrates how the interpretation of some temporal adverbials is subject to either lexical restrictions, relationships of combinability—such as in the case of seit ‘since’ and lang(e) ‘long’—or the complex interaction of semantic and pragmatic factors dealt with in previous chapters. Similarly, temporal subordinate clauses and their conjunctions are discussed since they play the role of temporal adverbials in their matrix clause. Finally, M shows the syntactic base and surface positions temporal adverbials can take. A thorough conclusion, list of references, and index make this work a useful manual for (advanced) students and scholars.