Universal-existential puzzles

Abstract

German Perfect sentences with durational phrases are (often) ambiguous between a universal (or 'u') and an existential (or 'e') reading. There are two different kinds of this u/e-ambiguity: a complex and a simple one, cf. also the article of Iatridou et al. in this volume. Let us start with the complex u/e-ambiguity. Cf. the following examples and the corresponding illustrations: (1) complex u/e-ambiguity: bis ('until') and seit ('since') (1 example: John ist bis/ seit gestern im Garten gewesen. John is until/ since yesterday in garden been 'John was in the garden until/?since yesterday.' u-reading: There is a time that ended/ started in yesterday, and John was in the garden throughout that time e-reading: There is a time that ended/ started in yesterday, and J. was in the garden at least once during that time (2) u-reading of): yesterday u bis-interval = be-in-garden-interval (3) e-reading of (1): yesterday u bis-interval ⊃ be-in-garden-interval 'At least 20 people have been killed since Monday during fights.'

Universal and existencial perfects in Brazilian Portuguese

“…A sentence-final "for", as in (5a), is ambiguous between U/E readings while a preposed-"for", in (5b), gives only a U-perfect (DOWTY, 1979). This view has been debated by some, although I will not go into the details of their particular analyses here (see RATHERT, 2003;ABUSCH;ROOTS, 1990). An immediate problem, however, would be how one could get the present perfect meaning when no adverbs are used, let alone other types of adverbs, like those of frequency or iterativity.…”

“…It has been noted by some (RATHERT, 2003;PANCHEVA, 2003;IATRIDOU et al, 2003) that there are some cases of the Present Perfect in which there is an ambiguity between the Universal and Existential Perfects (U-perfects vs. E-perfects, respectively). For example, (1a) could mean that John still lives in New York at speech time, or that there was some time in the past at which John lived in New York for four years.…”

“…Inglês, Alemão, Grego, Turco, etc.) descrevem as ambiguidades entre os dois tipos de leituras que frequentemente são definidos em termos da abordagem "Extended Now" ("Presente Estendido") (RATHERT, 2003;IATRIDOU et al, 2003;MCCOARD, 1978). A caracterização do Present Perfect nesta abordagem sofre de alguns problemas mesmo quando se trata de fenômenos nas línguas mais estudadas e também é sujeita a outros novos problemas na análise do PPC.…”

“…English, German, Greek, Turkish, etc.) describes the ambiguities that arise between these two types of readings which are often defined in terms of the Extended Now framework (RATHERT, 2003;IATRIDOU et al, 2003;MCCOARD, 1978). This framework's characterization of the Present Perfect runs into some problems even when dealing with phenomena of the more studied languages and incurs some new problems when the Brazilian Portuguese Present Perfect is given a closer look.…”