The Past Perfective and Present Perfect in African-American English

Abstract

African American English simple V-ed sentences such as John ate the rutabagas are ambiguous; they have both past perfective and present perfect readings. This paper focuses on the role that verb morphology plays in this ambiguity. It argues that the ambiguity can be traced to the presence of a covert present tense operator found in the present perfect (but not past perfective) versions of such sentences, and the interaction of this operator with -ed, the morphology that turns the verb eat into ate. When it interacts with a covert present tense operator, -ed is interpreted as perfect aspect, but when it is t the highest tense/aspect marker in the sentence, it is interpreted as past tense.