Tense, Aspect, Aktionsart and Related Areas: Approaches to Analysing the Core Meaning of English Perfect Verb Forms

This thesis deals with the verbal categories tense and aspect in the context of analysing the English perfect. The underlying notion of time is examined from the viewpoint of etymology and from the viewpoint of fields of knowledge that lie outside the immediate scope of temporal semantics. The category tense is scrutinised by discussing the concept of Reichenbach tense and the concept of correlation (Giering). The starting point of the discussion of the category verbal aspect is the dichotomy perfective vs. imperfective in the Slavic languages. The main part about the perfect is concerned with the possessive perfect as a cross-linguistic phenomenon and focuses on the usage and the meaning of the English present perfect. There are three appendices which are an integral part of this dissertation. (A) deals with the systematization of English verb forms and their graphical representation. Three different visualizations are presented, two of which are genuine to this paper. (B) reproduces the target setting according to which an animated visualization of English infinitives was programmed. (C) represents a synopsis of approaches to the English perfect in grammars and textbooks.