The functions of the auxiliary ‘have’ in Australian English vivid narratives

Marie-Eve Ritz, Sophie Richard

Research output: Chapter in Book/Conference paperChapterpeer-review

Abstract

The present chapter builds on earlier work showing that the Present Perfect (PP) in Australian English (AusE) narratives and police media reports has acquired some of the functions of the Simple Past (SP). It focuses more specifically on subject-auxiliary ellipsis in sequences of non-standard PP clauses with the aim of better understanding auxiliary scope in such segments. Our data are taken from three corpora of oral narratives and one corpus of written media reports. We argue that the auxiliary, in its full or cliticized form, serves as a marker of saliency, highlighting a speaker’s subjectivity, and that it has acquired discourse segmenting functions for some speakers. Both increased subjectivity and widening of scope are consistent with principles of semantic change.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationThe Perfect volume
Subtitle of host publicationPapers on the Perfect
EditorsKristin Melum Eide, Marc Fryd
Place of PublicationAmsterdam
PublisherJohn Benjamins Publishing Company
Chapter18
Pages461-478
Number of pages18
ISBN (Electronic)9789027259998
ISBN (Print)9789027208606
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jul 2021

Publication series

NameStudies in Language Companion Series
Volume217
ISSN (Print)0165-7763

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