I just come in Hong Kong by myselfTense in spoken Hong Kong English
- Elena Seoane 1
- Cristina Suárez-Gómez 2
- 1 (University of Santiago de Compostela
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2
Universitat de les Illes Balears
info
- Isabel Moskowich-Spiegel Fandiño (coord.)
- Begoña Crespo García (coord.)
- Inés Lareo Martín (coord.)
- Paula Lojo Sandino (coord.)
Publisher: Servizo de Publicacións ; Universidade da Coruña
ISBN: 978-84-9749-401-4
Year of publication: 2010
Volume Title: Part II, L-Z
Volume: 2
Pages: 817-827
Congress: International Conference on Corpus Linguistics (2. 2010. A Coruña)
Type: Conference paper
Abstract
Perfect meaning, that is, the expression of actions within “a time span beginning in the past andextending up to now” (Huddleston & Pullum, 2002: 143; cf. also Quirk et al, 1985: 192-195; Biber et al,1999: 467), is traditionally ascribed to the analytic construction have + past participle exclusively.However, alternative constructions are also attested, in particular the synthetic preterite, whichcompetes with the analytic construction in some registers and some geographical varieties of English.The aim of the study is to analyse the expression of the perfect in Hong Kong English. First, we willrevise the forms available for the expression of perfect meaning; then, we will study their use in spokenlanguage; finally, we will compare whether the variation observed for Hong-Kong English matches thevariation described for American, Scottish and Irish Englishes