The present perfect in Expanding circle: A diachronic study

• Main Author: Culbertson, Esperanza F.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2019
• Subjects: English language—Verb; English language—Variation; English Language and Literature
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_doctoral/1434; https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/context/etd_doctoral/article/2478/viewcontent/FINAL_DISSERTATION_Culbertson__Esperanza_F.2.pdf
• Institution: De La Salle University

The present study investigates the frequency of the use of the present perfect from a diachronic perspective from a corpus-linguistic point of view. Within the last 50 plus years, the present perfect has been receiving some attention from linguists because of being relatively and confusing complex verb in English. Its syntactic and semantic features and its varying distribution in different environments are, perhaps the main reason why it has been discussed by several scholars. Likewise, the semantic function of both the present perfect and the simple past appears to be of no difference. Thus, this study also examines the frequency of the occurrence of the simple past and compares it to the present perfect. The data were provided by Borlongan (2018) taken from his previous works on the Expanding Circle of Englishes, which is made up of reportage from three (3) national varieties of English. The texts from each national variety were divided into two periods, which have been labeled the 1970 and the 2000. The texts were written from 1960- 2018 by local authors from Japan, South Korea, and Vietnam and were gathered over the last 50 plus year period .The data were sourced from online articles and news that include: news reports, history, sports, economics, business, travel, skills, hobbies, editorials, opinion, humanities, culture, thesis, essays, and social science. The assumption being that there will be a decrease or increase on the frequency of the occurrence of the present perfect and the simple past among the three English varieties and that the degree of difference in the preference for use between these two might be influenced by factors such as historical and the degree of cultural contact between English varieties. The study also examines the temporal adverbials that co-occur with the present perfect and simple past. The findings show that the low and high frequency of the present perfect and simple past in these three national varieties of English from the Expanding Circle reveal a trend that suggests favor either to BriE or AmE and other factors such as previously mentioned.