TY - JOUR AU - Bui, Thuy PY - 2019/05/13 Y2 - 2024/03/28 TI - The Vietnamese perfect JF - Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung JA - SuB VL - 21 IS - 1 SE - Articles DO - UR - https://ojs.ub.uni-konstanz.de/sub/index.php/sub/article/view/136 SP - 249-266 AB - <p>The paper seeks to advance understanding of cross-linguistic variation in the semantics of tense and aspect by investigating the distribution and interpretation of the temporal marker <em>da</em> in Vietnamese. The study first explores the possibility of accounting for such a marker as an optional past tense. By testing this hypothesis against empirical data, this paper argues that <em>da</em> is neither a referential nor a quantificational past tense, but a perfect marker in Vietnamese. The second part of the paper provides a formal analysis of <em>da</em>. Based on <em>da</em>’s interaction with different adverbial phrases, this study suggests that <em>da</em> behaves similarly to the German perfect rather than the English perfect. The discussion relates directly to recent approaches to other languages and offers data from a superficially tenseless language to the discussion on the cross-linguistic semantic variation in ‘perfect puzzle.’</p> ER -