1. The shaping of the Perfect Tense construal
Edmond Cane Center for Albanian Studies, Tirana

2. Beyond a descriptive account
Differences are considerable - different structural quality
How far cross-linguistic differences go; what is the significance
Link behavior to structural features (or the structural framing)
a Mendeleyev’s Table

3. Cross-linguistic matching
Data from Linguee.com:
Ha detto (to English) past 23, perfect 3, present 2
Ha fatto (to English) past 9; perfect 14, out 3
est alle (to English) past 24; perfect 6, present 1, out 1
He said (to French) Perfect 12; past: 7; 2 present, imperfect 1; omitted 5, noun 1
Albanian perfect and past – well-placed and established as one alternative of past versus the other – the imperfect
Albanian perfect construction:
pairing with: pastime content + resultative frame content; plus further
uninterpretable between the two – and thus rendered relevant
each of the three being considerable, within a range: 20% - 55%

4. Cross-linguistic matching – Cont.
Italian/French perfect – match generally non-perfect English
English past broadly matches - Italian/French perfect
Albanian perfect behaving as past:
simple perfect harboring both (past & resultative) scenes;
Albanian perfect continuous – totally past temporal scene
English Perfect Continuous matched by a non-tense construction in Albanian

5. Observing that: Perfect is a construction (Goldberg’s 1995, 2006?)
pairing of idiosyncratic form to idiosyncratic content, conventionally shaped through usage and as provided for by structural features
a differently construed identity; Albanian Perfect is not an aspect
In English there is the ground domain of segmentation: past – present – future, and the aspect (perfect, continuous) is a projection
In Albanian, perfect has slipped from its aspect domain, landing onto the ‘bottom’ layer with the delimitation of basic temporal types of scenes
Segmentation of English, Albanian, French domain of tenses and the respective content zones of Perfect thereof: unreliable; no structural regularity across different language perfects
Or, no regularity duly generated by structure

6. Observations - Cont.
Evidence questions the structural organization along the traditional lines: aspect/time
Albanian perfect co-located with the past – versus imperfect, thus imposing a different segmentation, organization, delimitation
the Albanian perfect and past have significant shares, in one domain of past versus the imperfect (evidence from Albanian corpus)
the French perfect has occupied almost the whole past zone, and the past has been pushed to the literary corner;
Albanian imperfect takes over as past for “be”, “have”; perfect continuous is construed as past continuous
there is no structural regularity and hardly a reliable regularity or matching between Albanian perfect and the seemingly corresponding French, Italian
Delimitations do not fit:

7. Perfect’s ID
Perfect construal shaped/categorized in is proper environment: a) structure- relating factors; b) usage-related factors
Boundaries of opposition provide for content (Saussure, Martinet); A tense reveals content and dichotomies as observed in the axes of oppositions
Testing boundaries as content-generators:
English perfect/non-perfect has a full match of resultative/non-resultative
In English, replacing perfect with non-perfect, erases the resultative content
Albanian fails this test: in perfect: range of both resultative, non-resultative is 50-50;
Albanian perfect continuous is totally non-resultative
ownership of resultative content is confirmed for English , lack of such content is confirmed for Albanian

8. The frame of English perfect:
Perfect v. past v. present: a 3-angle opposition and choice of speakers
Perfect versus continuous
Perfect replicated onto: past, present, future
Perfect as common ground bearing a 2-sided opposition: perfect v. perf. Cont.
The presence and the size of resultative content in English:
Perfect – past – present
Replication of perfects – which consolidates the perfect construal
Past continuous/perfect continuous: replicates and consolidates past/perfect (even stretched further to future

9. The frame of Albanian perfect:
The wiring through the web of oppositions:
Perfect and past versus imperfect (in the past domain versus present); it is shaped as the main dichotomy in the domain of past scenes
Albanian lacks a binary consolidation of axes of perfect and continuous – both are deficient and not consolidated
Perfect is little established and replicated, without a clear resultative content ID
Continuous is half-way constructed; it offers little room for opposition with perfect; it offers little room for ‘sliding’ or replicating Perfect into a perfect-perfect continuous opposition
No extending from past to perfect along the simple tense line or the continuous tense line; there is perfect continuous content but only through a non-tense construction
Albanian grammarians claim (for perfect) both, perfectum historicum and resultative
However, no reliable link between perfect and resultative content in usage (Albanian corpus)
Further, in perfect continuous, total lack of resultative perfect tied to present

10. Analyzing typological differences
Considering the topology/delimitation of tenses, the frame so shaped; the contrast is between frames (the gestalt principle)
English different from Albanian, French
Albanian different from French, Italian
structure-relating factors: the web of axes: the imperfect in Albanian and French has impacted a quite different organization; perfect is what it has been delimited by its neighbors, or the topology of tenses
context-related or community related factors: French past as literary – locked by the respective community, and thus access was denied to large community – resulting into non- usage of past and all space was left to perfect as the other alternative to imperfect
the presence of the non-tense construction has taken over the perfect continuous content (but not in French and Italian)

11. Structural observations
English Perfect continuous matched with (in French –
has been working: perfect tense 8; present tense 15; noun/other 2
has been doing: perfect tense 11; present tense 12, other 4
have been sleeping: perfect tense 3; present tense 10; noun/other 3
have been reading: perfect tense 21; present tense 8

12. Share/ratio of Perf. Cont. in Albanian
Uses
present be +participle
4291
imperfect be + participle
512 (10%)
past/perfect be + participle
150 (3%)
have x time …+ progressive
320 (6%)

13. Share of Perf. Cont. in English (BNC)
Engl Past Cont %
Engl Perf. Cont %

14. Account meets evidence
The shaping of Alb. Perfect construal differs from the corresponding English
English oppositions/wiring produce resultative perfect (perfect/past dichotomy)
Alb. oppositions/wiring turn off provision to generate resultative perfect content
Albanian has some resultative content in its perfect – but not structurally established, even less replicated
The progressive tense track in Albanian is half-way constructed; it provides for consolidation and replication for present and imperfect, and fails for perfect
Alb. perfect continuous aggravates the above structural deficiency by strongly and clearly establishing a non-resultative perfect content – and this passes as memory and profiles the perfect prototype

15. Albanian perfect construal versus French match
Albanian perfect has a stronger resultative content; it ‘discharges’ part of the past scenes to the past, which co-domains the past area
Compared to French, Albanian has a more consolidated continuous track, (evidence from linguee.com and the Albanian corpus)
Hence, Albanian is less likely to ignore the projection of perfect onto the track of [continuous – non-continuous]
While due to structural awkwardness this is not established through the available Perfect Continuous (in Alb.)
Which then has resolved to: perfect continuous content established in non-tense temporal frame – confirmed by evidence in Albanian corpus

16. Albanian appears awkward regarding the blend of perfect continuous content to the feasible perfect continuous form
While for English, due to structural favorable environment, this blend occurred at the layer of tense frame, very close to verb frame, for Albanian, it was not ignored like in Latin Languages, but established out of the tense layer, and… weaker usage
Albanian perfect-relating networking is significantly smaller and weaker than the corresponding English, and significantly stronger than in some other languages

17. This account and evidence contributes to the broader account of structures as cognitive representations, construed as provided for in the peculiar environment they are wired/entangled, strongly determined by: structure-relating factors and usage/community relating factors. There is no ground for structural regularity as generated by basic structures.