It’s All Under Control! On Perfective Present Forms in BCS Main Clauses

Abstract

This study aims to provide a unified analysis of the syntax-pragmatics interface of the (allegedly) anomalous licensing of the perfective present (PresPF) in BCS present-tensed main clauses. Although PresPF forms cannot usually refer to eventualities that are anchored to the time of utterance UT, there seem to be three apparent exceptions to this structural constraint. They are as follows: 1) abusive metonymic performatives; 2) live demonstrations; and 3) nonveridical contexts introduced by the epistemic operator možda ‘maybe’. It is claimed that for PresPF forms to be licensed in BCS main clauses, control needs to be specified as a variable at the level of the so-called Seat of Knowledge in the SpeechActP layer.