The Present Perfect Tense (PPT): interpretations under the parameters of English learners Brazilian Portuguese speakers.

Abstract

The main aim of this work is to present four possible readings linked to the English structure known as Present Perfect Tense (PPT). We know that this is one of the most complex structures in the English language for English learners Brazilian Portuguese speakers due to its different interpretations. Considering the English structure with its morphological counterpart in Portuguese, the “Pretérito Perfeito Composto”(PPC), we found that they do not have the same syntactic distribution nor the same semantic interpretation, although they have the same morphological form. We will present examples from the perspective of four possible interpretations of the PPT using sentences in English and Brazilian Portuguese, with the aim of demonstrating criteria for similarities and differences between the two languages. The readings linked to the PPT are based on the theories and studies of Comrie (1976), Palmer (1987), Klein (1992), Oliveira (2003, 2005, 2015), Kearns (2011), Molsing (2010, 2013) and Portner (2003), which we call (a): empirical or experience-based PPT; (b): PPT that is resultant or of current relevance; (c): PPT as an expression of the recent past; and (e): PPT as a persisting or ongoing event. Considering the semantic non-equivalence between PPT and PPC, these learners end up using other English structures, such as Past Simple and Present Simple. The non-correspondence between morphologically similar structures between two languages ​​is considered, according to Slabakova (2016), a bottleneck (Botleneck Hypothesis), as the learner will have to understand a new grammatical configuration in the L2.

Keywords: Present perfect tense, Past perfect compound, L2 Acquisition, Semantics.