"Juan has been working for three hours"

[Marta Carretero]

        I have not done any research on the subject, but as a native
speaker of Spanish,I can suggest two equivalent constructions to the
English 'Juan has been working for three hours':

a) Juan ha estado trabajando tres horas.
        (present perfect progressive)

This construction entails that the situation is not persistent, i.e. Juan
is not working any longer, he has just stopped. Stress is laid on the
duration, and Juan may or not have finished the work concerned.

b) Juan lleva trabajando tres horas / Juan lleva tres horas trabajando
        (periphrastic construction)
This construction entails that the situation is persistent, i.e. Juan
is still working.

        I hope this helps.

        Best wishes,

        Marta.

*************************************************************************
On Thu, 9 Apr 1998, Mark Davies wrote:

> I'm starting into some research on the historical development of the
> following type of construction in Spanish and Portuguese :
>
>         a) "John has been working for three hours"
>         b) "John had been working for three hours, when . . ."
>         c) "I've been working here since 1995"
>
> I've looked through the standard sources on tense and aspect (Comrie,
> Bybee, etc) and find very little regarding this kind of construction.
> Bybee et al _Evolution of Grammar_ (1994:62) calls it the "anterior
> continuing" and Comrie _Aspect_ (1976:60) refers to it as the "perfect of
> persistent situation".  Neither spends more than a sentence or two on the
> construction, however.
>
> Questions:
>
> 1) Is there a standard name for this type of construction?
>
> 2) Is anyone aware of any studies dealing specifically with this
> construction, especially those related to diachronic issues?  I've searched
> extensively on OCLC and in other bibliographies, and haven't found much at
> all.
>
> 3)  I'd like to get some sense of the cross-linguistic possibilities for
> the construction, and am wondering whether any of you might be able to
> email me with glosses for the following three sentences.  I already have
> Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian, Latin, Japanese, and
> Mandarin, but would appreciate any other languages.  E.g.:
>
>         SPANISH
>
>         a) hace tres horas que Juan trabaja
>              makes three hours that J. works
>             "John has been working for three hours"
>
>         b) hacia tres horas que Juan trabajaba
>              make-IMPF three hours that J. work-IMPF
>             "John had been working for three hours, when . . ."
>
>         c) trabajo aca desde 1995
>              I-work here since 1995
>              "I've been working here since 1995"
>
> I'd be happy to post a summary a summary of these responses if there is
> sufficient interest.  Thanks in advance.
>
> Mark Davies
>
>
> ==================================================================
> Mark Davies, Assistant Professor, Spanish Linguistics
> Dept. of Foreign Languages, Illinois State University
> Normal, IL 61790-4300
>
> Voice:309/438-7975      email:mdavies at ilstu.edu
> Fax:309/438-8038          http://138.87.135.33/~mdavies/
> ==================================================================
>