"Juan has been working for three hours"

[Mark Davies]

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


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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/
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