The Present Perfect in World Englishes

This paper reports on a comprehensive corpus-based study of regional and stylistic variation in the distribution of the English present perfect. The data represents ten English varieties of both the Inner Circle and Outer Circle, covering four major text types: conversation, news reportage, academic and fictional writing. The results are discussed in light of the finding that the present perfect has been losing ground to the preterit since Late Modern English, a tendency which is possibly influenced by a process of colloquialization and which is most prominent in American English. The study shows that the distribution of the present perfect (along with the preterit) in most of the English varieties investigated can be placed on a continuum with British English (BrE) and American English (AmE) lying at its two opposite ends. The findings are suggestive of the influence of a combination of various factors including substrate transfer, different degrees of colloquialization, historical input, and geographical and cultural proximity. (Contains 9 figures, 2 notes and 6 tables.)