| This dissertation focuses on the nature of perfects and their relationship with other competing resultative constructions in Macedonian and Bulgarian. I show how we can systematically analyze the Macedonian and Bulgarian resultative constructions and demonstrate which of them are grammatical perfects and which are lexical resultative constructions. The term "resultative" applies to verb forms that express a state implying a previous event or action. Broadly speaking the two types of resultative constructions examined are the present perfect and what I have termed the "Resultative". The latter is one source from which present perfects may develop. Specifically four types of resultative constructions are considered: (1) the original Slavic 'be' perfect or l-form; (2) the 'have' perfect; (3) the 'have' Resultative; and (4) the 'be' Resultative. Based on analysis of a corpus of examples from contemporary Macedonian and Bulgarian and field research, I illustrate that the differences between perfects and Resultatives involve several properties of the respective constructions including, for example, the identity relation between subject and agent, morphology of the participle, as well as transitivity and aspectual restrictions of the participle, and syntactic composition of the verb phrase. In order to distinguish perfects from the non-perfects within a typology of Slavic resultative constructions, I then apply the types of distinctions established for the Bulgarian and Macedonian resultative constructions to resultative constructions in the rest of the Slavic languages and dialects (Polish, Cassubian, Polabian, Upper and Lower Sorbian, Czech, Slovak, Russian, northwestern Russian dialects, Ukrainian, Belorussian, Slovene, Croatian, and Serbian). |
