A Corpus‐Based Investigation Into the Semantic Relationship Between the English Present Perfect and Verbs

ABSTRACT Based on the BNC (British National Corpus) and the COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English) corpus, this study explores the semantic features of the verbs in the English present perfect (PrP). Collostructional analysis is employed to identify verbs that are strongly attracted to and repelled by the PrP construction. The results indicate that the PrP of British and American English attracts achievement and accomplishment verbs. For activity and state verbs, their behavior diverges: some are attracted to, while others are repelled by the PrP. Further analysis of the activity and state verbs shows that the scalar/non‐scalar distinction of the verbs can explain the attraction and repulsion relationship between the verbs and the PrP. The selectivity of the PrP construction can be explained by the semantic features of the verbs and the PrP. The current relevance associated with the PrP is embodied in the changes along the scale of values of a certain attribute that is encoded in the verb.