Temporal Adverbs and the English Perfect

Previous work has shown that the English perfect is semantically as well as syntactically complex, each verb having its complement of temporal parameters. We show using this assumption and semantic arguments that the ambiguity of Mary has again broken an odd number of glasses ('there has been a further incident of Mary breaking an odd number of glasses' or 'the total number of glasses that Mary has ever broken is again odd') reduces to whether again modifies the participial verb phrase or the phrase headed by hss. Our purpose is to articulate the system of temporal parameters associated with the perfect and address their interaction with frame and durative temporal adverbs.