Re-examining the hodiernal present perfect: towards a unified account

The paper re-examines the hodiernal Present Perfect (henceforth PrP) and shows that the nature of termination is not linked to outer aspect, but to the aspectual class of the predicate and that the 24-hour rule is mainly dependent on the presence of time adverbials. I argue that the hodiernal is not a separate reading of the PrP, but a subcase of the existential perfect. The crucial difference between the Catalan and English PrP is not that the former has an extra reading, but rather that it allows for the presence of time adverbials which fix the eventuality on the time axis.