Quinn, H.2010-02-152010-02-152005Quinn, H. (2005) Epistemic modals and perfective have. Edinburgh, Scotland: ICLCE 05 - The 1st International Conference on the Linguistics of Contemporary English, 24 Jun 2005.http://hdl.handle.net/10092/3469Epistemic modals are used to convey judgments about the probability of an event (cf. Palmer 1990: 50f). In Present-Day New Zealand English, epistemic utterances that concern past events usually contain a ‘perfective’ have that follows the modal. However, especially in the speech of NZers born between the late 19th and mid-20th century, we also find utterances where no have is present, even though a past event is discussed. This paper investigates the influence of linguistic factors on the use of perfective have in noncounterfactual judgments involving epistemic modals. I argue that the additional have may serve either to mark past time, or the episodic nature of the assessed event, and I propose that its distribution is determined by considerations of economy.enConference Contributions - PublishedFields of Research::420000 Language and Culture::420100 Language Studies::420102 New Zealand EnglishFields of Research::380000 Behavioural and Cognitive Sciences::380200 Linguistics::380207 Linguistic structures (incl. grammar, phonology, lexicon, semantics)Fields of Research::380000 Behavioural and Cognitive Sciences::380200 Linguistics::380206 Language in time and space (incl. historical linguistics, dialectology)