The Present Perfect in Canada: is it more like football, rugby or ice hockey? A corpus-based comparative study with American English and British English

The present study is set out to investigate on the use of the Present Perfect in Canadian English and to compare it with American and Britain English. The purpose of this MA dissertation is to find out if the Present Perfect in Canadian English is a mix of American or features or if it is Canadian. The present study is comprised of multiple corpora analyses, namely the Strathy Corpus, COCA and BNC, and a survey carried out among native speakers of these three varieties of English. Regarding the Present Perfect, different readings can apply to its usage: some of them include Continuance, Completion, Immediate Past, etc. In comparison with American and British English, it seems that the same verbs occur in the Present Perfect and that the same adverbs modify the Present Perfect. When modified by an adverb, it is accompanied by temporal adverbs. Frequency-wise, the Canadian and the American data appear to be the closest. However, different patterns are noticeable in Canadian English: it appears that activity verbs and communicative verbs are the frequent. Moreover, the survey analysis attests of a closer proximity between Canadian and American English. Therefore, the use of the Present Perfect in Canadian English is seemingly closer to American English than to British English but still exhibits numerous characteristics that indicate a Canadian flavor.