The have/be alternation in contemporary Faroese

Abstract

Abstract This paper investigates the status of the alternation in Faroese between have (hava) and be (vera) as auxiliaries combining with the past participle/supine. We present the results of two online questionnaire studies and argue that the data indicate that in Faroese the have/be alternation is an alternation of perfect auxiliaries, like in Danish but unlike the other Scandinavian languages, where be can only be used to convey resultant state.