This thesis provides an analysis of the done construction of Spartanburg, South Carolina. I argue that utterances such as I done ate describe an eating event that is perceived by the speaker as being connected to the reference time. If the eventuality under the scope of done is a state, then done allows for a continuative reading, in which the eventuality is still on-going at the reference time. Roseanne done lived in Columbus for three years, which describes a living-in-Columbus-state, can be uttered in a situation in which Roseanne lives in Columbus
at the reference time. On the other hand, I done ate, which describes an eating event, may only be used to describe an event that has culminated by the reference time.
An adaptation of Dowty's (1979) Extended Now analysis of the Standard English perfect best accounts for the properties of done. I conclude that done is a marker of perfect aspect, but unlike the Standard have perfect, it is an untensed construction. I assume that tense restricts the reference time of an utterance, and that tense is optional with the done construction. In order to model the restriction of reference time without tense markers, I adopt proposals by Lee & Tonhauser (2010) for untensed constructions in Korean and Japanese. The crucial property that Korean, Japanese, and Spartanburg English share is that they are languages that have tense as a grammatical category, but they also have constructions in which tense is prohibited or optional.