Detours along the perfect path
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Patrícia Amaral
Abstract
The development of periphrastic past constructions in Romance, including those that do not take a reflex of Latin habĒre as an auxiliary, has been analyzed along a continuum from a resultative construction to a perfect, and in some cases to a perfective (see Harris 1982; Fleischman 1983). This paper argues that the development of the Pretérito Perfeito Composto (PPC) in Portuguese does not adhere to the proposed typologies of periphrastic past evolution in Romance. Using diachronic corpus data, we revisit the proposed resultative > perfect grammaticalization path (see Bybee et al. 1994) and contend that the developmental trajectory of the Portuguese PPC is distinct from other cases of periphrastic past evolution in Romance languages, specifically Spanish. We demonstrate that the iterative meaning unique to the PPC in contemporary Portuguese arises in morphosyntactically ambiguous contexts in which the ter + Past Participle construction co-occurs with semantically plural complements.
Abstract
The development of periphrastic past constructions in Romance, including those that do not take a reflex of Latin habĒre as an auxiliary, has been analyzed along a continuum from a resultative construction to a perfect, and in some cases to a perfective (see Harris 1982; Fleischman 1983). This paper argues that the development of the Pretérito Perfeito Composto (PPC) in Portuguese does not adhere to the proposed typologies of periphrastic past evolution in Romance. Using diachronic corpus data, we revisit the proposed resultative > perfect grammaticalization path (see Bybee et al. 1994) and contend that the developmental trajectory of the Portuguese PPC is distinct from other cases of periphrastic past evolution in Romance languages, specifically Spanish. We demonstrate that the iterative meaning unique to the PPC in contemporary Portuguese arises in morphosyntactically ambiguous contexts in which the ter + Past Participle construction co-occurs with semantically plural complements.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Foreword & acknowledgements ix
- List of contributors xi
- Editors’ introduction 1
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Part I. Phonetics/Phonology
- Correcting the record on Dominican [s]-hypercorrection 15
- V-to-V assimilation in trisyllabic words in French 25
- The production and provenance of palatal nasals in Portuguese and Spanish 43
- Lenition and phonemic contrast in Majorcan Catalan 63
- Alveolar laterals in Majorcan Spanish 81
- Units of speech production in Italian 95
- Pitch polarity in Palenquero 111
- Word-minimality and sound change in Hispano-Romance 129
- Multiple opacity in Eastern Regional French 153
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Part II. Syntax
- Syntactic variation in Colombian Spanish 169
- Anaphoricity, logophoricity and intensification 187
- More on the clitic combination puzzle 203
- The Spanish dative alternation revisited 217
- Romanian genderless pronouns and parasitic gaps 231
- To agree or not to agree 249
- Variation in subject expression in Western Romance 267
- A phase-based analysis of Old French genitive constructions 285
- V2 loss in Old French and Old Occitan 301
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Part III. Morphology, and interfaces
- The loss and survival of inflectional morphology 323
- Allomorphy in pre-clitic imperatives in Formenteran Catalan 337
- Preverbal vowels in wh-questions and declarative sentences in Northern Italian Piacentine dialects 353
- Pitch accent, focus, and the interpretation of non- wh exclamatives in French 369
- Detours along the perfect path 387
- Grammaticalization of commencer/cominciare “to begin” in French and Italian 405
- Index of subjects, terms and languages 423
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Foreword & acknowledgements ix
- List of contributors xi
- Editors’ introduction 1
-
Part I. Phonetics/Phonology
- Correcting the record on Dominican [s]-hypercorrection 15
- V-to-V assimilation in trisyllabic words in French 25
- The production and provenance of palatal nasals in Portuguese and Spanish 43
- Lenition and phonemic contrast in Majorcan Catalan 63
- Alveolar laterals in Majorcan Spanish 81
- Units of speech production in Italian 95
- Pitch polarity in Palenquero 111
- Word-minimality and sound change in Hispano-Romance 129
- Multiple opacity in Eastern Regional French 153
-
Part II. Syntax
- Syntactic variation in Colombian Spanish 169
- Anaphoricity, logophoricity and intensification 187
- More on the clitic combination puzzle 203
- The Spanish dative alternation revisited 217
- Romanian genderless pronouns and parasitic gaps 231
- To agree or not to agree 249
- Variation in subject expression in Western Romance 267
- A phase-based analysis of Old French genitive constructions 285
- V2 loss in Old French and Old Occitan 301
-
Part III. Morphology, and interfaces
- The loss and survival of inflectional morphology 323
- Allomorphy in pre-clitic imperatives in Formenteran Catalan 337
- Preverbal vowels in wh-questions and declarative sentences in Northern Italian Piacentine dialects 353
- Pitch accent, focus, and the interpretation of non- wh exclamatives in French 369
- Detours along the perfect path 387
- Grammaticalization of commencer/cominciare “to begin” in French and Italian 405
- Index of subjects, terms and languages 423
