On the development of the perfect (participle)
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Ida Larsson
Abstract
This paper argues that the perfect tense has developed from a resultant state construction (in the sense of Kratzer 2000) that expresses bounded or resultative aspect. The development involves changes in the structure and meaning of the participle. Perfect participles and resultant state participles differ with respect to stativity and tense, and in Present-Day Swedish they also involve different forms. It seems plausible that the development of the perfect began with an extended use of resultant state participles with HAVE at some point in Old Germanic. Traces of such a development are observed in the Old Norse Edda and theGrágás, as well as in Old Saxon Heliand. In these texts, the frequency of agreeing participles in the complement of HAVE is considerably higher than in both Gothic and Old High German, as well as in the Present-Day languages.
Abstract
This paper argues that the perfect tense has developed from a resultant state construction (in the sense of Kratzer 2000) that expresses bounded or resultative aspect. The development involves changes in the structure and meaning of the participle. Perfect participles and resultant state participles differ with respect to stativity and tense, and in Present-Day Swedish they also involve different forms. It seems plausible that the development of the perfect began with an extended use of resultant state participles with HAVE at some point in Old Germanic. Traces of such a development are observed in the Old Norse Edda and theGrágás, as well as in Old Saxon Heliand. In these texts, the frequency of agreeing participles in the complement of HAVE is considerably higher than in both Gothic and Old High German, as well as in the Present-Day languages.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Foreword & Acknowledgements vii
- Editors’ introduction ix
-
Part I. General and specific issues of language change
- Competing reinforcements 3
- On the reconstruction of experiential constructions in (Late) Proto-Indo-European 31
- Criteria for differentiating inherent and contact-induced changes in language reconstruction 49
- Misparsing and syntactic reanalysis 69
- How different is prototype change? 89
- The syntactic reconstruction of alignment and word order 107
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Part II. Linguistic variation and change in Germanic
- The Dutch-Afrikaans participial prefix ge- 131
- Diachronic changes in long-distance dependencies 155
- Changes in the use of the Frisian quantifiers ea/oait “ever” between 1250 and 1800 171
- On the development of the perfect (participle) 191
- OV and V-to-I in the history of Swedish 211
- Ethnicity as an independent factor of language variation across space 231
- The sociolinguistics of spelling 253
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Part III. Linguistic variation and change in Greek
- Dative loss and its replacement in the history of Greek 277
- Word order variation in New Testament Greek wh-questions 293
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Part IV. Linguistic change in Romance
- The morphological evolution of infinitive, future and conditional forms in Occitan 317
- The evolution of the encoding of direction in the history of French 333
- Velle -type prohibitions in Latin 355
- The use and development of habere + infinitive in Latin 373
- Index 399
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Foreword & Acknowledgements vii
- Editors’ introduction ix
-
Part I. General and specific issues of language change
- Competing reinforcements 3
- On the reconstruction of experiential constructions in (Late) Proto-Indo-European 31
- Criteria for differentiating inherent and contact-induced changes in language reconstruction 49
- Misparsing and syntactic reanalysis 69
- How different is prototype change? 89
- The syntactic reconstruction of alignment and word order 107
-
Part II. Linguistic variation and change in Germanic
- The Dutch-Afrikaans participial prefix ge- 131
- Diachronic changes in long-distance dependencies 155
- Changes in the use of the Frisian quantifiers ea/oait “ever” between 1250 and 1800 171
- On the development of the perfect (participle) 191
- OV and V-to-I in the history of Swedish 211
- Ethnicity as an independent factor of language variation across space 231
- The sociolinguistics of spelling 253
-
Part III. Linguistic variation and change in Greek
- Dative loss and its replacement in the history of Greek 277
- Word order variation in New Testament Greek wh-questions 293
-
Part IV. Linguistic change in Romance
- The morphological evolution of infinitive, future and conditional forms in Occitan 317
- The evolution of the encoding of direction in the history of French 333
- Velle -type prohibitions in Latin 355
- The use and development of habere + infinitive in Latin 373
- Index 399
