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Reanalysis in the Russian past tense

The gerundial perfect
  • Jan Ivar Bjornflaten
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Perspectives on Language Structure and Language Change
This chapter is in the book Perspectives on Language Structure and Language Change

Abstract

The large majority of the Slavic languages have in historical times lost the synthetic past tenses of the aorist and the imperfect. These tenses were replaced by a new past tense based on the erstwhile perfect. This transformation created space for new ways of forming a past tense, and one of these was a novel past tense based on the past active participle, also called the gerundial past tense, a past tense found in Northwest Russia, above all in the Pskov area, cf. Pskov dialectal i jon pom'orši toper’ uže, versus Standard Russia i on teper’ uže umer, ‘and he died now already’. The point of this article is to demonstrate how the emergence of the l-participle as the general past tense opened up for a reanalysis of the past active participle as a finite past tense verb-form. The actualization process following this reanalysis is illustrated by examples from the Pskov Chronicle.

Abstract

The large majority of the Slavic languages have in historical times lost the synthetic past tenses of the aorist and the imperfect. These tenses were replaced by a new past tense based on the erstwhile perfect. This transformation created space for new ways of forming a past tense, and one of these was a novel past tense based on the past active participle, also called the gerundial past tense, a past tense found in Northwest Russia, above all in the Pskov area, cf. Pskov dialectal i jon pom'orši toper’ uže, versus Standard Russia i on teper’ uže umer, ‘and he died now already’. The point of this article is to demonstrate how the emergence of the l-participle as the general past tense opened up for a reanalysis of the past active participle as a finite past tense verb-form. The actualization process following this reanalysis is illustrated by examples from the Pskov Chronicle.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Preface ix
  4. Perspectives on language structure and language change 1
  5. Part I. On the theory of language change
  6. Andersen (1973) and dichotomies of change 13
  7. Induction and tradition 35
  8. Approaching the typology and diachrony of morphological reversals 81
  9. Deconstructing markedness in sound change typology 107
  10. Part II. Indexicality
  11. Diachronic morphology, indexical function and a critique of the morphome analysis 125
  12. Word order as grammaticalised semiotic systems 151
  13. Part III. Problems of reanalysis
  14. Anticausative and passive in Vedic 181
  15. Grammaticalization and degrammati(calizati)on in the development of the Iranian verb system 193
  16. Aspects of grammaticalization and reanalysis in the voice domain in the transition from Latin to early Italo-Romance 205
  17. From preverbal to postverbal in the early history of Japanese 233
  18. Reanalysis in the Russian past tense 253
  19. From a single lexical unit to multiple grammatical paradigms 271
  20. Morphosyntactic reanalysis in Australian languages 295
  21. Definiteness in Germanic and Balto-Slavic 311
  22. Part IV. Actualization
  23. Diatopy and frequency as indicators of spread 327
  24. Suppletion or illusion? 345
  25. Part V. Language change and diachronic typology in Balto-Slavic
  26. A complicated relationship 359
  27. Name-calling 381
  28. Changes of tense and modality in Late Mediaeval Slovene 395
  29. Index 411
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.345.11bjo

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Preface ix
  4. Perspectives on language structure and language change 1
  5. Part I. On the theory of language change
  6. Andersen (1973) and dichotomies of change 13
  7. Induction and tradition 35
  8. Approaching the typology and diachrony of morphological reversals 81
  9. Deconstructing markedness in sound change typology 107
  10. Part II. Indexicality
  11. Diachronic morphology, indexical function and a critique of the morphome analysis 125
  12. Word order as grammaticalised semiotic systems 151
  13. Part III. Problems of reanalysis
  14. Anticausative and passive in Vedic 181
  15. Grammaticalization and degrammati(calizati)on in the development of the Iranian verb system 193
  16. Aspects of grammaticalization and reanalysis in the voice domain in the transition from Latin to early Italo-Romance 205
  17. From preverbal to postverbal in the early history of Japanese 233
  18. Reanalysis in the Russian past tense 253
  19. From a single lexical unit to multiple grammatical paradigms 271
  20. Morphosyntactic reanalysis in Australian languages 295
  21. Definiteness in Germanic and Balto-Slavic 311
  22. Part IV. Actualization
  23. Diatopy and frequency as indicators of spread 327
  24. Suppletion or illusion? 345
  25. Part V. Language change and diachronic typology in Balto-Slavic
  26. A complicated relationship 359
  27. Name-calling 381
  28. Changes of tense and modality in Late Mediaeval Slovene 395
  29. Index 411
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