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Chapter 16. From have -omission to supercompounds

A wealth of English perfects

Abstract

This paper adopts an historical perspective to shed light on syntactic patterns exhibiting have-omission or have-doubling in a language – English – where the forms in question have gone largely unreported over the centuries, or have tended to be discarded as ‘non-standard’ by prescriptive grammarians. At least one subtype of supercompounds investigated here is reported for the first time in this paper. Explanations for the attested patterns involve e.g. prescriptivism, a universal tendency to avoid the (near-) adjacency of identical grammatical structures, and the normative pressure to ban several occurrences of have. In a comparison with cognate structures in closely related languages, semantic traits of these constructions are identified, e.g. irrealis (have-omission), resultative, and experiential (supercompounds). Nevertheless, a remainder of the examples are not captured by these semantic descriptions, but possibly result from functional overlap between modal and perfect constructions, or “copying” of morphosyntactic features across constructions in a discourse.

Abstract

This paper adopts an historical perspective to shed light on syntactic patterns exhibiting have-omission or have-doubling in a language – English – where the forms in question have gone largely unreported over the centuries, or have tended to be discarded as ‘non-standard’ by prescriptive grammarians. At least one subtype of supercompounds investigated here is reported for the first time in this paper. Explanations for the attested patterns involve e.g. prescriptivism, a universal tendency to avoid the (near-) adjacency of identical grammatical structures, and the normative pressure to ban several occurrences of have. In a comparison with cognate structures in closely related languages, semantic traits of these constructions are identified, e.g. irrealis (have-omission), resultative, and experiential (supercompounds). Nevertheless, a remainder of the examples are not captured by these semantic descriptions, but possibly result from functional overlap between modal and perfect constructions, or “copying” of morphosyntactic features across constructions in a discourse.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Chapter 1. The perfect volume 1
  4. Part I. Perfects and their relatives
  5. Chapter 2. “Universal” readings of perfects and iamitives in typological perspective 43
  6. Chapter 3. Perfect and its relatives in Atayal 65
  7. Chapter 4. Structural and functional variations of the perfect in the Lezgic languages 87
  8. Chapter 5. Cross-linguistic parallels and contrasts in a contact language perfect construction 117
  9. Chapter 6. Perfect and negation 137
  10. Chapter 7. The diachrony of the perfect in Zapotec 163
  11. Part II. Perfect extensions, hodiernality and aoristic drift
  12. Chapter 8. More on hodiernality 181
  13. Chapter 9. The impact of the simultaneity vector on the temporal-aspectual development of the perfect tense in Romance languages 213
  14. Chapter 10. Gauging expansion in synchrony 241
  15. Part III. Morphology of perfects
  16. Chapter 11. The rise of the periphrastic perfect tense in the continental West Germanic languages 261
  17. Chapter 12. On the emergence of auxiliary selection in Germanic 291
  18. Chapter 13. Language contact and competition in the periphrastic perfect in Early English 319
  19. Chapter 14. The Swedish perfect and periphrasis 343
  20. Chapter 15. “ Have -less perfects” in Norwegian 365
  21. Chapter 16. From have -omission to supercompounds 397
  22. Chapter 17. Auxiliary reduction in secondary grammaticalization 439
  23. Chapter 18. The functions of the auxiliary ‘have’ in Australian English vivid narratives 461
  24. Index 479
The Perfect Volume
This chapter is in the book The Perfect Volume
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.217.16fry

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Chapter 1. The perfect volume 1
  4. Part I. Perfects and their relatives
  5. Chapter 2. “Universal” readings of perfects and iamitives in typological perspective 43
  6. Chapter 3. Perfect and its relatives in Atayal 65
  7. Chapter 4. Structural and functional variations of the perfect in the Lezgic languages 87
  8. Chapter 5. Cross-linguistic parallels and contrasts in a contact language perfect construction 117
  9. Chapter 6. Perfect and negation 137
  10. Chapter 7. The diachrony of the perfect in Zapotec 163
  11. Part II. Perfect extensions, hodiernality and aoristic drift
  12. Chapter 8. More on hodiernality 181
  13. Chapter 9. The impact of the simultaneity vector on the temporal-aspectual development of the perfect tense in Romance languages 213
  14. Chapter 10. Gauging expansion in synchrony 241
  15. Part III. Morphology of perfects
  16. Chapter 11. The rise of the periphrastic perfect tense in the continental West Germanic languages 261
  17. Chapter 12. On the emergence of auxiliary selection in Germanic 291
  18. Chapter 13. Language contact and competition in the periphrastic perfect in Early English 319
  19. Chapter 14. The Swedish perfect and periphrasis 343
  20. Chapter 15. “ Have -less perfects” in Norwegian 365
  21. Chapter 16. From have -omission to supercompounds 397
  22. Chapter 17. Auxiliary reduction in secondary grammaticalization 439
  23. Chapter 18. The functions of the auxiliary ‘have’ in Australian English vivid narratives 461
  24. Index 479
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