Areal factors in the development of the European periphrastic perfect

Abstract

Three essential elements in the development of the European periphrastic perfect are explored, each of which demonstrates the important role played by areal diffusion. First, an east-west split in auxiliary usage is examined: HAVE developed as an auxiliary only in the west, while BE remains predominant in the east; convergence along linguistic borders is examined in some detail. Secondly, an explanation for this western predominance of HAVE is proposed: it is claimed that Latin formed its HAVE perfect on the model of Ancient Greek, with subsequent development of this construction in the Romance and other western European languages. Both the use of the HAVE auxiliary in Latin and the reinterpretation of the past passive participle as active are claimed to be due to Greek influence. Finally, the more recent shift of perfects from anterior or resultative to preterital meaning is presented as originating in Parisian French, and diffusing from there to other varieties within its realm of influence.• a nucleus (French, German, Dutch, and Northern Italian) from which many of the innovations seem to have emanated,

Verbal Periphrasis in Ancient Greek A state of the art

“…She stresses that Latin VPEs already existed in Pre-Christian times, so that Greek probably stimulated the use of a construction which was already known in Latin but was not often used (Amenta 2003:96). The work of Drinka (2003aDrinka ( , 2003bDrinka ( , 2007 presents similar findings with regard to the periphrastic have-perfect. She claims that this periphrastic perfect ‚sprang ultimately from a Greek innovation which was adopted and reanalyzed by Latin, and which spread from there into the languages of Europe‛ (Drinka 2003a:106).…”

“…She claims that this periphrastic perfect ‚sprang ultimately from a Greek innovation which was adopted and reanalyzed by Latin, and which spread from there into the languages of Europe‛ (Drinka 2003a:106). Next to formal factors, Drinka also pays attention to sociolinguistic elements stimulating these borrowings, namely the social prestige of Greek in Roman society (Drinka 2003b(Drinka :11, 2007. Giacalone Ramat (2008:140) argues against Drinka's findings with regard to the periphrastic haveperfect: ‚although some calquing cannot be excluded, especially in the translations of Christian literature, there is no evidence of any direct influence of Greek upon the development of the Latin and Romance perfect‛.…”

“…In the past two decades, the subject of periphrasis has come under renewed attention, and it has been studied from both synchronic (Porter 1989;Fanning 1990;Evans 2001;Bentein 2011) and diachronic (Amenta 2001(Amenta , 2003Drinka 2003aDrinka , 2003bDrinka , 2007 angles. At the same time, however, it is clear that a general consensus on many key aspects (to start with the definition of the phenomenon) is still far from being reached (cf.…”

The development of the universal perfect in Arabic

“…1 I hypothesize that the emergence of the universal perfect construction in Arabic is the result of a grammaticalization, akin to what are in the literature referred to as possessive perfect constructions (Heine & Kuteva 2006), that is, perfect-expressing constructions that have been grammaticalized out of a possessive construction. In this case, though, the historical base is a preposition, in contrast to the well-known grammaticalization of constructions expressing tense and aspect from possessive verbs in Romance and Germanic languages (Meillet 1923, Trask 1979, Vincent 1982, Pinkster 1987, Bybee & Dahl 1989, Dahl 1996, Haspelmath 1998, Ramat 1998, Drinka 2003. Such a developmental trajectory has never before been attested in the context of Semitic.…”

“…This is widely acknowledged in the literature (Traugott & Heine 1991 (and references therein), Heine 1993, Bybee et al 1994, Lehmann 1995, Heine & Kuteva 2002, 2005, 2006, Hopper & Traugott 2003, Heine & Nomachi 2010. More broadly, much work on grammaticalization has specifically focused on the grammaticalization and development of constructions expressing tense and aspect that involve the auxiliary 'have' (Meillet 1923, Trask 1979, Vincent 1982, Pinkster 1987, Bybee & Dahl 1989, Dahl 1996, Haspelmath 1998, Ramat 1998, Drinka 2003. Coining the term 'possessive perfect', Heine and Kuteva (2006) make reference to perfect-expressing constructions that have come about as a consequence of the grammaticalization of a possessive schema.…”