Perfects, Resultatives, and Auxiliaries in Earlier English

Abstract

In this article, we investigate the peculiar distribution of the auxiliaries have and be in Earlier English and its consequences for theories of the perfect and auxiliary selection. We argue on the basis of a largescale corpus study that the periphrastic construction with be was restricted to a stative resultative interpretation, whereas that with have developed a wider range of uses, crucially including the experiential perfect in addition to resultatives. Support comes from comparing the Earlier English patterns with related ones in Norwegian and German for which native-speaker judgments are available. On the basis of this insight, we propose distinct formal analyses for the two constructions and show how they account for the attested patterns and changes in Middle and Early Modern English. Of particular theoretical relevance is the premise that what has been called the ''perfect'' is not a homogeneous, monolithic category, and that certain kinds of variation can only be understood by teasing apart the pieces involved. Earlier English and German auxiliaries have distinct distributions because their ''perfects'' have disinct syntactic and semantic makeups.

Synchronic Variation in The Old English Perfect

“…Old English, like many other languages, could also express perfect‐like semantic content through the use of constructions formed with the auxiliary wesan ‘be’. However, there are a number of reasons for treating the constructions habban separately from those with wesan , both theoretical (for details on the controversy regarding the degree of semantic and syntactic similarity existing in Old English between the two types, see Mitchell : i , 303–4; Rydén & Brorström ; McFadden & Alexiadou ) and methodological (for the difficulties involved in distinguishing perfects and passives with wesan , see Mitchell : i , 315–19). The decision to study the constructions with habban as an independent phenomenon in their own right is paralleled in other studies of the Old English perfect such as those by Carey () and Wischer (); in the more detailed investigation in Macleod () of the consequences of this methodological decision on Old Saxon data, no statistically significant effects upon the data analysed were found.…”

A construction grammar analysis of the transitivebeperfect in present-day Canadian English

“…The output of AspR is stative and conflicts with agentive Voice, which outputs another event with an external argument. While McFadden & Alexiadou's (2010) approach allows for semantics to influence structural representations, their generalization still falls short of the facts of [ be done NP]. If it was a stative resultative structure, its derivation would be thwarted at the point of merger with agentive Voice.…”

M�tode Filol�gic I Ling��stica De Corpus: Una Intersecci� Profitosa (O Com Enfrontar-Se a Mostres D

“…En un altre ordre de coses, construccions com (3c) fan evident, per l'ascensió del clític, que s'hi ha produït una reestructuració (Ramos 2005;Mateu i Massanell 2015;Massanell i Mateu en premsa). Finalment, fragments com (3d) permeten reparar en el fet que també en català, com ja s'havia observat per al napolità antic (Cennamo 2002;Ledgeway 2003) i per a diverses llengües germàniques antigues (Shannon 1995;McFadden 2007;McFadden i Alexiadou 2010), la modalitat irreal o contrafactual afavoreix la presència d'haver, perquè, en realitat, no s'ha arribat a produir l'estat resultant (Mateu i Massanell 2015;Massanell i Mateu en premsa). En altres casos, més tardans, entrats ja en el segle XVI, els exemples reflecteixen l'inici d'un gir, encara tímid, en la selecció de l'auxiliar, primer a través de construccions híbrides, que conserven la concordança del participi amb el subjecte malgrat que aquest tret és propi de les construccions auxiliades amb ésser i no amb haver, com mostra (3e), i després en Després d'aquestes pinzellades per a situar el lector quant al procés gradual de canvi en els auxiliars dels temps de perfet, atès que és l'àmbit de recerca en què basem l'exemplificació del present article sobre metodologia de tractament de dades, en els apartats següents analitzem detalladament tres exemples que s'han adduït en la bibliografia com a mostres primerenques de penetració d'haver en el terreny d'ésser, a partir d'interpretacions que, a parer nostre, no són encertades i que es poden reconduir si se'n fa una anàlisi contextualitzada, és a dir, atenent al conjunt de l'obra i al context lingüístic en què aquesta es va produir, com ens ensenya el mètode filològic.…”