Toward a Cognitive Explanation of Perfect Auxiliary Variation: Some Modal and Aspectual Effects in the History of Germanic

Shannon, Thomas F.

doi:10.1017/s1040820700001578

Cited by 24 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 9 publications

(2 reference statements)

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“…33 31 Auxiliary selection has been reported to be sensitive to similar factors in many other languages. See, for example, Shannon 1995 andLedgeway 2003 for discussion of such patterns in Germanic and Romance varieties, respectively. It is unclear whether the account we propose here can be directly extended to all of these cases, as the reported restrictions on BE are not always as strong as we have shown here, or are limited to certain verb classes (as Cennamo and Sorace (2007:76) claim for verbs of indefinite change in Paduan).…”

Section: Structural Detailsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Perfects, Resultatives, and Auxiliaries in Earlier English

McFadden

Αλεξιαδου

2010

Linguistic Inquiry

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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.

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Section: Structural Detailsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Perfects, Resultatives, and Auxiliaries in Earlier English

McFadden

Αλεξιαδου

2010

Linguistic Inquiry

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“…Evidence for variation regarding the auxiliary selection of intransitive verbs can already be found in early texts (cf. Jacob 1996;Elvira González 2001 Examples such as (1) and (2) demonstrate what has been called the 'irrealis effect' in auxiliary selection (Shannon 1996). As in Old English, Old Spanish aver + PtP anteriors 2 disproportionately often occur in contexts that display irrealis modality or negation (Stolova 2006).…”

Section: Semantic-displacement Hypothesismentioning

confidence: 99%

How to measure replacement: Auxiliary selection in Old Spanish bibles

Rosemeyer

2012

Folia Linguistica Historica

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Studies of the development of compound tense auxiliary selection in Spanish frequently analyse ser ('to be') + past participle (PtP) as an anterior construction, and its disappearance as a slow replacement process starting in Old Spanish, in which the new anterior auxiliary aver ('to have') replaced it. This article investigates and rejects the empirical basis for this claim on the basis of a comparative analysis of Old Spanish bible translations. It is argued that the majority of tokens of ser + PtP has a resultative function, as indicated by typical patterns of verbal mood, coordination and temporal-aspectual morphology. Old Spanish translators of the bible appear to have regarded aver + PtP as being more similar to simple imperfective preterit forms like cantaba ('s/he sang') than to ser + PtP. Comparing the types and rates of use of aver + PtP and ser + PtP in earlier and later bible versions with the help of generalised linear mixed-effects regression models shows that ser + PtP was more stable in Old Spanish than hitherto assumed. Rather than replacing ser + PtP in Old Spanish, aver + PtP expanded at the expense of simple preterit forms. In summary, this article provides empirical evidence against the replacement hypothesis for Old Spanish, while at the same time assessing ways to quantitatively identify replacement processes in diachronic linguistics.

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“…A preference for HAVE in modal contexts in older Germanic languages other than English was already noted by Kern (1912) and Johannisson (1958). Shannon (1995), largely following Kern, discusses the effects of modality on auxiliary selection in Middle Dutch and Middle Low German, noting for Middle Dutch "a strong, though by no means absolute tendency for mutative verbs, which of course are otherwise normally conjugated with BE in the perfect, to take HAVE in irrealis contexts" [p. 138] Johannisson (1958, p. 108) identifies "the subjunctive expressing unreality" as a key factor favoring HAVE with verbs that otherwise took BE in Old Swedish (though, interestingly enough, not in Old West Norse).…”

Section: Some Cross-linguistic Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The only theory of which we are aware which specifically addresses the counterfactual effect is that proposed by Shannon (1995). 27 Shannon proposes that BE is most strongly selected by clauses that approximate what he calls a mutative intransitive prototype, which is defined in terms of a cluster of semantic properties.…”

Section: Problems For Other Theories Of Auxiliary Selectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Auxiliary selection and counterfactuality in the history of English and Germanic

McFadden¹,

Αλεξιαδου²

2006

Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today

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The retreat of BE as perfect auxiliary in the history of English is examined. Corpus data are presented showing that the initial advance of HAVE was most closely connected to a restriction against BE in past counterfactuals. Other factors which have been reported to favor the spread of HAVE are either dependent on the counterfactual effect, or significantly weaker in comparison. It is argued that the effect can be traced to the semantics of the BE perfect, which denoted resultativity rather than anteriority proper. Related data from other older Germanic and Romance languages are presented, and finally implications for existing theories of auxiliary selection stemming from the findings presented are discussed.

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Toward a Cognitive Explanation of Perfect Auxiliary Variation: Some Modal and Aspectual Effects in the History of Germanic

Cited by 24 publications

References 9 publications

Perfects, Resultatives, and Auxiliaries in Earlier English

Perfects, Resultatives, and Auxiliaries in Earlier English

How to measure replacement: Auxiliary selection in Old Spanish bibles

Auxiliary selection and counterfactuality in the history of English and Germanic

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