This Introduction highlights some of the recurrent themes of the volume, in particular two diachronic paths: (i) resultative > perfect > perfective past; (ii) relaxation of an initial constraint restricting the perfect to results attributed to the patient. The latter leads to a discussion of be and have perfects, including English and Dutch data that point to important methodological caveats.
This paper gives an overview of the development of perfect forms in the branches of Indo-European. It begins with a discussion of the perfect in Proto-Indo-European and problems with its reconstruction. Special attention is paid to the formal and functional discrepancies between the Common Indo-European perfect and related forms in the Anatolian branch. The paper then traces the continuation of the Proto-Indo-European perfect form and gives an overview of various new constructions which take the place of the original form. It concludes with a short discussion of the semantic shifts which take place in the different Indo-European branches.
Past tense marked for perfective aspect, resultative, or other typical features of grammatical perfect forms is clearly in evidence in all of the modern Celtic languages, although not normally listed in the standard paradigms. An overview of usages in the modern languages will be given here, the major structures being of fairly recent origin. The formal structure is periphrastic throughout, divided between an older type employing the preposition ‘after’, and a newer one which shows some resemblance to the have-perfects in many other European languages. In agreement with previous authors, these major formal types will be referred to as p1 and p2 respectively. As the question of active vs. passive is crucial here, this side of the matter will be discussed to some extent, as will be the issue of syntactically reduced structures containing traces of a perfect tense. Questions of contact-induced change will not be addressed in this descriptive overview, except on some minor points. Given the grammatical and semantic complexity of this matter, with different developments over six literary languages and a multitude of dialectal varieties, the early (pre)history will not be discussed in much detail here.
This article gives an overview of the most important similarities and differences in perfect constructions in modern Germanic languages. The focus is on the German present perfect form and its developments, which will be compared with the perfect constructions of English and Dutch (West Germanic) and Swedish (North Germanic) throughout. First, I introduce and compare the perfect forms in a selection of modern Germanic languages. I then focus on the emergence and development of the German perfect, before I compare the degrees of perfect expansion in the languages under investigation. In a final step, I investigate some of the consequences of the described processes: i.e. the loss of the German preterite form (Präteritumschwund), the emergence of the double perfect constructions in German substandard varieties, and the re-introduction of a semantic opposition in English.
This survey presents a comprehensive account of perfect constructions (based on an anteriority participle and an often optional auxiliary) in Baltic and Slavic over space and time, including dialects and high-contact minority varieties. Based on a classification by participle types and their combinations with be- and have-verbs, it provides a systematic check of renowned functions of perfect grams and evaluates accepted parameters of grammaticalisation. The most consistent common denominator of perfects in Baltic and Slavic lies in the irrelevance of most such parameters but an increase in admissible lexical input and a decrease in paradigmatic variability. The two most salient differences between Slavic and Baltic are (i) the high level of stability of voice orientation of participles in Baltic vs. the diathetic lability and repeated changes in voice orientation in Slavic, and (ii) stable systems of perfects of likely great antiquity in Baltic vs. the lack of consistently employed perfect systems in most Slavic languages.
In this chapter I consider a periphrastic construction based on the resultative participle and the auxiliary. The semantics are those typical of a perfect grammaticalized from a resultative construction. The combination with time adverbials as well as contextual information show that the reference time coincides with the moment of speech and is not prior to it. In addition to the inherited meaning of the resultative perfect, other meanings typical of a perfect are also found, e.g., the experiential perfect. Finally, there are no selectional input restrictions: all Vendler classes are found in this construction – a situation that may not be found with early resultatives. Even though, these properties suggest an advanced grammaticalisation degree of the construction, there are also indications for its recent development. For example, there is no evidence for a non-compositional interpretation of the auxiliary such as remote past – a meaning facet typical of pluperfects.
This paper outlines the origin and development of the synthetic Perfect from Indo-Iranian, the reconstructed common ancestral stage of the Iranian and Indo-Aryan languages, to Vedic, the oldest attested stage of Old Indo-Aryan. Comparative evidence from Old Iranian, Homeric Greek and a number of other Indo-European languages shows that this morphological category ultimately originates from Proto-Indo-European. In the course of its history, the synthetic Perfect develops from a P-oriented stative construction in Indo-European, via an anterior construction in Indo-Iranian to a general past tense with an emerging indirect evidential sense in Old Indo-Aryan. The present contribution highlights the various stages of development reflected in Vedic, but it also includes reference to the Indo-Iranian prehistory of the Vedic Perfect, as well as to its demise in later stages of Indo-Aryan. The development of the Indo-Iranian Perfect indicates that anterior categories tend to be rather unstable diachronically.
This paper is the first step towards a description of the category ‘perfect’ in Middle and New Iranian languages. It attempts a comprehensive overview of the various forms that developed in the course of the past 2000 years, arriving at a typological classification of the Iranian languages. The comparison of perfects with their paradigmatic counterparts helps delimit the functional range that the perfect covered or covers, which, owing to lack of information, is as much as can be achieved for the majority of the Iranian languages. The diachronic perspective provides insight into the functional development of the perfect, which began with a resultative construction, and which in turn developed via a perfect into a simple past or past perfective (in some cases more than once). The paper concludes with a brief overview of some special perfect constructions such as double perfects, evidentials and perfect continuous forms.
This paper describes the form and function of the perfect in the North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic (NENA) dialects, a highly diverse subgroup of Neo-Aramaic originally spoken east of the Tigris river. After a short description of the expression of the perfective in § 1, a detailed classification of the various forms of the perfect is presented in § 2. Many of these forms have developed under the influence of the verbal system of Iranian languages of the area (§ 3). The perfect in NENA has a wide range of functions, some of them not commonly documented elsewhere, such as the use of the perfect to express the remote past and its use in presuppositional contexts (§ 4). Some of these functions have parallels in the function of the perfect in Iranian languages in contact with NENA (§ 5). Finally, an analysis is given of the NENA perfect within a Reichenbachian framework (§ 6). The common denominator of the diverse functions of the NENA perfect is the fact that the event is viewed from an indirect reference point and as a result the event is defocalized. The separation between the event and the reference point (e < r), which is the hallmark of the perfect, need not be temporal distance, but may be cognitive distance from the focus of attention due to the presuppositional information status of the event.
The paper discusses the syntax and semantics of the perfect and pluperfect of Classical Armenian. While A is usually marked for genitive, S may be marked for nominative or genitive. The perfect of terminative unaccusative verbs (‘fall’, ‘come’) describes the state of the subject after the event has reached its endpoint (‘be fallen, lie’, ‘have come, be present’). In two-place predicates the majority of perfects occur in a single-actant construction describing the resulting state of the object of the active clause (‘weave’ → ‘is woven’). If the underlying A is present as oblique subject in the genitive and the resulting state of O is backgrounded, the perfect may depict A as responsible for the event (‘characterizing’), or as being affected more than O (‘possessive’). Cases without a clear target state may have triggered the development of the perfect into a resultative in the modern language denoting present relevance of a preceding state of affairs.
In Hittite, the meaning associated with the Proto-Indo-European perfect, i.e. to indicate a state resulting from a change-of-state event, was covered by compound verb forms consisting of the -ant- participle plus the finite forms of the verbs ḫar(k)- “have” and eš- “be”. The origin and the function of this construction have been a matter of debate. In this chapter, we review the standard description of the Hittite periphrastic perfect, and reassess its status and function based on an analysis of its occurrences in texts ranging from Old to New Hittite. We argue that periphrastic forms involving ḫar(k)-/eš- and the participle instantiate three different constructions: the stative construction and two distinct auxiliary verb constructions, i.e. the passive and the perfect. We also suggest that the stative construction was probably the most ancient, and that the perfect construction, which functions as an anterior, constitutes a later development.
The paper deals with selected questions of ‘perfectivity’ as both aspect and tense function in Gothic in comparison with old and contemporary West Germanic languages. Perfectivity is treated as a functional category which originated in verbal aspect, but which has been re-analysed in many languages which have lost aspect as a grammatically marked opposition. In old East Germanic (Gothic), the prefix ga- originally marking terminative aktionsart was grammaticalised as the marker of perfective aspect. This is still reflected in Gothic, but lost in West Germanic. Hence, the development of perfectivity in Old Germanic is connected with the development of perfective aspect. However, in old West Germanic languages comparable prefixed compounds have already lost their aspect-marking function and could be used as general semantic modifiers of related simplex verbs. Beside the perfective-marking prefix, perfectivity also could be encoded by means of periphrastic forms, which gradually developed from aspect to tense function, so that in contemporary West Germanic languages aspectual (perfective) readings of periphrastic constructions are extremely peripheral.
The present paper surveys the diachronic development of the Ancient Greek perfect in four periods: Mycenaean, Archaic, Classical and post-Classical. At each stage the semantic evaluation of perfect is assessed in the context of the semantics of its predicate. While generally confirming the standard picture of increasing anteriority and past reference in the perfect correlating with greater numbers of verbs able to form perfects, the present study contributes empirical data to support this assertion. The article traces the growing paradigmatisation of the perfect form throughout its history. However, this development is not linear. Instead in the post-Classical language we witness a bifurcation along diglossic lines, with the literary language remaining much more conservative in terms of the perfect’s semantic range, while in lower-register material the perfect increasingly competes with the aorist to denote perfective semantics.
The present-anterior/stative function of the ancient perfect placed it outside the core verbal system, which was organised around a binary (perfective/imperfective) aspectual opposition. By the early middle ages the increasingly marginal perfect had disappeared as a functionally discrete category, its role subsumed by the aorist (past perfective), and the notion of continuing relevance determined contextually. The rare pluperfect was also abandoned, though periphrastic replacements continued the overt, if optional, expression of relative-past meaning, a function later strengthened by contact with Romance. A perfect counterpart appeared only in modern times, however, functioning as a past perfective with a compulsory current-relevance reading, but remaining optional in that the aorist still carries present-anterior implications in appropriate contexts. Other periphrases were introduced in later antiquity specifically to express stativity. Most have continued in stative function into Modern Greek, though intense contact with Latin/Romance also encouraged present-anterior and relative-past functions locally at various times.
The Old Geg perfect system has a morphology resembling that of neighbouring Romance perfects (‘have’/‘be’ + past participle). It is a major sub-system of the verbal system, using nearly all synthetic forms of the auxiliary. Moreover, there are surcomposé forms. The present perfect usually has a resultative or existential reading, other readings being very rare. The past tenses of the perfect system indicate anteriority to a reference point in past time. Among the surcomposé forms, there is a pluperfect of the perfect, which indicates a second, deeper layer of anteriority. The non-indicative forms of the perfect system serve as past-tense counterparts to the respective non-indicative categories of the synthetic verbal system. Finally, the Old Geg present perfect gives rise to the so-called admirative, a present expressing the speaker’s surprise, disbelief, irony or doubt, or his or her unwillingness to vouch for the truth of the statement given.
The Latin perfect system is argued to denote that an eventuality described by a predicate terminates prior to some moment in time, whether utterance time in the case of the ‘present’ perfect, or reference/topic time, in the case of the perfect infinitive, past and future forms. The ‘present’ perfect is argued to function as a perfective, while the past, future and infinitive perfect are argued to denote anteriority. Additional conditions are considered in order to explain the behaviour with state and achievement predicates. The participle in *-to- generally denotes that an eventuality described by the predicate terminates prior to topic time, as well as that an event’s poststate (if any) holds at topic time. As such the participle is generally passive in diathetical orientation, although there are exceptions. In certain kinds of predicate, namely those describing extent and mental state, the perfect loses direct reference to a prior event and refers only to an eventuality’s poststate.
The have-perfect, found almost exclusively in western Europe, has been identified as a “European quirk, unparalleled elsewhere in the world” (Cysouw 2011: 425). The spread of this highly marked construction to adjacent varieties provides us with an exceptional opportunity to observe the conditions under which this calquing occurred, and to assess the role of external as well as internal factors in the adoption of this structure in closely-related, distantly-related, and unrelated languages. After a general overview of the distribution of have-perfect calques across Europe, three representative instances are presented: Old High German and Old Saxon, Portuguese, and Czech. These examples illustrate, respectively, three important principles of social conditioning connected with the grammatical calquing: the role of prestige in the operation of ‘roofing’, the linguistic repercussions of political and confessional realignment, and the capacity of social motivation to outweigh internal linguistic factors.
English and Sistani Balochi are tense-prominent languages, and use the perfect mainly to elaborate on an existing topic by referring to a past state of affairs that is of relevance to that topic. English perfects also introduce new topics that the speaker wishes to address, while Balochi uses perfects with a mirative to introduce entities to a narrative and as a forward-pointing device in orienters that introduce reported speeches. New Testament Greek is aspect-prominent, which partly explains why English translates some Greek aorists (perfectives) with perfects. The Greek perfect often introduces restatements of past events or speeches. In passages with aorist-perfect alternation, it is also used in a marked way with added implicatures. Towards the end of a passage, assertions in the perfect often clinch the argument and/or are climactic. Near the beginning of a narrative passage, in contrast, the perfect, as in Balochi, is a forward-pointing device, highlighting what follows.
This chapter looks at Indo-European perfects in the light of recent typological research on TAME (tense-aspect-mood-evidentiality), in particular the work done at the Department of Linguistics at Stockholm University with the help of massive parallel corpora. The chapter starts with a survey of data sources and methods for multilingual linguistic research. Parameters of variation among perfects, both within Indo-European and elsewhere, are discussed: negated experiential uses, universal uses, combinations with definite time adverbials and words like ‘just’. Incipient grammaticalization of words for ‘already’ in the Indo-European languages is also considered.
This Introduction highlights some of the recurrent themes of the volume, in particular two diachronic paths: (i) resultative > perfect > perfective past; (ii) relaxation of an initial constraint restricting the perfect to results attributed to the patient. The latter leads to a discussion of be and have perfects, including English and Dutch data that point to important methodological caveats.
This paper gives an overview of the development of perfect forms in the branches of Indo-European. It begins with a discussion of the perfect in Proto-Indo-European and problems with its reconstruction. Special attention is paid to the formal and functional discrepancies between the Common Indo-European perfect and related forms in the Anatolian branch. The paper then traces the continuation of the Proto-Indo-European perfect form and gives an overview of various new constructions which take the place of the original form. It concludes with a short discussion of the semantic shifts which take place in the different Indo-European branches.
Past tense marked for perfective aspect, resultative, or other typical features of grammatical perfect forms is clearly in evidence in all of the modern Celtic languages, although not normally listed in the standard paradigms. An overview of usages in the modern languages will be given here, the major structures being of fairly recent origin. The formal structure is periphrastic throughout, divided between an older type employing the preposition ‘after’, and a newer one which shows some resemblance to the have-perfects in many other European languages. In agreement with previous authors, these major formal types will be referred to as p1 and p2 respectively. As the question of active vs. passive is crucial here, this side of the matter will be discussed to some extent, as will be the issue of syntactically reduced structures containing traces of a perfect tense. Questions of contact-induced change will not be addressed in this descriptive overview, except on some minor points. Given the grammatical and semantic complexity of this matter, with different developments over six literary languages and a multitude of dialectal varieties, the early (pre)history will not be discussed in much detail here.
This article gives an overview of the most important similarities and differences in perfect constructions in modern Germanic languages. The focus is on the German present perfect form and its developments, which will be compared with the perfect constructions of English and Dutch (West Germanic) and Swedish (North Germanic) throughout. First, I introduce and compare the perfect forms in a selection of modern Germanic languages. I then focus on the emergence and development of the German perfect, before I compare the degrees of perfect expansion in the languages under investigation. In a final step, I investigate some of the consequences of the described processes: i.e. the loss of the German preterite form (Präteritumschwund), the emergence of the double perfect constructions in German substandard varieties, and the re-introduction of a semantic opposition in English.
This survey presents a comprehensive account of perfect constructions (based on an anteriority participle and an often optional auxiliary) in Baltic and Slavic over space and time, including dialects and high-contact minority varieties. Based on a classification by participle types and their combinations with be- and have-verbs, it provides a systematic check of renowned functions of perfect grams and evaluates accepted parameters of grammaticalisation. The most consistent common denominator of perfects in Baltic and Slavic lies in the irrelevance of most such parameters but an increase in admissible lexical input and a decrease in paradigmatic variability. The two most salient differences between Slavic and Baltic are (i) the high level of stability of voice orientation of participles in Baltic vs. the diathetic lability and repeated changes in voice orientation in Slavic, and (ii) stable systems of perfects of likely great antiquity in Baltic vs. the lack of consistently employed perfect systems in most Slavic languages.
In this chapter I consider a periphrastic construction based on the resultative participle and the auxiliary. The semantics are those typical of a perfect grammaticalized from a resultative construction. The combination with time adverbials as well as contextual information show that the reference time coincides with the moment of speech and is not prior to it. In addition to the inherited meaning of the resultative perfect, other meanings typical of a perfect are also found, e.g., the experiential perfect. Finally, there are no selectional input restrictions: all Vendler classes are found in this construction – a situation that may not be found with early resultatives. Even though, these properties suggest an advanced grammaticalisation degree of the construction, there are also indications for its recent development. For example, there is no evidence for a non-compositional interpretation of the auxiliary such as remote past – a meaning facet typical of pluperfects.
This paper outlines the origin and development of the synthetic Perfect from Indo-Iranian, the reconstructed common ancestral stage of the Iranian and Indo-Aryan languages, to Vedic, the oldest attested stage of Old Indo-Aryan. Comparative evidence from Old Iranian, Homeric Greek and a number of other Indo-European languages shows that this morphological category ultimately originates from Proto-Indo-European. In the course of its history, the synthetic Perfect develops from a P-oriented stative construction in Indo-European, via an anterior construction in Indo-Iranian to a general past tense with an emerging indirect evidential sense in Old Indo-Aryan. The present contribution highlights the various stages of development reflected in Vedic, but it also includes reference to the Indo-Iranian prehistory of the Vedic Perfect, as well as to its demise in later stages of Indo-Aryan. The development of the Indo-Iranian Perfect indicates that anterior categories tend to be rather unstable diachronically.
This paper is the first step towards a description of the category ‘perfect’ in Middle and New Iranian languages. It attempts a comprehensive overview of the various forms that developed in the course of the past 2000 years, arriving at a typological classification of the Iranian languages. The comparison of perfects with their paradigmatic counterparts helps delimit the functional range that the perfect covered or covers, which, owing to lack of information, is as much as can be achieved for the majority of the Iranian languages. The diachronic perspective provides insight into the functional development of the perfect, which began with a resultative construction, and which in turn developed via a perfect into a simple past or past perfective (in some cases more than once). The paper concludes with a brief overview of some special perfect constructions such as double perfects, evidentials and perfect continuous forms.
This paper describes the form and function of the perfect in the North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic (NENA) dialects, a highly diverse subgroup of Neo-Aramaic originally spoken east of the Tigris river. After a short description of the expression of the perfective in § 1, a detailed classification of the various forms of the perfect is presented in § 2. Many of these forms have developed under the influence of the verbal system of Iranian languages of the area (§ 3). The perfect in NENA has a wide range of functions, some of them not commonly documented elsewhere, such as the use of the perfect to express the remote past and its use in presuppositional contexts (§ 4). Some of these functions have parallels in the function of the perfect in Iranian languages in contact with NENA (§ 5). Finally, an analysis is given of the NENA perfect within a Reichenbachian framework (§ 6). The common denominator of the diverse functions of the NENA perfect is the fact that the event is viewed from an indirect reference point and as a result the event is defocalized. The separation between the event and the reference point (e < r), which is the hallmark of the perfect, need not be temporal distance, but may be cognitive distance from the focus of attention due to the presuppositional information status of the event.
The paper discusses the syntax and semantics of the perfect and pluperfect of Classical Armenian. While A is usually marked for genitive, S may be marked for nominative or genitive. The perfect of terminative unaccusative verbs (‘fall’, ‘come’) describes the state of the subject after the event has reached its endpoint (‘be fallen, lie’, ‘have come, be present’). In two-place predicates the majority of perfects occur in a single-actant construction describing the resulting state of the object of the active clause (‘weave’ → ‘is woven’). If the underlying A is present as oblique subject in the genitive and the resulting state of O is backgrounded, the perfect may depict A as responsible for the event (‘characterizing’), or as being affected more than O (‘possessive’). Cases without a clear target state may have triggered the development of the perfect into a resultative in the modern language denoting present relevance of a preceding state of affairs.
In Hittite, the meaning associated with the Proto-Indo-European perfect, i.e. to indicate a state resulting from a change-of-state event, was covered by compound verb forms consisting of the -ant- participle plus the finite forms of the verbs ḫar(k)- “have” and eš- “be”. The origin and the function of this construction have been a matter of debate. In this chapter, we review the standard description of the Hittite periphrastic perfect, and reassess its status and function based on an analysis of its occurrences in texts ranging from Old to New Hittite. We argue that periphrastic forms involving ḫar(k)-/eš- and the participle instantiate three different constructions: the stative construction and two distinct auxiliary verb constructions, i.e. the passive and the perfect. We also suggest that the stative construction was probably the most ancient, and that the perfect construction, which functions as an anterior, constitutes a later development.
The paper deals with selected questions of ‘perfectivity’ as both aspect and tense function in Gothic in comparison with old and contemporary West Germanic languages. Perfectivity is treated as a functional category which originated in verbal aspect, but which has been re-analysed in many languages which have lost aspect as a grammatically marked opposition. In old East Germanic (Gothic), the prefix ga- originally marking terminative aktionsart was grammaticalised as the marker of perfective aspect. This is still reflected in Gothic, but lost in West Germanic. Hence, the development of perfectivity in Old Germanic is connected with the development of perfective aspect. However, in old West Germanic languages comparable prefixed compounds have already lost their aspect-marking function and could be used as general semantic modifiers of related simplex verbs. Beside the perfective-marking prefix, perfectivity also could be encoded by means of periphrastic forms, which gradually developed from aspect to tense function, so that in contemporary West Germanic languages aspectual (perfective) readings of periphrastic constructions are extremely peripheral.
The present paper surveys the diachronic development of the Ancient Greek perfect in four periods: Mycenaean, Archaic, Classical and post-Classical. At each stage the semantic evaluation of perfect is assessed in the context of the semantics of its predicate. While generally confirming the standard picture of increasing anteriority and past reference in the perfect correlating with greater numbers of verbs able to form perfects, the present study contributes empirical data to support this assertion. The article traces the growing paradigmatisation of the perfect form throughout its history. However, this development is not linear. Instead in the post-Classical language we witness a bifurcation along diglossic lines, with the literary language remaining much more conservative in terms of the perfect’s semantic range, while in lower-register material the perfect increasingly competes with the aorist to denote perfective semantics.
The present-anterior/stative function of the ancient perfect placed it outside the core verbal system, which was organised around a binary (perfective/imperfective) aspectual opposition. By the early middle ages the increasingly marginal perfect had disappeared as a functionally discrete category, its role subsumed by the aorist (past perfective), and the notion of continuing relevance determined contextually. The rare pluperfect was also abandoned, though periphrastic replacements continued the overt, if optional, expression of relative-past meaning, a function later strengthened by contact with Romance. A perfect counterpart appeared only in modern times, however, functioning as a past perfective with a compulsory current-relevance reading, but remaining optional in that the aorist still carries present-anterior implications in appropriate contexts. Other periphrases were introduced in later antiquity specifically to express stativity. Most have continued in stative function into Modern Greek, though intense contact with Latin/Romance also encouraged present-anterior and relative-past functions locally at various times.
The Old Geg perfect system has a morphology resembling that of neighbouring Romance perfects (‘have’/‘be’ + past participle). It is a major sub-system of the verbal system, using nearly all synthetic forms of the auxiliary. Moreover, there are surcomposé forms. The present perfect usually has a resultative or existential reading, other readings being very rare. The past tenses of the perfect system indicate anteriority to a reference point in past time. Among the surcomposé forms, there is a pluperfect of the perfect, which indicates a second, deeper layer of anteriority. The non-indicative forms of the perfect system serve as past-tense counterparts to the respective non-indicative categories of the synthetic verbal system. Finally, the Old Geg present perfect gives rise to the so-called admirative, a present expressing the speaker’s surprise, disbelief, irony or doubt, or his or her unwillingness to vouch for the truth of the statement given.
The Latin perfect system is argued to denote that an eventuality described by a predicate terminates prior to some moment in time, whether utterance time in the case of the ‘present’ perfect, or reference/topic time, in the case of the perfect infinitive, past and future forms. The ‘present’ perfect is argued to function as a perfective, while the past, future and infinitive perfect are argued to denote anteriority. Additional conditions are considered in order to explain the behaviour with state and achievement predicates. The participle in *-to- generally denotes that an eventuality described by the predicate terminates prior to topic time, as well as that an event’s poststate (if any) holds at topic time. As such the participle is generally passive in diathetical orientation, although there are exceptions. In certain kinds of predicate, namely those describing extent and mental state, the perfect loses direct reference to a prior event and refers only to an eventuality’s poststate.
The have-perfect, found almost exclusively in western Europe, has been identified as a “European quirk, unparalleled elsewhere in the world” (Cysouw 2011: 425). The spread of this highly marked construction to adjacent varieties provides us with an exceptional opportunity to observe the conditions under which this calquing occurred, and to assess the role of external as well as internal factors in the adoption of this structure in closely-related, distantly-related, and unrelated languages. After a general overview of the distribution of have-perfect calques across Europe, three representative instances are presented: Old High German and Old Saxon, Portuguese, and Czech. These examples illustrate, respectively, three important principles of social conditioning connected with the grammatical calquing: the role of prestige in the operation of ‘roofing’, the linguistic repercussions of political and confessional realignment, and the capacity of social motivation to outweigh internal linguistic factors.
English and Sistani Balochi are tense-prominent languages, and use the perfect mainly to elaborate on an existing topic by referring to a past state of affairs that is of relevance to that topic. English perfects also introduce new topics that the speaker wishes to address, while Balochi uses perfects with a mirative to introduce entities to a narrative and as a forward-pointing device in orienters that introduce reported speeches. New Testament Greek is aspect-prominent, which partly explains why English translates some Greek aorists (perfectives) with perfects. The Greek perfect often introduces restatements of past events or speeches. In passages with aorist-perfect alternation, it is also used in a marked way with added implicatures. Towards the end of a passage, assertions in the perfect often clinch the argument and/or are climactic. Near the beginning of a narrative passage, in contrast, the perfect, as in Balochi, is a forward-pointing device, highlighting what follows.
This chapter looks at Indo-European perfects in the light of recent typological research on TAME (tense-aspect-mood-evidentiality), in particular the work done at the Department of Linguistics at Stockholm University with the help of massive parallel corpora. The chapter starts with a survey of data sources and methods for multilingual linguistic research. Parameters of variation among perfects, both within Indo-European and elsewhere, are discussed: negated experiential uses, universal uses, combinations with definite time adverbials and words like ‘just’. Incipient grammaticalization of words for ‘already’ in the Indo-European languages is also considered.