Article published In:
Languages in Contrast: Online-First Articles

Intermediate perfects

A comparison of Dutch, Catalan and Breton

| Université Paris III – Nouvelle Sorbonne , France
| Utrecht University , the Netherlands
| Escuela Oficial de Idiomas , Spain

The cross-linguistic variation in distribution and meaning of perfect constructions building on have + past participle in Western European languages has been analysed in terms of the aoristic drift, the shift from resultative via perfect to perfective past meaning that takes us from ‘classical’ perfect languages like English to ‘liberal’ perfect languages like French. This paper challenges the (often implicit) assumption that there is a single path along the aoristic drift, resulting in a linear perfect scale. Data coming from translation corpora reveal that the perfect in three ‘intermediate’ languages (Dutch, Catalan and Breton) is sensitive to lexical aspect (state vs. event), narrativity and hodiernal vs. pre-hodiernal past time reference. These meaning ingredients appear in different combinations in the three languages, thereby establishing them as independent dimensions of variation. The conclusion that there are multiple paths along the aoristic drift has implications for the cross-linguistic semantics of tense and aspect.

Keywords: perfect, aoristic drift, Breton/Catalan/Dutch
Article outline
  • 1.The perfect in contrast
    • 1.1 perfect variations
    • 1.2Distributional patterns emerging from translations
    • 1.3Linguistic ingredients driving the perfect scale
  • 2.The Dutch, Catalan and Breton perfects
    • 2.1Dutch in the tense-aspect system of the Germanic languages
    • 2.2Catalan in the tense-aspect system of the Romance languages
    • 2.3The tense-aspect system of Breton
    • 2.4Towards a comparison
  • 3.Catalan, Breton and Dutch as intermediate perfect languages
    • 3.1Distributional patterns: A quantitative analysis of the Camus dataset
    • 3.2The intermediate position of the Dutch present perfect
    • 3.3The Catalan present perfect in comparison to Dutch
    • 3.4The Breton present and past perfect in comparison to Dutch and Catalan
  • 4.Implications of cross-linguistic distribution for linguistic theory
  • Notes
  • References
  • Secondary references
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 22 September 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lic.22008.cor
References
Acosta, de D.
2006  <have+perfect participle> in Romance and English: Synchrony and Diachrony. PhD thesis, Cornell University. [URL]
Bertinetto, P. M.
1986 Tempo, aspetto e azione nel verbo italiano: il sistema dell’indicativo. Firenze: Accademia della Crusca.Google Scholar
Bertinetto, P. M. and Squartini, M.
2016 Tense and Aspect. In The Oxford Guide to the Romance Languages, A. Ledgeway and M. Maiden (eds), 939–953. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Boogaart, R.
1999 Aspect and Temporal Ordering: A Contrastive Study of Dutch and English. PhD thesis, Free University of Amsterdam.
Corre, E.
2022 Perfective Marking in the Breton Tense-Aspect System. Languages 7(3): 188. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Curell, H.
2003 El perfet en català. In Verbal periphrasen in den (ibero)romanischen Sprachen, C. D. Pusch and A. Wesch (eds), 35–46. Hamburg: Helmut Buske.Google Scholar
Dahl, Ö. and Velupillai, V.
2013 The Perfect. In The World Atlas of Language Structures Online, M. S. Dryer and M. Haspelmath (eds), Chapter 68. [URL] [last accessed 12 November 2022].
De Swart, H., Grisot, C., Le Bruyn, B., Xiqués, T. M.
2022 Perfect Variations in Romance, Isogloss 8(5): 1–31. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Deo, A. and Condoravdi, C.
2014 Aspect Shifts in Indo-Aryan and Trajectories of Semantic Change. In Language Change at the Syntax-Semantics Interface, C. Gianollo, A. Jäger and D. Penka (eds), 261–292. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Fuchs, M. and Gonzalez, P.
2022 Perfect-Perfective Variation across Spanish Dialects: A Parallel Corpus Investigation. Languages 7(3), 166. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Granger, S. and Lefer, M.-A.
2020 A two-pronged Approach to Corpus-Based Crosslinguistic Studies, Languages in Contrast 20(2): 167–184. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Grisot, C.
2018 Cohesion, Coherence and Temporal Reference from an Experimental Corpus Pragmatics Perspective. Cham: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Haeseryn, W., Romijn, K., Geerts, G., de Rooij, J. and van den Toorn, M. C.
1997  Algemene Nederlandse Spraakkunst, Martinus Nijhoff en Wolters Plantyn. Available at [URL]. [last accessed 26 January 2021].
Hemon, R.
1975 A Historical Morphology and Syntax of Breton. Dublin: Institute for Advanced Studies.Google Scholar
Howe, L.
2013 The Spanish Perfects: Pathways of Emergent Meaning. London: Palgrave McMillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kamp, H. and Rohrer, C.
1983 Tense in Texts. In Meaning, Use, and Interpretation of Language, R. Bäuerle, C. Schwarze and A. von Stechow (eds), 250–269. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kempas, I.
2021 En torno a la gramaticalización del pretérito perfecto compuesto (perfet) en catalán. In Los pretéritos perfectos simple y compuesto en español peninsular y en otras lenguas, C. Quijada Van den Bergue and J. J. Gómez Asencio (eds), 157–181. Madrid: Arco Libros.Google Scholar
Kervella, F.
1976 Yezhadur bras ar Brezhoneg [Great grammar of Breton]. Brest: Al Liamm.Google Scholar
Laca, B.
2010 Perfect Semantics: How Universal are Ibero-American Present Perfects? Proceedings of the Twelfth Hispanic Linguistics Symposium, C. Borgonovo, M. Español-Echevarría and P. Prévost (eds), 1–16. Somerville: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Google Scholar
Le Bruyn, B., van der Klis, M. and de Swart, H.
2019 The Perfect in Dialogue: Evidence from Dutch. Linguistics in the Netherlands 361: 162–175. [URL]
Le Bruyn, B., Fuchs, M., van der Klis, M., Liu, J., Mo, C., Tellings, J. and de Swart, H.
2022 Parallel Corpus Research and Target Language Representativeness: The Contrastive, Typological and Translation Mining Traditions. Languages 7(3): 176. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lindstedt, J.
2000 The perfect – Aspectual, Temporal and Evidential. In Tense and Aspect in the Languages of Europe, Ö. Dahl (ed.), 365–383. Berlin: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Löbner, S.
(2002) Is the German Perfekt a Perfect Perfect? Proceedings of the Sixth Annual Meeting of Gesellschaft für Semantik. Osnabrück, Germany. 8–10 October 2001. 255–274. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Partee, B.
1984 Nominal and Temporal Anaphora. Linguistics and Philosophy 71: 243–286. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pérez Saldanya, M.
2002 Les relacions temporals i aspectuals. In Gramàtica del català contemporani, J. Solà, M.-R. Lloret, J. Mascaró, M. P. Saldanya (eds), 2567–2662. Barcelona: Empúries.Google Scholar
Ritz, M.-E.
2012 Perfect Tense and Aspect. In The Oxford Handbook of Tense and Aspect, R. Binnick (ed.), 881–907. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schaden, G.
2009 Present Perfects Compete. Linguistics and Philosophy 321: 115–141. [URL]
2012 Modelling the “Aoristic Drift of the Present Perfect” as Inflation: An Essay in Historical Pragmatics. International Review of Pragmatics 41: 261–292. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2021 Perfects in the Romance Languages. Oxford Research Encyclopedias, Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schmitt, C.
2001 Cross-Linguistic Variation and the Present Perfect: The Case of Portuguese. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 191: 403–453. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schwenter, S. and Torres Cacoullous, R.
2008 Defaults and Indeterminacy in Temporal Grammaticalization: The ‘Perfect’ Road to Perfective. Language Variation and Change 20(1): 1–39. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Squartini, M. and Bertinetto, P. M.
2000 The Simple and Compound Past in Romance Languages. In Tense and Aspect in the Languages of Europe, Ö. Dahl (ed.), 403–440. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tellings, J., Fuchs, M., van der Klis, M., Le Bruyn, B. and de Swart, H.
2022 Perfect Variations in Dialogue. Proceedings of the Thirty-Second Semantics and Linguistic Theory Conference (SALT 32). Mexico City, Mexico, 8–10 June 2022. 22–43. [URL]
Van der Klis, M., Le Bruyn, B. and de Swart, H.
2022 A Multilingual Corpus Study of the Competition between PAST and PERFECT in Narrative Discourse. Journal of Linguistics 58(2): 423–457. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
in press. The present perfect: An Unstable Category in an Overall Stable Tense-Aspect Grammar of the Western European languages. In Beyond Time, A. De Wit et al. eds Oxford Oxford University Press
Xiqués, T. M.
2015 Towards a Unified Account of the Present Perfect: A study on Catalan, English and Gĩkũyũ. PhD dissertation, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
2021 More on Hodiernality. In The Perfect Volume: Papers on the Perfect. K. M. Eide and M. Fryd (eds), 181–212. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar

Secondary references

Camus, A.
(1942) L’Étranger. Paris: Éditions Gallimard. (French original).Google Scholar
(1942/1982) The Outsider. London: Hanish Hamilton. (English translation by Joseph Laredo).Google Scholar
(1942/1949) De vreemdeling. Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij. (Dutch translation by Adriaan Morriën).Google Scholar
(1942/2010) L’Estrany. Barcelona: Labutxaca. (Catalan translation by Joan Fuster).Google Scholar
(1942/2016) An estren. Lannuon: Skrid. (Breton translation by Erwan Hupel)Google Scholar
Liamm, A.
(ed.) (2006) Danevelloù divyezhek. Nouvelles bilingues breton-français. Brest: Centre de recherche bretonne et celtique.Google Scholar
Rowling, J. K.
(1997) Harry Potter and the philosopher’s stone. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. (English original).Google Scholar
(1997/1998) Harry Potter en de steen der wijzen. Amsterdam: de Harmonie. (Dutch translation by Wiebe Buddingh’)Google Scholar
(1997/2001) Harry Potter i la pedra filosofal. Barcelona: Editorial Empúries. (Catalan translation by Laura Escorihuela).Google Scholar
(1997/2012) Harry Potter ha maen ar furien. Pornizh: An Amzer ambanner. (Breton translation by Mark Kerrain).Google Scholar