Cover not available

In:Perfects in Indo-European Languages and Beyond
Edited by Robert Crellin and Thomas Jügel
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 352] 2020
► pp. 591–614

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload Book EPUB
authorization required

Chapter 17
Calquing a quirk

The perfect in the languages of Europe

 | University of Texas at San Antonio
Published online: 23 September 2020
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.352.17dri
Abstract
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.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The distribution of the perfect
  • 3.Old High German and Old Saxon and the Charlemagne Sprachbund
  • 4.Portuguese on the periphery
    • 4.1The influence of Arabic
    • 4.2Historical background of Al-Andalus
    • 4.3The perfects of Arabic
    • 4.4Possible influence on Romance perfects
  • 5.Czech, Slovak, and the influence of German
    • 5.1Historical background of German influence
    • 5.2German influence on aspectual distribution of Czech
    • 5.3Prescriptive reactions to German influence
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations of languages
  • References
References (38)
References
Ammann, Andreas. 2002. Arabic verbal inflection: An essay in de-exoticizing. Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung 55. 311–339.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
van der Auwera, Johan (ed.). 1998. Adverbial constructions in the languages of Europe (Empirical Approaches to Language Typology, eurotyp, 20–3). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Banniard, Michel. 2004. Germanophonie, latinophonie et accès à la Schriftlichkeit (Ve-VIIIe siècle). In Dieter Hägermann, Wolfgang Haubrichs & Jörg Jarnut (eds.), Akkulturation: Probleme einer germanisch-romischen Kultursynthese in Spätantike und frühem Mittelalter, 340–358. Berlin: de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Beale-Rivaya, Yasmine. 2006. Mozarabic: Culture, contact, language and diglossia. Los Angeles: University of California at Los Angeles dissertation.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Benveniste, Emile. 1960 [1971]. ‘Être’ et ‘avoir’ dans leurs fonctions linguistiques. Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris 55. 113–134. [Reprinted in Problèmes de linguistique générale. 1966. Vol. 1. Paris: Gallimard. 187–207] Translated by Mary Elizabeth Meek as: The linguistic functions of ‘to be’ and ‘to have’. Problems in general linguistics. 1971. Coral Gables, Florida: University of Miami Press, 163–179.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Berger, Tilman. 2009. Tschechisch-deutsche Sprachbeziehungen zwischen intensivem Kontakt und puristischer Gegenwehr. In Christel Stolz (ed.), Unsere sprachlichen Nachbarn in Europa: Die Kontaktbeziehungen zwischen Deutsch und seinen Grenznachbarn, 133–156. Bochum: Brockmeyer.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Comrie, Bernard. 1976. Aspect: An introduction to the study of verbal aspect and related problems (Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics 2). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cuvalay-Haak, Martine. 1997. The verb in Literary and Colloquial Arabic. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cysouw, Michael. 2011. Quantitative explorations of the world-wide distribution of rare characteristics, or: the exceptionality of northwestern European languages. In Horst J. Simon & Heike Wiese (eds.), Expecting the unexpected: Exceptions in grammar, 411–432. Berlin: de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dahl, Östen & Viveka Velupillai. 2013. Perfects. In Dryer & Haspelmath (eds.), 2013. [URL]. (April 3, 2007.)
Dickey, Stephen M. 2011. The varying role of po- in the grammaticalization of Slavic aspectual systems: Sequences of events, delimitatives, and German language contact. Journal of Slavic Linguistics 19. 175–230. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2013. See, now they vanish: Third-person perfect auxiliaries in Old and Middle Czech. Journal of Slavic Linguistics 21. 77–121. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dieninghoff, Josef. 1904. Die Umschreibungen aktiver Vergangenheit mit dem Participium praeteriti im Althochdeutschen. Bonn: Georgi.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Drinka, Bridget. 2013. Sources of auxiliation in the perfects of Europe. In Freek Van de Velde, Hendrik De Smet & Lobke Ghesquière (eds.), On multiple source constructions in language change (Special issue of Studies in Language 37/3). 599–644. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. [Republished in 2015 in Hendrik De Smet, Lobke Ghesquière, and Freek Van de Velde (eds.), Benjamins Current Topics, 79, 129–174. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.]Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2016. Perfects in Contact on the Iberian Peninsula: Ibero-Romance, Arabic, and the Charlemagne Sprachbund. In Carlota de Benito Moreno & Álvaro Octavio de Toledo y Huerta (eds.), En torno a ‘haber’: Construcciones, usos y variación desde el latín hasta la actualidad (Studia Romanica et Linguistica 46), 281–326. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2017. Language contact in Europe: The periphrastic perfect through history. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dryer, Matthew S. & Martin Haspelmath (eds.). 2013. The World Atlas of Language Structures online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. [URL]. (May 25, 2014.)
Fassi Fehri, Abdelkader. 2003. Arabic perfect and temporal adverbs. In Artemis Alexiadou, Monika Rathert & Arnim von Stechow (eds.), Perfect explorations, vol. II, 69–99. Berlin: de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gerhards, Agnès. 1992. L’abbaye de Cluny. Bruxelles: Editions Complexe.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Harre, Catherine E. 1991. Tener + past participle. A case study in language description. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin. 1998. How young is Standard Average European? Language Sciences 20. 271–287. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2001. The European linguistic area: Standard Average European. In Martin Haspelmath, Ekkehard König, Wulf Oesterreicher & Wolfgang Raible (eds.), Language typology and language universals: An international handbook. Sprachtypologie und sprachliche Universalien. La typologie des langues et les universaux linguistiques, vol. II, (Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft 20/2), 1492–1510. Berlin: de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Johannisson, Ture Gustaf. 1945. Hava och vara. Som tempusbildande hjälpverb i de nordiska språken. Lund: C.W. K. Gleerup & Leipzig: Harrassowitz.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kinberg, Naphtali. 1992. Semi-imperfectives and imperfectives: A case study of aspect and tense in Arabic participial clauses. Lingua 86. 301–330. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mattoso Câmara, Joaquim. 1972. The Portuguese language. Translated by Anthony J. Naro. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Meillet, Antoine. 1917/1970. Caractères généraux des langues germaniques. Paris: Hachette. [Translated by William Dismukes as General characteristics of the Germanic languages. 1970. Coral Gables, Florida: University of Miami Press.]Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Norberg, Dag Ludvig. 1943. Syntaktische Forschungen auf dem Gebiete des Spätlateins und des Frühen Mittellateins. Uppsala: Lundequistiska Bokhandeln & Leipzig: Harrassowitz.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Oubouzar, Erika. 1974. Über die Ausbildung der zusammengesetzten Verbformen im deutschen Verbalsystem. Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 95. 5–96. Halle: Niemeyer.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pontius, Jason. 1997. Language codification and the perception of otherness: The case of Czech and German. In Kora Singer, Randall Eggert & Gregory Anderson (eds.), Panel on linguistic ideologies in contact, 1997, Chicago, Ill.. Papers from the panels on linguistic ideologies in contact, universal grammar, parameters and typology, the perception of speech and other acoustic signals (Chicago Linguistic Society 33), 101–108. Chicago, IL: Chicago Linguistic Society.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rodríguez Molina, Javier. 2010. La gramaticalización de los tiempos compuestos en español antiguo: Cinco cambios diacrónicos. Madrid: Universidad Autonoma de Madrid dissertation.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Squartini, Mario, & Pier Marco Bertinetto. 2000. The simple and compound past in Romance languages. In Östen Dahl (ed.), Tense and aspect in the languages of Europe (Empirical Approaches to Language Typology, eurotyp 20–6), 403–440. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sten, Holger. 1973. L’emploi des temps en portugais moderne. Copenhagen: Munksgaard.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Thielmann, Philipp. 1885. Habere mit dem Part. Perf. Pass. Archiv für lateinische Lexicographie und Grammatik 2. 372–423, 509–549.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Thomas, George. 2003. Puristic attitudes to German phraseological and syntactic calques in the Slavic languages of the former Habsburg empire. Canadian Slavonic Papers / Revue Canadienne des Slavistes 45. 201–225. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Thomason, Sarah Grey & Terrence Kaufman. 1988. Language contact, creolization, and genetic linguistics. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wiemer, Björn & Markus Giger. 2005. Resultativa in den nordslavischen und baltischen Sprachen (LINCOM Studies in Language Typology 10). Munich: LINCOM.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wright, Roger. 1982. Late Latin and early Romance in Spain and Carolingian France. Liverpool: Cairns.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wünsch, Thomas. 2008. Deutsche und Slawen im Mittelalter: Beziehungen zu Tschechen, Polen, Südslawen und Russen. Munich: Oldenbourg. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

Green, John N.
2022. Celebrating Gallo-Romance, the British way. Romance Philology 76:1-2 ► pp. 233 ff. DOI logo
Eide, Kristin Melum & Marc Fryd
2021. The perfect volume. In The Perfect Volume [Studies in Language Companion Series, 217], ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 6 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue