“Perfect” asymmetry: Variation in Judeo-Spanish as a window into the diachrony of perfect auxiliaries

Abstract

Examples of variation and change in Romance periphrastic perfects are numerous, from dichotomies between have and be auxiliaries, to the specialization of particular auxiliaries. The current study analyzes periphrastic perfect variation in Judeo-Spanish (JS) auxiliaries. Results suggest that language internal considerations of tense, transitivity, and morphology contribute to the variable selection of two have auxiliaries, aver and tener. While aver appears in 90% of periphrases overall, constructions in the present tense, with transitive verbs, or with irregular participles favored use of the rarer tener auxiliary. The results for present tense relate to different semantic meanings between aver and tener in Old Spanish. The findings for transitivity and irregular participles can be accounted for in terms of retention in the face of analogical change and effects of frequency, respectively. The present study also utilizes the findings on JS auxiliary variation to provide insight into diachronic change in Spanish and Portuguese. Present day Spanish perfects use haber (related to aver) and Portuguese uses ter (related to tener) following centuries of variation between these forms. This diachronic divergence is reflected in JS synchrony, and possibly driven by the specific semantic meanings of perfect constructions in Spanish and Portuguese.