Compound Tense Research Articles

Cyclic Selection: Auxiliaries Are Merged, Not Inserted

Traditional approaches to verbal periphrasis (compound tenses) treat auxiliary verbs as lexical items that enter syntactic derivation like any other lexical item, via Selection/Merge. An alternative view is that auxiliary verbs are inserted into a previously built structure (e.g., Bach 1967, Arregi 2000, Embick 2000, Cowper 2010, Bjorkman 2011, Arregi and Klecha 2015). Arguments for the insertion approach include auxiliaries’ last-resort distribution and the fact that, in many languages, auxiliaries are not systematically associated with a given inflectional category (Bjorkman’s (2011) “overflow” distribution). Here, I argue against the insertion approach. I demonstrate that the overflow pattern and last-resort distribution follow from Cyclic Selection (Pietraszko 2017)—a Merge counterpart of Cyclic Agree (Béjar and Rezac 2009). I also show that the insertion approach makes wrong predictions about compound tenses in Swahili, a language with overflow periphrasis. Under my approach, an auxiliary verb is a verbal head externally merged as a specifier of a functional head, such as T. It then undergoes m-merger with that head, instantiating an External-Merge version of Matushansky’s (2006) conception of head movement.

The role of the verb assists on the construction of the time composes in French and in English Le rôle du verbe auxiliaire dans la construction du temps composé en français et en anglais

An auxiliary verb is a verb that serves another verb to form a compound tense. In the compound tense, the auxiliary verb plays an important role. The auxiliary verb, however, is devoid of meaning and only serves to indicate the tense in the sentence. This article strives to carry out a comparative analysis of the dynamic in French and in English. The intention is to distinguish auxiliary verbs in French and their usage. Examples with verbs in different compound tenses have been cited in both languages

Is the “BE compound tense” in Xhosa (Nguni) a Serial Verb Construction, or not?

Developed within the dynamic, cognitive approach to categorization, the present article analyzes the taxonomical status of the BE gram in Xhosa (Nguni, Bantu) within the category of Serial Verb Constructions (SVC). By testing the BE gram for the features associated with the SVC prototype, the author concludes the following: the full type of the BE gram can be viewed as a minimally less canonical member of the SVC category, whereas the contracted type constitutes its non-canonical instantiation. The categorial difference between the two types stems from their dissimilar advancement on the grammaticalization path leading from less cohesive to more cohesive schemas. The study furthermore indicates that the typological category of SVCs has another diachronic input apart from coordination – namely, syntactic dependency.

The Syntax of simple and compound tenses in Ndebele

It is a widely accepted generalization that verbal periphrasis is triggered by increased inflectional meaning and a paucity of verbal elements to support its realization. This work examines the limitations on synthetic verbal forms in Ndebele and argues that periphrasis in this language arises via a last-resort grammatical mechanism. The proposed trigger of auxiliary insertion is c-selection – a relation between inflectional categories and verbs.

Venir de (+ infinitive)

This paper deals with the grammaticalisation of venir into an aspectual auxiliary of immediate anteriority, against the traditional approach (Gougenheim 1971 [1929]) according to which venir de + inf, would express recent past and so would be a temporal auxiliary. On the basis of the (revised) Reichenbachian model, it shows that venir de + inf bears upon the relationship between R and E (aspect) and not on the relationship between R and S (time). This analysis explains why venir, in this periphrasis, is defective (i.e., why venir cannot be conjugated in the passé simple or in any compound tense).

L’uso dei tempi e dei modi, traduzione delle espressioni fisse, idiomatiche e metaforiche e cambiamenti dei costrutti frasali nella versione polacca de «I dodici abati di Challant». Come superare i limiti di un sistema linguistico

The purpose of this paper is to present a comparative analysis of a novel written in Italian by Laura Mancinelli, 'The Twelve Abbots of Challant', and its translation into Polish prepared by Maciej Brzozowski. Focusing on a few examples, such as the use of grammatical tenses and moods, differences in the syntax, and the problems of translating idiomatic and metaphoric expressions, the paper aims to compare the author’s style with that of the translator. The task undertaken by the translator seems very hard indeed from the very beginning due to considerable differences between the Italian and Polish languages in the use of tenses and moods. While the Italian grammar uses four moods, eight simple and seven compound tenses, the frugal Polish grammar makes with just three modes, one compound and three simple tenses. The discussion will clearly illustrate that thanks to some modifications it was possible to translate and preserve the meaning and the spirit of the Italian grammar and style.

How to measure replacement: Auxiliary selection in Old Spanish bibles

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.

Substantive Verb on Turkish Cypriot Dialects-I (Compound Tenses)

Substantive Verb on Turkish Cypriot Dialects-I (Compound Tenses)

A Comprehensive French Grammar (review)

Reviewed by: A comprehensive French grammar by Glanville Price Gary H. Toops A comprehensive French grammar. 5th edn. By Glanville Price. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003. Pp. xix, 584. ISBN 3631235639. $29.95. The fourth edition of this grammar appeared in 1993 under the title L. S. R. Byrne and E. L. Churchill’s a comprehensive French grammar (Oxford: Blackwell). As Price explains in the preface to this new edition, scarcely any of the material in the original grammar by Byrne and Churchill now remains in this volume so it is no longer necessary to retain their names in the title. P further points out that ‘[i]n this fifth edition, a number of modifications to points of detail have been introduced . . . . However, the paragraph numbering and the pagination of the fourth edition have been retained’ (xii). Indeed, the most prominent modification appears to be the pervasive substitution of euros for francs in the language samples (cf. Je vais emprunter mille euros [formerly: francs] à mon frère ‘I am going to borrow a thousand euros from my brother’ [394; though P has not undertaken an actual currency conversion]). A comprehensive French grammar is user-friendly. The introduction (1–13) contains sections on the alphabet, phonetic transcriptions, the two varieties of h in French, capitalization, punctuation, syllabification, hyphenation, diacritics, and elision. This is followed by chapters on ‘The noun phrase’ (14–244), ‘Verbs’ (245–428), ‘The structure of the sentence’ (429–72), and ‘Adverbs, prepositions, and conjunctions’ (473–544). An appendix (545–54) delineates the ‘expression of age, time, price, dimensions, speed, [and] fuel consumption’ (x). The 30-page index (555–84) is particularly useful. Nevertheless, in preparing this fifth edition, P has not availed himself of the opportunity to fill in a number of arguably minor, but potentially significant, lacunae of previous editions. For example, the section on the infinitive (327–37) still makes no mention of the infinitif de narration; introduced by the preposition de, this verbal construction denotes the sudden onset of an action in the past, for example, Et les enfants de sauter et de crier ‘And the children began jumping and yelling’, Et l’ivrogne de se diriger vers la porte et de sortir ‘And the drunk headed toward the door and walked out’ (examples from Le Petit Robert French dictionary, Paris: Le Robert, 1981, p. 448). In the section on tenses (310–26), the imperfect as past conditional also continues to be disregarded (for example, tombais ‘fell’ in Un pas de plus et je tombais à l’eau ‘One more step and I would have fallen in the water’). In the section on modal auxiliaries (‘May, might, must, ought, should, would’, 383–87), P states that ‘where English uses “must” and the past infinitive, French usually has a compound tense of devoir and the present infinitive’ (385). This is correct; however, P forgoes any example of the competing construction, viz., a simple tense of devoir and the past infinitive. Here something along the lines of Il a dû se tromper ~ Il doit s’être trompé ‘He must have been mistaken’ might have been in order (only the former being conceivably ambiguous with respect to deontic [‘He had to deceive himself’] vs. epistemic modality). While the omissions indicated here do not seriously detract from the overall utility of P’s work, any grammar labeled ‘comprehensive’ is necessarily subject to particular scrutiny. Gary H. Toops Wichita State University Copyright © 2004 Linguistic Society of America

Basic conjugation of the Mbalanhu verb

In this article the morphology and morphophonology of the basic conjugational categories of the Mbalanhu verb are described. These categories are mood (those inflectionally marked properties of the verb that relate clauses to possible worlds), simple tense (as opposed to compound tense; simple tense is regarded as those inflectional properties of the verb that indicate deixis between coding time and event time), and aspect (those agglutinating properties of the Mbalanhu verb that signal the internal temporal structure of the event described by the verb).

Caminhos de mudanças sintático-semânticas no português arcaico

ln this paper I discuss some research results on syntactic variation and change which took place in OId Portuguese. Based on texts from the 14th and 15th centuries I discuss: (a) the variation involving ser/estar and the diffusion of estar to atributive structures (both locative and descriptive); (b) the variation between singular and plural as weIl as the loss ofagreement marks in the Past Participle in those structures where in conjunction with haver or ter it could be reinterpreted as a compound tense; and (c) fmaIly, I present evidence to show that in some syntactic and semantic contextsnumber agreement involving a verb and its subject was a variable phenomenon in Old Portuguese.

Deictic explicitness and event continuity in Swahili discourse

This paper addresses the question whether a sequence of two verb forms is to be analyzed as a discontinuous morphological unit (i.e. a compound tense) or a sequence of separate verbs. In the case of Swahili verb sequences consisting of an inflected form of kuwa ‘be’ followed by another inflected verb, syntactic arguments can be advanced for both analyses. Co-occurrence restrictions on permissible tense combinations support a compound tense analysis; the fact that kuwa and V 2 can each be independently negated and can have different subject prefixes supports a two-verb analysis. Discourse data are used to argue in favor of a two-verb analysis. By means of examples from texts and quantitative data it is argued that kuwa supplies deictic orientation for verbs whose orientation is not obvious from context. Such explicit orientation is needed in situations where there is a break in continuity between events, such as introduction of a new subject, that might cause difficulty in integrating a verb into its context. Restrictions on permissible tense combinations in kuwa + V sequences are given a semantic/pragmatic explanation. Implications of the analysis for other languages with relative tense are discussed.

The Auxiliary-Verb-plus-Infinitive Construction in Old Occitan

THE AUXILIARY-VERB-PLUS-INFIMTIVE CONSTRUCTION G? OLD OCCITAN A few years ago I began making lists of the most frequently occurring nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs in the poems of the troubadours. I made lists ofthese parts of speech for each oftwenty troubadours, and I also combined the lists into general lists (the combined lists). The results of that research were reported at Kalamazoo and elsewhere. The combined list of the most frequently used verbs [Table 1] shows that the top ranks are occupied by the verbs esser and aver, which can also be used as auxiliaries in forming past tenses, as well as with other kinds of complements. The next most frequently used verb on the combined list isfar, which may be used with various complements and also in the causative construction. Next in order come the frequently used modal auxiliaries voler, poder and saber. A fourth modal, dever, is in twelfth place. The raw numbers for the occurrences of voler, poder and saber are quite close in the sample of twenty troubadours which I have used. Of the twenty most frequently occurring verbs, no less than ten, including eight of the first twelve, are commonly used to introduce an infinitive. This paper uses that observation as a starting point for a brief introductory analysis of the grammatical structure of auxiliary verbs followed by infinitive in Old Occitan. A recent book by Gérard-Raymond Roy: Contribution à l'analyse du syntagme verbal: Etude morpho-syntaxique et statistique des coverbes conveniently compares the remarks of grammarians on the auxiliary verb. They have been prolific in their invention of terminology, but there is no agreement amongst them. Roy therefore therefore creates his own terms, and I shall adopt here one of them: the coverb. By coverbs, Roy means those verbs which can be used to introduce an infinitive (either directly or after a preposition). A coverb differs formally from an auxiliary in that the auxiliary introduces a past participle, in order to make a compound tense, whereas a coverb introduces an infinitive, with the relation between the verbs often having something to do with the attitude ofthe subject to the action ofthe infinitive (35). Several tables serve to introduce the results of my analyses.1 Table 2 gives a list of the most frequently used coverbs in the sample, and Table 3 a list of the most commonly used infinitives. The listings are then given for the individual troubadours of the sample: their F. R. P. Akehurst use of coverbs in Table 4 and of infinitives in Table 5. These lists were compiled as follows: A computer-generated concordance for each of the troubadours of the sample was created. Then the concordance was inspected and all the infinitives noted.2 The grammatical analysis of each sentence containing an infinitive then revealed whether the infinitive was governed by a coverb. Lists were compiled of: the coverbs used and their frequency [Table 4], and the infinitives so governed [Table 5]. Since one occurrence of a coverb can govern more than one infinitive, it happened that the number of infinitives governed by poder was more than the number of occurrences of the verb poder itself. (For an example of how this occurs, see stanza 5 of Poem 9 of Guilhem of Poitiers). The lists for the individual troubadours were combined to give the overall figure for the whole group. The lists were always ordered in descending order offrequency. The troubadour whose language is often considered typical, Bernard de Ventadour, uses coverbs 321 times in his 44 poems, an average of 7.3 coverbs per poem. These coverbs are used with a total of 124 different infinitives. The coverb followed by infinitive construction may thus be considered an important one for the language ofthe troubadours. The main modal verbs poder, voler, saber are occasionally replaced by periphrastic expressions which have the same meaning. Thus instead of poder, the poet may write: aver poder de, or esser poderos de; for saber he may use instead aver sabenssa de or aver saber de, or even by redoubling aver engenh e saber de. The largest number of periphrastic modal auxiliary verbs have the same meaning as voler...