Re: IE Languages - Auxiliary Verbs

From: Neeraj Mathur (neemathur_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 01/01/05 

Date: Fri, 31 Dec 2004 19:39:45 -0500

>"PT" <xyz@xyz.com> wrote in message
news:cqt0js$6rj$1@nwnexus-news.nwnexus.com...
>In forming certain past tenses, some IE languages - such as French, Italian
& German, use the auxiliary verb >"to have" for some verbs, and "to be" for
others. But other IE languages (Spanish, Russian, and I assume >others),
only use "to have". What's the origin of this "to be" feature, and why is
it limited to certain languages?

I don't believe that the answer is a universal, typological thing - I would
assume that the feature in question has developed independently in each of
the languages, but arrived at a similar point because of working under
similar conditions.

Consider, for example, French. The division here is more or less clear: the
verbs using 'to be' as the auxiliary for the compound past tense are the
verbs which can never have any but an intransitive usage. Why has this
become the case? Let us start by considering how the usage with 'have'
arose.

There is a partial, illustrative parallel here in the development of
English. Consider that most useful linguistic artefact, the Bible -
particularly, consider Ephesians 6:14. In the modern editions (RSV is it?)
it reads 'Stand therefore, having girded your loins with truth..'. The King
James Version, however, phrases it like this: 'Stand therefore, having your
loins girt-about with truth.' This is a very illuminating intermediary
usage: the meaning of 'have' in the earlier text is still somewhat felt; it
has not become a simple auxiliary yet. The work is done by the past passive
participle 'girt(-about)'. There is no explicit agent for this passive
participle in the KJV text. This, no doubt, is the origin of our modern
construction, where the agent of the participle is the same as the subject
of 'have' and the position of the participle has changed.

We could expect that the development in French was more or less the same,
and if we use that assumption, then we can see why 'avoir' is used in that
language with transitive verbs only: only transitive verbs have a past
participle that is passive. This also explains why any verb that can ever be
used transitively falls in to this category: once they have produced a
pasive participle, this becomes grammaticalised and extended into situations
where the verb is not being used transitively.

I don't have any particularly stellar ideas about why the intransitive verbs
of French use 'etre', but I'm sure that their development can be traced and
understood as well.

Now, if all of the languages which have this have/be dichotomy have the same
or similar distribution (ie one based on the transitivity of the verb), it
is likely that they developed this in the same way. It is crucial to
understand, for these languages, the origin and development of the verbs
which use 'be' as their auxiliary. That is what will finally answer your
question.

Neeraj Mathur

Relevant Pages

  • Re: The benefits of multilingualism
    ... science meaningful at school and thought learning French was a useless ... shows that languages with fewer ... can actually enjoy school. ... and had no English ...
    (uk.philosophy.humanism)
  • Re: Hardest to learn between Russian and Irish
    ... "are the now the native languages of..." ... a fourth one (French or English). ... If they spoke only pidgin Latin, ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: How to prime kids to learn 3+ languages?
    ... multi-lingual environment and become fluent in multiple languages. ... They learnt English, French, and Arabic. ... When we "went" to a shoe shop, they switched to French, ... later, they still speak English and French well, and they have learnt ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: [ANN] How to spy on the Japanese Rubists
    ... Only romance languages - French is particularly easy if you're ... particularly the King's English. ... Suisse a first) speak French as, at least, a second language. ...
    (comp.lang.ruby)
  • Re: Polyglotism the Easy Way
    ... I am really to understand the history of the 19th century and ... present, my knowledge of these languages would merit a D and and E-, ... Since you're in Canada I'd start with French because the available resources will be ten a penny. ... Reading French-language Wikipedia articles might be useful. ...
    (alt.talk.royalty)
Quantcast