Re: Past Tenses in Western Europe


"Nath Rao" <RnNaDthOrMao@xxxxxxxxx> wrote ...
> Douglas G. Kilday wrote:
> [...]
>
> > This fits well with
> > my view of laziness as the principal engine of linguistic change. The
lazy
> > person uses superfluous emphasis to draw attention to his utterances,
since
> > it requires less effort than clever phrasing, or for that matter
actually
> > doing something notable. Over time, emphatic expressions gradually
crowd
> > out normal ones.
>
> There is also the fact that sound changes can obliterate endings and
> make homophones out of what were different sounding words.

Yes, which is laziness operating on a different scale.

> [...]
> > I don't know, but I don't think it matters to the theory. What matters
is
> > that English-speakers (in the theory) picked up expressions like "I am
on
> > going to London" from Celtic ESL-speakers, and this new form of
conveying
> > the immediate present ("I am a-going" > "I'm going") was eventually
> > _interpreted_ as marking an aspectual distinction in English.
>
> What about all the other languages that (have) developed a progressive?
> Are you going to posit contact influence in every case? If not how does
> it come about, why is English different? See Bybee et al, 'Evolution of
> grammar' for the large number of similar cases.

No, I'm certainly not going to posit contact influence in every case.
Languages are perfectly capable of creating novelties from the material they
already have. Indeed I'm not _convinced_ that the English progressive
originated from a calqued Celtic periphrasis, but it's an attractive theory
for this particular case.

> Tamil is an interesting case: The old present now lives on as future and
> habitual/generic (though books tend to call it just 'future'). A former
> progressive (based on literary evidence, the form arose in 6/7 c. CE) is
> now limited to 'present habitual' (habitual now but did not obtain in
> the past). There is a new progressive, in regular use. But the past
> progressive is also used for past 'blocked' habitual: Thus 'Madurai Mani
> Iyer nanRAka pAtuvAr' is roughly 'MMI was a good singer', [the point is
> that Mr. Iyer has been dead for years.] but one would say, 'X nanRAka
> pAtikkoNTiruntAr. ToNTTaiyil kancer vantu viTTatu, pAvam' = 'X used to
> sing well, but poor guy, got cancer of the throat.'
> Here 'pAtuvAr' is what grammar books tend to call the 'future', while
> 'pAtikkoNTiruntAr' is past progreesive.
>
> I don't see what contact we can find for this.

I don't either, but as long as you've brought up the past habitual, note
that English uses 'used to' (and used to use a present habitual 'use to'),
and 'use' isn't Germanic, but entered Middle English from (gasp!) CONTACT
with French-speakers! The demise of the pres. hab. 'use to' looks
attributable to the simple present acquiring habitual force, due to the
pres. prog. taking over present function: an aspectual domino effect.

Few if any current speakers regard modal 'used to' as polymorphemic, and it
is sometimes written 'useta' in transcribing speech (cf. 'gonna'). My
girlfriend regularly used a past habitual potential 'useta could' where
prescriptivists would likely say 'could formerly'.

The bottom line here is that grammatical novelties must be studied
individually. A given innovation might be based entirely on native
material, might be directly borrowed, might be calqued, might be generalized
from a calque, might be a reaction to changes elsewhere in the language, and
so on. It would be as foolish to say there is NO contact influence as it is
to insist there is ALWAYS contact influence.



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