Lingua 60 (1983) 183-214 North-Holland

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FROM PRAGMATICS TO GRAMMAR* Diachronic reflections on complex pasts and futures in Romance

Suzanne FLEISCHMAN
University of California at Berkeley, Dept. of French
Received November 1982 This paper reexamines in diachronic perspective two complex verb structures in Romance and English, the so-called 'perfect' (Ft. j'ai fait, Eng. I have done) and the 'go-future' (Fr. je vais faire, Eng. I'm going to do), with a view toward demonstrating the striking parallelism in their development from exponents of ASPECT, whose principal function was to identify the situation described by the verb as being of 'present relevance', to exponents of TENSE. In the process, the complex structures both moved into the functional territory of existing simplex tense forms, which in certain dialects they ultimately supplanted or are in the process of so doing. These developments in the verbal system are ultimately brought to bear on the topical question of the pragmatic origins of grammar.

1.

Preliminaries: the basic functions of tense and aspect

In the metalanguage of linguistic theory pertaining to categories of the verb there exist fairly precise definitions of tense and aspect and fairly standard descriptions of their basic functions, though individual languages may differ with respect to the semantic oppositions grammaticalized under these respective categories. In addition, language-particular paradigms often combine tense and aspect, even when one or the other is not formally encoded by the grammar.
* Sections of this paper were presented at the 1981 Modern Language Association Meeting (Language Theory Session) and the Tenth Romance Linguistics Symposium, Cambridge, England. My sincere thanks to Roger Lass, Martin Harris, Giulio Lepschy, Elizabeth Traugott, and Eliza Ghil for comments on an earlier draft. The research for this article was supported by a grant from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. For text of footnotes see p. 204ff.

0024-3841/83/$3.00

1983 Elsevier Science Publishers B.V.

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1.1.

Despite this margin o f variability, most linguists would likely concur that tense is a deictic category whose primary function is to relate the time o f an event (E) or situation t predicated in an utterance or discourse to some other time, typically the moment o f the speech event (S), or, in the case o f relative tense relationships, to a reference point (R) which is in turn situated in relation to the moment o f speech. 2 The basic function o f tense, then, is to sequence events in a discourse.
1.2.

As a universal category o f grammar, aspect is more difficult to circumscribe, something one discovers quickly in trying to reconcile the spectrum of opinions about which distinctions are properly aspectual and for which languages. These opinions, it should be noted, are often formulated on the basis o f language-particular or group-particular data. 3 The issue is further complicated, first, in that aspect may be expressed in ways other than by the verb : lexically, for example, in which case it shades off into Aktionsart (cf. Bache 1982) or what the French often refer to as mode d'action, and second, in that aspect is now generally considered to be sentential in scope (cf. Dowty 1972; Verkuyl 1972), irrespective o f where in the sentence - if anywhere - it is explicitly marked. With the waters now sufficiently muddy, I will attempt nonetheless to formulate a basic working definition o f aspect: Comrie (1976) argues that aspect is a non-deictic category involving different ways o f looking at the "internal temporal constituency o f a situation". Grammaticalized under aspect are meaning distinctions pertaining typically to (nonmodal) features of the situation described by the verb other than its 'time', such as duration, boundedness, completion, repetition, inception, termination, and the like. Yet Comrie points out (p. 52) that the above definition appears to exclude the category o f perfect ("the Perfect ... tells us nothing directly about the situation itself, but rather relates some state to a preceding situation"), which is nonetheless commonly regarded as an aspect. + This apparent contradiction may be eliminated, however, if we do not restrict the referential domain o f aspect to the internal constituency o f a situation; that is, if in addition to those features o f the situation cited above, we also include within the confines o f aspect the representation of a situation as being in some logical (i.e. not strictly temporal, sequential) relation to a reference

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point. Inasmuch as such reference points are themselves established through a combination o f tense and time adverbials, certain aspects (retrospective and prospective) may be viewed as 'relative' or 'secondary' tenses (Anderson 1973: 39f; cf. also Smith 1980). These are distinct from tenses, however, in that they are not inherently deictic; the reference point in relation to which E is viewed need not be S, nor is the relationship simply one o f anteriority or posteriority. With our definition o f aspect now expanded to accommodate the perfect, it should at the same time be pointed out that perfects typically overlap the boundary between aspect and tense (the logical connection between the two situations presupposes a temporal relationship o f anteriority), and often ultimately develop into exponents o f past tense (see section 5 below). A final point concerning aspect. Perspectives on an event that are encoded in the form o f aspects tend to be subjective, i.e. they reflect a particular speaker's view of the event at a particular moment, and, unlike Aktionsarten, do not correspond to immutable, intrinsic features o f the situation described by the verb.
1.3.

Comparing the categories o f tense and aspect, we find the latter to be far more widespread (i.e. formally grammaticalized) among the languages o f the world; aspect is also considered to be a more primary category ontogenetically. 5 In diachronic perspective, however, aspect markers frequently evolve to tense markers. Evidence for this shift is available from language histories as well as in the acquisition literature. 6

2.
2.1.

The locus of tense and aspect in linguistic description

In a thought-provoking article on the status o f tense, Kress (1977) calls into question the elementary tenet of English grammar that the past tense o f think is thought. Clearly in sentences like (1) and (2) the speaker is not reporting on thoughts o f an earlier moment, but expressing his concerns at time-now : (1) Here. I thought you might like to have one of these. (2) I (just) wanted to tell you that 1 can't come to dinner tomorrow.

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Thought and wanted are not here fulfilling the basic past-tense function (marking an event as prior to the moment o f speech); rather, their contribution to the utterance" is modal. Use of past softens the abruptness o f the corresponding sentences with present-tense verbs, and in (1) serves to protect the speaker from a potentially awkward challenge (e.g. a response such as No thanks, I really don't want one of those). 2.2.
Examples o f this type lead Kress to pose the question o f whether tense is primarily concerned with the world o f processes and events or about 'interpersonal' relations, specifically those between speaker and hearer and between speaker and message. The question may be reformulated in terms o f linguistic categories as whether tense should be located in the 'ideational' or 'interpersonal' component o f languages (Kress operates with the categories of Halliday's functionalist system), or, translated into a comparable frame o f reference, whether tense belongs to the domain o f grammar or to pragmatics. Traditionally this question would likely have been answered by an unreflective assigning o f tense to grammar. But there is increasing evidence that it should - or should also - be considered in its interpersonal or pragmatic dimension. 7

2.3.
In view o f the propensity o f tense forms to function modally, 8 Kress (p. 43) proposes a 'compromise' solution to the problem o f how to_ account for tense, namely to collapse tense and mood into a single category called simply 'modality'. It is not entirely clear how this strategy solves the problem - unless a single category with multiple functions is somehow preferable to, or more 'elegant' than, discrete categories with a measure of functional overlap -, nor does it in any way handle the analogous overlap between tense and aspect. My own concern here, however, is not to describe - nor modify - the formal category structure o f the grammars o f particular languages, but merely to underscore the important pr~fgmatic dimension o f certain o f these 'grammatical' categories. By way o f example I have in mind a development which is conveniently illustrated with data from Romance and English, but which clearly obtains over a wider cross-language domain. This involves use o f particular past

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and future markers which grammars often label, for better or worse (I suspect the latter), 'present perfect' and 'immediate' or 'near future' I will argue for a formal and functional parallelism in the diachronic development of these two formations, both of which evolved from complex (or periphrastic) 9 exponents of aspect, whose pragmatic function was to identify the situation as being of 'current relevance', to exponents of tense. In the process, the complex structures in both cases moved into the functional orbit of existing simplex tense forms which in certain cases they ultimately supplanted, the paradigm examples being the standard French, Romanian, and Catalan simplex pasts.l I conclude by discussing the relevance of these developments to the currently debated question of the pragmatic origins of grammar

3.
3.1.

Formal and functional categories

The paradigms at issue here are listed in table 1 (the arguments do not apply to the slots in square brackets, where only one structure, complex or simplex, is solidly documented). It is important to distinguish clearly
Table 1 Simplex and complex futures and pasts Future Simplex
Fr.

Past Complex je vais faire voy a hacer you fazer ?vaig a fer] (a) O] (v)oi face] (c) I'm going to do Simplex je fis hice fiz flu feci f~cui ~ I did Complex j'ai fait he hecho tenho feito ~he fet ~vaig fer (b) ho fatto am f~cut I have done

Sp. Ptg. Cat. It. Rom. Eng. (a) (b) the (c) (d)

je ferai hat6 farei [far6 [far6 [ I will do

Regarded by purists as a Castilianism, but heard not infrequently. Vaig fer is functionally equivalent to the preterit (flu), but morphologically complex like perfect he fet. Beside std. voi + infin, the var. in oi (< voi?) is generally regarded as familiar or regional. See n. 9.

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from the outset between formal and functional category labels. 'Simplex' and 'complex' are formal labels which refer solely to morphological structure, and make no assumptions about the semantic or pragmatic functions of a paradigm in a particular language at a particular time. 'Preterit' and '(present) perfect' are functional designations. To the extent possible I will avoid the terminology used by the grammars of individual languages (e.g. It. passato prossimo, Fr. futur prochain, pass~ d~fini, Ptg. pret~rito perfeito, etc.) as usage is often inconsistent from one grammar to another, and, more important, because the traditional labels not infrequently misrepresent the functions of the paradigms in question. Particularly infelicitous in this regard is the term 'immediate future' and its translation equivalents. As I have argued elsewhere (Fleischman 1982a), the constructions associated with this label - which typically involve the 'go' verb with an infinitive are in no sense restricted to marking situations located in the near future, as (3)--(4) will confirm: (3)
If Winterbottom's calculations are correct, this planet & go#~g to burn itself out 200,000,000 years from now. ( 4 ) Un jour vous allez vous faire ~craser par une voiture! "Some day you're going to get yourself run over by a car !'

These constructions will henceforth be referred to as go-futures, a purely formal designation with no functional connotations.

3.2.
In the best of all possible grammatical worlds, where 'best' equals most symmetrical and isomorphic, simplex pasts would express the preterit function and complex pasts the perfect function, and to a large extent this is the case in the languages under survey. But since real-worlds are rarely optimal, and grammars rarely display perfect symmetry, much as linguists might like them to, these formal-functional correlations do not hold absolutely. In addition, the meanings of forms tend to change over time while their morphological structure changes much more slowly if at all. ~ With respect to the past system in particular, substantial variation exists even within a relatively close-knit group such as Romance.

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4.

The future system

I discuss elsewhere (Fleischman 1982a) various proposals that have been put forth (principally with respect to French and English) for a 'basic meaning '12 for the go-construction. What this amounts to is finding a feature capable of differentiating the go-future from the simplex (or will-) future in the maximum number of cases - ideally all - in which a contrast is perceived, la A number of interpretations came to be rejected as either erroneous readings of the contrast, or, alternatively, as valid but limited readings (i.e. overtones), too narrow to account for a significant portion of the data, as determined by the ease with which counterexamples could be adduced. I will outline briefly several such approaches; for a more detailed discussion and examples see Fleischman 1982a: section 4.4.1.
4.1.

To begin with, temporal proximity (i.e. the 'immediate future' interpretation) must be ruled out, since currently go-futures can and often are used to describe situations in the indeterminate and potentially distant future, as in (3) and (4). Similarly inappropriate, therefore, is the suggestion of Flydal (1943) that the French go-future refers to a 'localized' future situation, i.e. one whose precise temporal location has been established, in contrast to the simplex future which can serve to describe either localized or non-localized situations. Inadequate are various distinctions that revolve around the epistemic notion of possibility: for example, the idea that the go-future assumes the existence of the future situation, whereas it remains contingent with the simplex or will-future (Joos 1964; Binnick 1972); or a distinction based on illocutionary force such as Boyd and Thorne's (1969) distinction between making a statement and making a prediction. 14 Other suggestions for a basic meaning for the go-future such as imminence, intentionality or premeditation, inceptive or inchoative action fail' similarly on grounds of inadequacy. Counterevidence is easy to adduce, though the matter will not be pursued further here. Suffice it to say that all of the above oppositions or distinctive features can account for some of the data, but none by itself can account for all of it. What is called for is a 'lower common denominator'; as it turn out, all of these features may be subsumed under the broader umbrella of 'present relevance'.

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Implicit in all the proposed interpretations o f the go-future is a connection between present a~ad future according to which the future situation, irrespective o f its real-time distance from 'now', is v i e w e d b y the s p e a k e r as growing out of, or somehow in relation to, the present world-state. The essential point is the p s y c h o l o g i c a l rather than chronological nature o f this link to the present, which accounts for the ability o f go-futures to describe situations located even in the very remote future. In (4) the adverb un j o u r situates the event in the non-localized and possibly quite distant future. However, the event's realization is represented as a potential consequence o f the presupposed continuation o f a p r e s e n t condition, i.e. the addressee's habitual negligence in crossing streets. Similarly in (5): (5) I1 avait l'apparence d'un homme qui va mourir. 'He looked like a man who is about to die.' the man's imminent demise is related by the speaker to his state o f ill-health at reference time. Here the simplex future m o u r r a would only render the statement pointless: sooner or later it happens to everyone. What the go-future conveys in such examples is essentially pragmatic information: it expresses the s p e a k e r ' s subjective view o f the situation at the moment of utterance. His perspective on the situation may change, though the situation itself remains fixed in time, as illustrated in (6)-(7): (6) D6s qu'il viendra - car il va venir ... 'as soon as he comes - for he is going to come..." (7) Nous allons jouer; tu joueras d'abord, et moi, je jouerai ensuite.~5 'we're going to play (now); you'll play first, then I'll play.' The actual time of the visitor's arrival or the period o f piano playing does not change; only the speaker's way o f looking at, hence of representing these events.
4.2.

Another way o f formulating the subjectivity factor inherent in go-futures is in terms o f s p e a k e r i n v o l v e m e n t in the predicated event. The go-constguction presupposes a degree o f participation, interest, or personal involvement in the situation that generally is not conveyed, or must be conveyed by other means, when a more neutral, psychologically detached future is chosen. Admittedly, these nuances are often extremely subtle and highly contextsensitive, in addition to varying from one language to another.

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To sum up our findings regarding the two futures found in most of Western Romance and English, it appears that along a temporal axis (using 'temporal' as defined above), the simplex future and go-future are currently equivalent, and in many contexts interchangeable, with minimal if any difference in meaning. They can both be used to describe all manner of situations located on the future side of 'now'. Likewise, along the relevant modal axes (probability, supposition/inference, volition, attenuation, etc.) the two cover much though not all of the same ground (see Fleischman 1982a). These factors, coupled with the go-future's steadily increasing text frequency would seem to argue conclusively for regarding these formations as full-fledged tense forms. Yet, most normative and pedagogical grammars, and even a number of transformational analyses, 16 have been reluctant to do so. The go-future, however, has retained, as an important overtone on its basic meaning an optional connection with the speaker's present which is lacking in the simplex future and which translates into grammar as an aspect of 'prospection'.
4.4.

What has been referred to here as prospection is the future-oriented dimension of present relevance (-- PR, cf. note 25). This is probably as appropriate a place as any to define this notion. While certain scholars, Romanists in particular (Paiva Boleo 1936; Alarcos Llorach 1947; Harris 1982) appear to regard PR as a temporal concept, my own view is that when PR is grammaticalized, it is grammaticalized initially as aspect (as defined above), albeit with a temporal overtone. Were it essentially temporal, PR would involve nothing more than a chronological relationship between two events ('earlier than'/'later than'). The temporal location of an event can be determined more or less precisely in relation to an established reference point, which is ultimately S. The speaker can, however, choose to represent that event in various ways (through combinations of tense, aspect, modals, time adverbs) which involve factors other than or in addition to sequence, and with or without reference to S. One such representation involves placing the event in a logical or causal relation to a reference point. This is clearly a subjective determination, not necessarily shared by other speakers describing the same event. The sub-

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jectivity of current relevance is therefore not, I feel, strictly temporal, but

rather seems to correspond to what various linguists (Anderson 1973; Comrie 1976) have labelled prospective and retrospective aspects. These are ways of viewing an event in which a (non-chronological or not primarily chronological) connection is established between the event and the reference point, in the case of 'present' relevance, between the event and 'now'.A non-present situation is linked up in the speaker's mind to the here-andnow. We shall consider the past and future varieties of PR to be synonymous respectively with retrospection (a past situation viewed in terms of its subsequent [in this case present] repercussions) and prospection (a future situation viewed as resulting from, determined by, or contingent upon prior [here present] circumstances). These relationships are diagrammed in (8):

(8) ,(retrospection) i

(prospection)

Reichenbach (1947) contrasts the French future forms je vais voir and je verrai as in (9): (9)
je vais v o i r SR - E je v e r r a i S - RE

In its linearity this representation might suggest a temporal contrast. Yet, what is captured by placing the reference point (R) - or what has variously been called the 'orientation' (McIntosh 1966) or 'speaker's point of primary concern' (Close 1977) - coincident with S is precisely what is referred to here as the PR of the go-future. As suggested above, in the languages that make use of both future structures, there are currently numerous situations in which the two are virtually interchangeable, according to speakers, although appropriate contexts may vary from language to language (cf. (22) below). What this means in terms of diachrony is that the go-construction has moved into the territory of the 'future tense' and is now operating in environments in which its aspectual feature of PR/prospection has been neutralized.

4.5.
Certain specialists in the Romance verbal system insist that temporal relations in Romance are expressed by simplex forms, and that complex forms contribute something additional, in particular aspectual nuances (Co-

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seriu 1976: 119).17 While in principle I would agree with this position and have argued for it myself (Fleischman 1982a), I would nonetheless point out that Coseriu's categorical formulation of this generalization does not take into account an important phenomenon of diachrony, namely that over time periphrastic modals and aspectuals often develop into tense forms. This is a well-attested shift in language history (see note 6), and is the precise path of change marked out by the go-construction in Romance a n d English. This formation is acknowledged to be the predominant future tense form in the speech of a number of (regional and social) dialects of English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese.18 One consequence of the development of the go-construction into a future tense is that it is no longer obligatorily marked for [+PR]. The current relevance feature has been neutralized, as is similarly the case for the complex past in standard (spoken) French and Romanian 19 (discussed in section 5 below).

4.6.
A brief recapitulation of the relevant points with respect to the go-future : leaving aside the earliest stages (its origin as a construction of spatial motion - as in Italian still today -, and its subsequent transfer from the domain of space to that of time), 2 we find the go-construction operating early on as a pragmatic device used to link a future situation to the speaker's present. It enters the framework of grammar initially as an exponent of prospective aspect, the future-oriented dimension of PR. Over time, however, the PR requirement may be relaxed as the go-future develops into a tense form and moves into the functional territory of the simplex future. It is of course well known that shifts of this kind rarely occur in isolation with no concomitant adjustments to the system. Without appealing to such quasi-explanatory strategies as push-chains or drag-chains, I merely add here that the Romance simplex futures have also undergone change (cf. note 8), and in predictable directions (see Fleischman 1982a).

5.

The past system

One of the most striking facets of this development in the future system is its quasi-replication on the other side of 'now', i.e. in the past system with regard to the simplex and complex formations (see table 1).

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5.1.

Perfect vs. preterit

I will not attempt here an in-depth analysis of these two paradigms in the various languages under consideration. The literature on this question is extensive, for individual languages and dialects as well as comparative. 21 Acknowledging that the contrast operates with perceptible differences from one language to another, and even among dialects of the same language, I will again propose some basic operating definitions (adapted from Harris).
5.1.1.

In the case of PRETERIT, the situation (E) described by the verb or the reference period (R) in which it is located is entirely past, is seen as completed rather than in progress at the time in question, and is not represented as being relevant to the speaker's present. By contrast, (PRESENT) PERFECT is used to refer to a situation that began or first occurred at an earlier moment and is still going on, or a situation whose reference period satisfies this criterion (e.g. today, in the past ten years; cf. also note 33), or a completed past situation regarded as still relevant at the present moment. 22 The salient semantic feature of Romance and English perfects, i.e. their connection with time-now, is morphologically transparent in these structures which combine a present-tense auxiliary with a past participle. This construction type is, of course, not peculiar to Romance and Germanic; it is a fairly common strategy for encoding the perfect (e.g. in Finnish, Albanian, Armenian, certain Georgian forms, Hindi-Urdu, Punjabi, etc.).
5.1.2.

According to a number of investigators (Friedrich 1974; Li and Thompson 1982) the distinctive feature of perfect aspect is that it brings states of affairs into the current situation. I see no need to demonstrate this claim, as I attempted to do very summarily for the go-future, since there appears to be consensus in recognizing PR as the distinguishing characteristic of perfects. Thus Jespersen (1931: section 4.1) describes one type of English perfect as "connecting the Present time with the Past ..., a retrospective Present, which looks upon the present state as a result of what has happened in the past". 23 Along this same line, but reversing the direction of the entailment, Li and Thompson (1982) give a convincing demonstration that the basic function of the Mandarin sentence-final particle le 24 is a pragmatic one, namely to signal 'current relevance'. 25 From this position they argue for its being a marker of perfect aspect, even though the particle is not associated specifically with the verb.

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5.2. Development of the Romance complex pasts

The complex pasts listed in table 1, particularly those deriving from habeo f a c t t l , 26 have all at one time conformed - and several still do conform - to our working definition of perfects. Predictably, however, a number of these have developed, to greater or lesser degrees, beyond the archetypal perfect function (retrospective present) in the direction of pasts, just as the prospective go-constructions have evolved in the direction of futures. The history of the Romance complex pasts in relation to their simplex counterparts is discussed in detail in Harris 1982. Harris distinguishes four functional stages in this diachronic continuum, all of which are currently attested in dialects of Romance.

5.2.1. The common starting point is the state of affairs that prevailed in Vulgar Latin, given in table 2 as stage I: a simplex past with both preterit and perfect functions alongside a new complex structure used only to describe the present states resulting from past actions; at this stage the complex formation cannot yet be used to refer to past actions per se. This state of
Table 2 Evolution of Romance past systems Stage Simplex form I All past functions Complex form Only present states resulting from past situations Beginnings of perfect function but limited to situations of a particular aspectual profile Perfect (i.e. past actions with PR) All past situations (preterit and perfect functions) Currently attested in: Sicilian, Calabrian

II

Most past situations (including recent past or a time period still in progress) Preterit

Galician, Portuguese, American Spanish

III

English (a), Castilian, "Spanish, vars. of Oc, Oil, Catalan Std. French, N. Italian, std. Romanian (b), Catalan (c)

IV

Restricted to formal registers, eventually eliminated

(a) Included here solely for purposes of comparison. (b) Though standard French and Romanian have reached stage IV, stage III is preserved in various regional dialects. (c) See n. 28.

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affairs still obtains in Sicilian and dialects of Southern Italy. Subsequently, the complex structure evolves in two stages, according to Harris, toward a true perfect whose primary function is to signal past events marked for [+PR]. At the earlier of these intermediate stages (II), which we find currently attested in Galician-Portuguese and varieties of American Spanish, the complex formation begins to resemble a perfect as defined above, but carries with it aspectual restrictions; appropriate use of the form, Harris claims, requires a durative or repetitive situation (i.e. where English would use the progressive perfect have been doing). 2~ 5.2.2. By the third stage, currently represented in English, Peninsular (Castilian) Spanish, and regional varieties of French and Occitan, the complex structure has become a canonical perfect, capable of referring to all manner of past situations marked for [+PR]. As we shall see, however, PR is not interpreted in precisely the same way in all languages. I omit details of these intermediate stages as they are peripheral to the focus of our discussion. Harris's fourth stage, however, merits a closer look. 5.2.3. In standard spoken French, Northern Italian, standard Romanian, and Catalan (the last with respect to the go-past) 28 the development has gone the furthest. In these areas a complex past has come to assume all temporal functions of the simplex past, such that the latter is now restricted to formal registers, and may be eliminated entirely. Rather than express tense or aspect, the simplex past now serves primarily to identify a particular variety of discourse, i.e. third-person narrative. 29 The complex past-in these dialects functions as both a preterit and a perfect, and the opposition thereby ceases to be formally encoded. Such was the state of affairs in Classical Latin also. However, in Latin it was the simplex form (feci) that did double duty, while in Romance, in conformity with the prevailing syntactic typology (SVO), it is the complex form with a present-tense auxiliary. This neutralization of the perfect-preterit opposition is evident in (10) and (11), if we compare the French and Italian examples with their English equivalents in which the contrast is still explicit: (10a) Je n'ai rien mango de la journ+e. (10b) Oggi non ho mangiato proprio niente.
'I haven't eaten a thing all day. '3

(1 la) Je n'ai rien mango bier non plus. (1 l b ) Non ho rnangiato niente neanche ieri.
'I didn't eat anything yesterday either.'

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5.3.

It should not be inferred from our discussion that the development outlined for perfects is confined to Romance. Similarly in a number of Germanic (Yiddish, Afrikaans, varieties of German) and Slavonic (most except Bulgarian and Macedonian) languages, forms with present-tense auxiliaries and past participles are no longer specifically perfect in meaning, but have acquired a preterit dimension as well (Comrie 1976" 107). In all these lanz guages the result is a 'discrepancy' between FORM, which comprises present and past, and MEANING, which is often just past. In other words, the characteristic form of a perfect is conveying the meaning of a preterit if it is even legitimate to invoke this functional-semantic distinction for a language which has ceased to encode it formally (see note 40). There are languages which are more consistent and isomorphic in their formal representations of this meaning distinction, sx while others reverse the expected correlations.
-

5.4.

It has been variously observed (Jespersen 1931:27; Anderson 1973" 39; Comrie 1976: 54f) that a useful heuristic for identifying the perfect in English is an apparent cooccurrence restriction, operative in all but a scattering of marginal situations, 32 on the use of this form together with an explicit specification of the time of the past event. Thus, a sentence such as (12) is inadmissible in English: (12)
*I have got(ten) up at seven o'clock this morning, as

Pursuing this observation further, we might hypothesize the restriction to be a consequence of the fact that the English complex past is still a (stage III) perfect. Only at stage IV, i.e. once the form has come to function squarely as a preterit, might we expect it to be compatible with explicitly past-time adverbials. This hypothesis appears t o be supported by a comparison of equivalents of (12) in other languages here under survey. The complex past is likewise unacceptable in Portuguese, also stage III: (13)
"*Hoje eu me tenho levantado As sete da manhfi.

whereas in standard French (14), Northern Italian (15), and standard Ro-

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manian (16) - all stage IV - not only is the complex past acceptable, it is the only option in speech: (14) Fr. Ce matin j e m e suis levO fi sept heures. (15) It. Oggi mi sono alzato alle sette. (16) Daco-Rom. Azi dimineata m-am sculat la ~apte. 34 Further insight into this question might be gained by looking at it in the light of Anderson's (1973) 'localist' interpretation of the observed tendency for prospective and retrospective aspect markers to develop into future and past tenses respectively. Aspect markers, Anderson contends, frequently collocate with point-of-time adverbs to yield expressions of temporal location; it is ultimately the adverbs - themselves often locative in origin - that constitute the source of tense, 3s This, however, raises a chicken-and-egg question of whether co-occurrence with time adverbs is what serves to move perfects in the direction of past tenses - in which case why are (12) and (13) still unacceptable? - or, alternatively, whether the achievement of tense status (i.e. stage IV), however this is accomplished, is the necessary precondition for allowing complex pasts to collocate with past-time adverbials, as Anderson and our data above seem to suggest. I have deliberately reserved for last the relevant examples from Catalan and Spanish. These appear to run counter to our hypothesis that preterits but not perfects should co-occur with past-time specification; they may, however, shed light on the question of relative chronology posed above. The spontaneously elicited version of (12) in Catalan (stage IV with respect to vaig fer) shows not the preterit vaig fer but the perfect he f e t : (17)
M ' h e llevat aquest mati a l e s set.

My informant attributes this usage to the particular adverb at issue, 'this morning' being one of the classic cases in which individual variation in the use of preterit and perfect has been observed. 36 Spanish seems to allow both possibilities: (18) Hoy (19) Hoy
m e he levantado a l a s siete. m e levant~ a l a s siete.

Yet, speakers of several dialects (American and Peninsular) whom I have consulted tend to prefer, and produce spontaneously (e.g. in response to a question such as Comrie's Why do you look so tired?) the version of (19) with the preterit, though they find (18) entirely acceptable.

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Spanish might therefore represent the 'transitional situation' of a perfect which, unlike its English and Portuguese counterparts, can co-occur with explicit past-time specification, and which may therefore already be headed down the path taken by its congeners in French, Northern Italian, and Romanian.37 The acceptability of (18) might also provide a piece of evidence useful in resolving the question posed above concerning the relative chronology of tense status and co-occurrence with past-time adverbials, though it is not at all established, as Comrie (1976: 54) cautiously notes, that the co-occurrence restriction on perfects is a necessary state of affairs in language. Still, for our purpose, the operation or non-operation of this restriction may prove to be a diagnostic indicator of the extent to which a perfect has moved in the direction of a past tense. 5.5. Opening a brief parenthesis, I would point out that the shift from perfect to preterit is a predictable cross-language generalization which operates independently of morphological structure (simplex vs. complex, cf. note 39). Simplex preterit forms such as Eng. I wrote, Ger. ich schrieb are ultimately traceable to the Indo-European perfect, which according to Indo-Iranian and Greek evidence originally denoted a present state or result of action (Kurytowicz 1972: 181). 38 The Romance simplex pasts (/~crivis, escribi) likewise go back to a Latin ancestor which was both a preterit and a perfect. As these forms developed into exponents of past action, there arose beside them new (complex) perfects: I have written, ich habe geschrieben, j'ai dcrit, he escrito, certain of which have by now recapitulated the shift from perfect to preterit. 39 (An analogous cycle for the periodic remodeling of the future is proposed in Fleischman 1982a.) 5.6. Having sketched in overview the development of Romance complex pasts to the ultimate stage, represented by standard French, Northern Italian, and standard Romanian, in which the preterit-perfect contrast is formally obliterated, 4 I should like now to return to the notion of PR as the distinguishing mark of perfects.

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Present relevance

In a discussion o f the deictic demonstratives this and that, Fillmore (1975) observes that the sentences in (20): (20a) THIS has been an interesting course. (20b) THAT was a brilliant lecture. are clearly more acceptable than those in (21): (21a) THAT has been an interesting course. (21b) THIS was a brilliant lecture. Fillmore does not comment on the verb forms; however, one would expect that the perfect (has been) would be more compatible with a deictic element similarly marked for [ + P R ] , in this instance a demonstrative conveying proximity or relevance to the speaker/speech situation. Present relevance, however, is a subjective notion which tends to be interpreted differently from one language to another and even between dialects of the same language. I was made particularly aware o f such differences in my own language u p o n receiving from England a pre-print o f Harris 1982 with an a c c o m p a n y i n g note that began: "Herewith a draft o f the article we have s p o k e n a b o u t . . . " . Since we had spoken a b o u t it some months earlier and had no further exchange on the matter since, I was struck by this use o f the perfect. Ruling out the reading that Harris's article was perhaps relevant to him but irrelevant to me, I offer this anecdotal example simply as evidence for the claim that dialects o f a language differ with respect to the interpretation o f PR. This seems to be the most satisfying way to account for the cross-language or cross-dialect divergence observed in the use of perfect vs. preterit, or of future vs. go-future (illustrated in (22) below), without undermining the validity o f distinctions based on PR. Compare in this regard the French and English versions o f the situation in (22) in which speaker A is having difficulty opening a bottle and speaker B offers his assistance: (22a) A: Je n'arrive pas h deboucher la bouteille. B : Donne-la-moi, je vais le Jaire. [go-future] (*Donne-la moi, je le Jerai) [simplex future]

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(22b) A : I can't get this bottle open.

B: Here, 1'11 do it for you. [will-future] (*Here, I'm going to do it for you) 41 [go-future]

7.
7.1.

Diaehronic parallelism between past and future systems

An interesting symmetry, both formal and functional, may be observed in the evolution of the grammatical apparatus for past and future reference in Romance and English. We have established that at an earlier stage the essential feature contrasting simplex and complex, pasts, likewise simplex and complex futures, was something called present relevance, a pragmatic device by which speakers mark a past or future situation as bearing on the here-and-now. Thus, in the appropriate context a speaker of Castilian Spanish could conceivably use the perfect to refer to an event that occurred in the indefinite, possibly quite distant past, as in (23), the line with which the poet Miguel Hernfindez begins his elegiac lament over the death of a friend : (23) En Ceriheura, su tierra y la mia,
se m e ha muerto Ram6n Sij6... 'In Ceriheura, his land and mine, Ram6n Sij6 died' (lit. 'has died to me') 42

This pragmatic choice is grammaticalized initially as an aspect: retrospection or prospection. And while the languages under survey differ in the extent to which the complex past has evolved from a stage I (stative) preperfect to a stage IV preterit, in the most advanced cases - standard French being a paradigm example - we observe how in both past and future systems a complex formation which began as a marker of aspect (or at last functioned as such by stage II) acquired an additional temporal meaning belonging to a simplex rival. In the process the PR requirement in these languages has been relaxed, with PR becoming an optional and no longer explicitly encoded feature of the two complex constructions. The complex tenses can now refer to situations completely detached from 'now', situations which at one time could be described using only the simplex forms. 43 The current distribution of functions for French is represented in table 3.

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Table 3 Functional distribution of pasts and futures (French) Form Grammatical category Past Future Complex Tense/Aspect = Simplex Tense +_ Present relevance Aspect

j'ai fait je vais faire

= =

je fis je ferai

+_ +

Retrospection Prospection

7.2.
Particularly with respect to French there have been various attempts to identify - or perhaps impose? - symmetries on the marking systems for past and future. According to the most common of these matrixes (Flydal 1943; Klum 1961; Vet 1980), the simplex future correlates with the pass~ compos~ and the go-future with the recent-past construction with venir, as represented in the diagram in (24): (24)
Tense [+ proximal] PAST j'ai fait je viens de faire FUTURE je ferai je vais faire

This set of correspondences appears to be motivated first, by a desire to see functional parallelism in structures that are etymologically parallel (those from the 'come' and 'go' verbs), and second, by the erroneous assumption that both of these originally spatial constructions are marked for [+ proximal]. While this is true for je viens de faire, it is not the case for the go-future, which is currently [+_proximal], nor is there any compelling synchronic motivation for correlating je ferai with j'ai fait. Within the verbal system of French today the simplex future (/'e feral) is preferably viewed as the counterpart of the passk simple (je fiS), 44 while the pass~ composO (l"ai fait) is analogous, both formally and functionally, not to the simplex future but to the go-future. And if according to the above matrix the venirconstruction remains without a corresponding 'immediate' future, 45 we must simply chalk this up to the perverse asymmetry of grammars and to the fact that in 'prospective' languages (i.e. where the basic temporal opposition is past-nonpast) the marking systems for past time are predictably more finely graded than those for future time. 46

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7.3.
It is neither assumed nor expected that in a given language the complex future and complex past structures will evolve at the same rate. In standard Italian, for example, ho fatto has already reached the preterit stage, while vado a fare remains an expression of spatial motion. In Portuguese, by contrast, you fazer is the predominant future in conversation, while tenho feito is still a 'restricted' perfect (see Thomas 1969). The shift from pragmatic device --~ aspect ~ tense is simply a predictable path of change which one structure may follow independently of the other (or not at all), and with rates of change varying within a single language as well as from one language or dialect to another.

7.4.
The development of the Romance complex forms into past and future tenses is clearly related to the concomitant decline of the simplex forms (for discussion see Fleischman 1982a). In French the simplex past has effectively disappeared from the spoken language and now functions to signal a particular variety of discourse, while the simplex future is largely modal. If the 'past' should serve as a guide to the 'future' - as historians often claim - then we, or generations to come, should not be altogether surprised by an analogous disappearance of the simplex Romance futures from the spoken language, or their confinement to exclusively modal use. Presumably this has already occurred in certain dialects. 47

7.5.
I conclude this discussion by moving from particular historical developments to a broader theoretical question, and to suggest that the path of change described here for go-futures and complex pasts might shed some light on the debated issue of the pragmatic origins o f grammar.

8.

On the pragmatic origins of tense-aspect

There have been a numt~er of recent claims in the literature, perhaps the most vigorous and broad-ranging by Giv6n at various points in his writings, 48 to the effect that much of the apparatus of grammar has its

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source in the pragmatics of discourse. Specifically in regard to tense-aspect, this position is also argued in Hopper 1979 in reference to strategies for foregrounding and b~fckgrounding in narration. Hopper observes (p. 239) that one finds frequently in languages an aspect marker specialized for foregrounding, or one for backgrounding, or both, and that superimposed on these aspectuals there may be indicators of tenge. In French, for example, the passd simple/imparfait contrast has been interpreted as one involving narrative focus (Reid 1976), 49 and Hopper (p. 217) insists on viewing this and analogous aspectual distinctions "as DERIVING FROM discourse rather than as ready-made devices 'deployed' in discourse because they happen already to exist". According to the opposite view, as argued in Traugott 1979, rather than originate in discourse, tense and aspect come to express discourse functions only after they have served a purely referential, non-discourse function, in the same way as, for example, certain discourse organizing devices can be shown to have developed out of the referential meanings of the respective terms (locative interrogative where --~ relative where --~ concessive where(as) ; time-adverb while--~ adversative conjunction while), rather than the other way around (Traugott forthcoming). 5 Without wishing to debate the theoretical merits of these contrasting views, I would simply point out that my own findings with respect to the tense-aspect phenomena here at issue appear to support the 'source-pragmatic' rather than the 'target-pragmatic' position. The development of complex futures and pasts marks out a progression from a pragmatic notion of 'current relevance', which is encoded initially as aspect (prospection or retrospection), to a temporal stage at which the forms may be used to describe future and past situations with or without the aspectual/pragmatic coloration of PR. 51 The parallel developments of the go-future and complex past may thus be seen as providing an additional piece of evidence in favor of the pragmatic origins of tense and aspect.

Notes
1 'Event' and 'situation' will be used interchangeably here, although the relationship is technically one o f h y p o n y m y : situation is a cover term that includes events, states, and actions/processes. 2 This three-part structure o f tense relationships goes back ultimately to Reichenbach (1947), and has been reformulated - and refurbished - in much o f the subsequent literature on time and its linguistic representation. See for example, ,~qvist 1976; Smith 1980. While no-one

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would likely dispute that the S-R relationship is one of tense, certain linguists (Binnick 1976; Traugott 1975, following Anderson 1973) interpret the E-R relationship not as one of relative tense, but of aspect. Anderson (1973: 40) in effect acknowledges that what he calls 'prospective' and "retrospective' aspects are essentially relative or secondary tenses (discussed further below). 3 The literature on aspect is extensive. Among recent studies with particular reference to Romance, see Dietrich 1973: ch. 2 for a survey of points of view, also Vet 1980, and the comprehensive, if already dated bibliography in Martin 1971. 4 This difference between the perfect and other aspects has led certain analysis to question the aspectual status of the perfect. Even Comrie (p. 52) acknowledges that "it is an aspect in a rather different sense" than, say, imperfective, perfective, punctual, durative, etc. Most linguists, however, consider that the perfect, if it is not solidly aspectual, involves at least an aspectual component. s Cf. Cassirer 1953 : 218, 223ff, Lyons 1977: 68, Kurylowicz at various points in his writings, and following him, McCray 1979. The development of creole verbal systems provides a classic instantiation of the ontogenetic primacy of aspect, which may eventually develop into, or have superimposed on it, something resembling tense. Cf. Hall 1952; Goodman 1964; Bentolila 1970; Valdman 1977; Bickerton 1977. 6 The shift from aspect ~ tense as illustrated in diachrony is taken up in sections 4 and 5 below; cf. also Friedrich 1974; Silverstein 1974; Binnick 1976; McCray 1979; Traugott 1979, forthcoming; Fleischman 1982a (esp. pp. 99t', 128t, 133 n. 82). On aspect ~ tense in language acquisition, see Stern and Stern 1928; Ferreiro 1971; Bronckart and Sinclair 1973; Antinucci and Miller 1976; Bloom et al. 1980. 7 Concerning the modal use of past forms illustrated in (1) and (2), Kress observes (p. 45) that in a speech situation such forms will be used differentially in interaction: one participant will be more likely to use them than the other, either because of the awkwardness of a request, if one is being made, or a perceived inequality between the participants. This particular 'modal' use of tense forms might therefore serve as a useful diagnostic device for the pragmatic analysis of social relations in linguistic interaction (ibid.). The pragmatic role of tense has also been looked into, from different angles, in Lakoff 1970 and Riddle 1976. Although none of the papers from the Stuttgart Conference on the Logic of Tense and Quantification (1979) actually presents a formal framework that might account for the pragmatics of tense forms, the editor of the Proceedings (Rohrer 1980) acknowledges the widespread feeling among conference participants that an adequate description of tense requires a pragmatic component. 8 Kress is concerned mainly with the modality of past tenses, secondarily present. Along the same line, it is argued in Fleischman 1982a that modal use is coming to be, if it is not already, the predominant use of simplex futures (see n. 9) in Western Romance. 9 The terms 'simplex' and 'complex' used here to describe morphological structure are synonymous with 'synthetic' and 'analytic', also essentially with the traditional labels 'simple' and 'compound'. Usage of these concepts in the literature, however, is not consistent (see Tauli 1945-49). On overall synthetic and analytic tendencies in language, see Tauli 1958, 1966; also Pulgram 1963 ; Ashby 1977. For convenience and to" underscore functional parallelism, the will-future will be subsumed under simplex futures (as in table 1), notwithstanding its transparently complex structure. lo The hypothesized diachronic shift and the parallelism between past and future systems have both been carried out to different degrees in the different languages under consideration

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(see section 7). However, neither the fact that the shift has not everywhere run its course, nor that both English futures are complex, compromises the postulation o f this diachronic shift. 1~ T h u s the reflexes o f L..[acere habeo synthesized early on into the R o m a n c e simplex futures, while the reflexes o f the habeo factu past have remained complex. An explanation for this contrastive development is proposed in Fleischman 1982a: section 5.4. There has also been speculation that the go-future and complex past m a y eventually agglutinate (Pulgram 1963, 1967; A s h b y 1977). 12 The 'basic meaning' (cf. G e r m a n "Grundbedeutung') is the semantic nucleus o f a category, a kind o f lowest c o m m o n denominator o f all examples, for the determination o f which context is in principle unnecessary. 'Overtones' (cf. G e r m a n 'Nebenbedeutungen') are subsidiary meanings derived or inferrable from the basic meaning, but adding a coloration o f their own. No overtone extends to all tokens o f a category (it would then be a basic meaning) and all are contextually conditioned. In certain cases the existence of both basic meanings and overtones can be shown to be the result o f an historical development in which the basic meaning is the original one, with overtones being acquired as extensions thereof. Ultimately the form may acquire a new basic meaning, broader in scope than the original, a n d incorporating what were once overtones. Such a state o f affairs might also be interpreted from the standpoint o f markedness: in certain cases the unmarked value o f a form or paradigm can encompass that of its marked counterpart (cf. table 3). As we shall see below, this process - however we choose to describe it - is clearly exemplified in the evolution o f gofutures and a n u m b e r of complex pasts. ~3 More precisely this would distinguish the go-future from all other constructions and strategies used in the language(s) for referring to future situations, including the so-called futurate construction (praesens pro futuro), which will not be discussed here. ~4 Strictly speaking, the statements-predictions opposition was put forth to contrast the futurate use o f the English simple present (John GOES to London tomorrow) and the willfuture (John W I L L GO to London tomorrow). But since the contrast is based on likelihood/ possibility, which is scalar rather than absolute, it is a simple matter to integrate the go-future at some point along the epistemic continuum. is In a sentence containing a series o f verbs describing a future event or sequence of future events it is not u n c o m m o n for the speaker to shift from an initial go-future to simplex/will futures for the remaining verbs, as in (7). 16 For discussion see Posnei 1972; Fleischman 1982a: 25f. 17 Cf. also Dietrich 1973: section 0.3 on the R o m a n c e tendency to express aspects through verbal periphrases. Dietrich traces this strategy back to Greek, via C o m m o n R o m a n c e or Vulgar Latin, but bypassing Classical Latin altogether. 18 For further discussion and language-specific references, see Fleischman 1982a: 101f, also C h a m p i o n 1978 (reviewed in Fleischman 1981). ~9 Halvorsen (1973:54) claims that R u m a n i a n lacks the means for expressing a future without PR ("sans un rapport avec le-pr6sent"). In line with this is the fact that the several options for expressing futurity in that language ( ( v ) o i + infin., o sh + subjunct.; am sh + subjunct.) are all complex structures involving present-tense auxiliaries. 20 Perhaps the most widely accepted tenet of the 'localist' hypothesis is the notion that spatial terms will typically serve as structural templates for temporal expressions but not the reverse. Cf. Cassirer 1953, Anderson 1973, Traugott 1975, 1978. On the motion verbs 'come' and 'go' as sources o f tense, see Fleischman 1982b.

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21 An up-to-date comparative treatment of the question in Romance (with comprehensive bibliography) appears in Harris 1982. 22 As the several components of our working definition might suggest, the category of perfect is frequently subdivided into types, which Comrie (1976: 52-61) labels: (l) perfect of result (Jespersen's "retrospective' present): John has arrived vs. John arrived (the former implying the persistence of the result, i.e. that he is still here); (2) experiential perfect: Bill has BEEN to Europe (experiential) vs. Bill has GONE to Europe (result); (cf. n. 36 below); (3) perfect of recent past (Anderson's "ablative retrospective'): I've just learned of the snowstorms in the Midwest; and (4) perfect of persistent situation (Jespersen's "inclusive' present): 1 have lived/been living in Berkeley since 1970. (The last of these is expressed in many languages by the simple nonpast form of the verb, e.g. Sp. VIVO en Berkeley desde hace 1970.) We need not pursue these distinctions further inasmuch as the languages under survey in general do not formally incorporate them into the grammar (except perhaps Eng. been vs. gone, as in (2) above, or use of present tense for (4)) as some languages do, e.g. Kpelle and LoNkundu (Niger-Congo), in which different construction markers are used for experiential and resultative perfects (Welmers 1973: 351). 23 Comrie (1976: 108if) invokes a form of the 'present relevance' argument to account for the striking formal similarity between perfects and inferentials in a number of languages. The fact that both forms combine a past participle with a present tense of 'to be' is linked to the view that both categories represent an event not in itself, hut via its results (p. ll0). 24 Not to be confused with the homophonous verbal suffix -le indicating perfective aspect and relative past-time reference. 2s The term 'current relevance' is merely broader in scope than "present relevance', taking into account situations for which the reference time (R) is a point or period other than the speaker's present, as in 1 had already seen him three times (that week). 26 As indicated in table l, Portuguese has a complex past with ter 'to have' ( < TENERE), and Catalan two complex pasts, a preterit with anar 'to go' and a perfect with hayer 'to have'. 27 With respect to the development of the perfect in French, Schogt (1964: 10) argues for the opposite restrictions, i.e. that the passage from indicating the result of an action to the action leading up to that result began with inherently 'terminative' rather than 'cursive' verbs. To be precise, Schogt's claim seems to involve Aktionsarten, while Harris speaks of aspect; the discrepancy nonetheless remains. On the development of the French complex past, see also Foulet 1920; Worthington 1966; Saunders 1969. 2s In spoken Catalan (all dialects but Valencian and Balearic) the go-past (vaig fer) has replaced the simplex past (flu). In formal writing the simplex past now serves to signal a type of discourse rather than to express temporal-aspectual meaning (Badia 1962: section 151), a state of affairs analogous to that prevailing in standard French. Unlike French, Catalan retains a formally distinct perfect (he let) used in the canonical perfect situations described above. 29 Within the discourse framework of written narrative the simplex past does have an aspectual value, i.e. it contrasts with other tense-aspect forms, notably the imperfect, cf. Reid 1976. ao In certain dialects of (American) English, however, I DIDN'T eat a thing all day would be acceptable. 3~ E.g. certain of the languages of Northern India (Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi), in which both preterit and perfect are formed with the active past participle, but the perfect combines

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this with a present of 'to be', while the preterit does not, as in the Punjabi sentences in (i) and (ii) taken from Comrie (1976: 108): (i) 6 b~ir gya e "he has gone out' he out gone is (ii) 6 b~ir gya 'he went out" he out gone 32 E.g. habitual action (I have often gotten up at seven o'clock) and epistemically modalized utterances (he may have gotten up at seven o'clock). 33 As Comrie (1976: 54) points out, it is not temporal specification per se that is excluded. With perfects one can indicate the time in which the past situation obtained, provided that time includes the present, e.g. I have spoken to Bill today; also in the case of perfects of 'persistent situation' (see n. 22), the beginning point of the period described by the situation of the verb, e.g. I have been here./or three years (scalar adv.) or since 1979 (calendrical adv.). 34 Only in standard (Daco-)Romanian would the complex past be used in this context. Certain dialects of the Southeast (Wallachia, Transylvania) show a curious reversal of the expected pattern, using the simplex formation to refer to recent past situations and the complex formation for situations further removed in time (Pop 1948: 241). 35 "Marking of tense by the verb is a concord feature with respect to a temporal adverbial. The temporal adverb registers in the first instance the time reference of the predication relative to the time of utterance [the E-S relationship]" (Anderson 1973: 42). On the role of time adverbials in establishing 'extended' temporal reference (i.e. within a discourse), see Smith 1980. 36 Thus some English speakers allow I've been to the campus this morning (but not I've gone...) even if spoken in the afternoon. 3~ Lapesa (1980: 588) reports a substantial increase in the use of the complex past he hecho in NE Argentina and parts of Bolivia, and sees this development as possibly foreshadowing that which occurred in French. Against this prediction see Alarcos Llorach 1947; Harris 1982. The complicated issue of dialect variation in Hispano-Romance in the use of preterit and perfect will not be taken up here. Among recent studies this is discussed in Barrera Vidal 1972; Berschin 1976. 3a The Germanic situation turns out to be more complex than what is implied by Kurytowicz's statement. The OGmc. preterit represents a conflation of the IE perfect and aorist, curiously redistributed as exponents of number (sg. < o-grade perfect, pl. < zero-grade aorist) in the past. The eventual loss of the sg./pl, distinction in the past gives the impression that the early phase involved merely a shift from perfect to preterit (Roger Lass, personal communication). 39 The replacement of preterits by complex perfects appears to be a widespread crosslanguage development, particularly in IE. In addition to Romance and Germanic, discussed above, it has occurred in Slavic (Russian, Polish, Czech, Serbian, Slovenian, Wendish), Iranian, Armenian, and doubtless elsewhere as well (Zieglschmid 1930: 156f; Tauli 1958: 63ff). In principle, the functional issue (perfect vs. preterit) is independent of the morphological issue of simplex vs. complex structure. The latter will depend on the syntactic and morphological typology of the language. SVO languages will predictably develop new verbal structures with auxiliaries preposed to main verbs. Under certain conditions these complex structures may synthesize, as in the case of Latin infin. + habeo structures (amare habeo) evolving to the Romance simplex futures (aimerai, amar~, etc.). Tauli (1966: 175) cites parallel evidence from Uralic languages of agglutination of V + AUX constructions, but no instances involving the

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reverse order o f elements, A U X + V. Repercussions of this word-order contrast in the Romance verbal system are discussed in Fleischman 1982a: ch. 5. 40 What this neutralization implies about the logico-semantic structure o f the language(s) in which it occurs is an open question which cannot be resolved here, Traugott (forthcoming) raises the issue - a crucial one which anyone concerned with grammatical change must at some point confront - o f whether it is justifiable to say that a language may be more limited in its resources in a particular area, hence in its pragmatic possibilities, at a stage (e.g. our stage IV) when it does not have certain grammatical categories or oppositions than at a stage when it does have them, but that semantically and logically the same possibilities are always available. 41 While certain speakers find the English starred form ~acceptable', they would be unlikely to produce it spontaneously in this context. Other languages prefer the simple nonpast (present) verb here, e.g. It. Dammi qua, te I'APRO io, Sp. D~mela. Te la A B R O yo. 42 My thanks to Carlos Rojas for this example. 43 Kurytowicz (1972: 182) goes further, interpreting the development o f IE pasts and futures in general (not simply the periphrastic variety) as extensions o f the speaker's present. Cf. also n. 46 below and Anderson 1973 : 57f. 44 This also is the view taken by Martin (1965: 72-6) in remarks apropos of Klum 1961. 45 Immediate futurity is handled in French by the go-future je vais Jaire, or where greater explicitness is required, by periphrases such as ~tre sur le point de kto be about to, on the point of'. 46 See Benveniste 1965: 76; Kurytowicz 1972: 180ft. The latter explains the asymmetry thus: "'The occasional [?] lack o f a special form for the future is to be accounted for by the fact that whereas from a physical state the corresponding past action may be inferred with a fair degree of certainty, obligation or desire o f action on the part of the agent does not necessarily entail the conviction o f the speaker that action will follow, but only that it may follow" (p. 182). ,,7 For further discussion and particulars, see Champion 1978; Fleischman 1982a: 101f. ,,8 Especially Giv6n 1979. Cf. also Sankoff and Brown 1976. With particular reference to tense-aspect, see Giv6n 1977. ,9 It is not entirely clear how Reid's 'linguistic" interpretation of the contrast differs in any fundamental respect from that offered in traditional grammar. 50 The two situations are not strictly parallel. The development of while and where(as) into discourse markers exemplifies the normal 'bleaching' process through which lexical items come to function as grammatical tools. Though bleaching is similarly involved in the demotion of full verbs (have, go) to auxiliaries in the verb structures at issue here, this is a separate process from that by which an entire (complex or simplex).construction evolves from a pragmatic device to a grammatical marker whose function is no longer tied to the context of utterance. 51 It might be useful to discriminate between two types o f PR: relevance to utterance time and relevance to the place one is at in the discourse. (This distinction was suggested to me by Elizabeth Traugott). PR o f the first type is obviously at issue here, though it may conceivably have developed from an earlier discourse PR. For the moment I leave open the question of a diachronic relationship between the two types o f PR and the direction it would take.

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