Re: The Perfect Tense versus the Preterite

I would think that the use of the perfect in French is mainly due to general
regularising tendencies in the language, in that the preterite endings are
unlike the rest of the verbal paradigms. If one adds the almost complete
replacement of "nous" by "on" and the use of "aller"+infinitive for the
future, this means that for the regular "-er" verbs there are now
phonetically-speaking only two forms (excluding the imperfect/conditional),
i.e. /port/ and /portE/. I have seen spelling mistakes by French speakers
such as "j'ai porter" or "vous porté", which indicates that many French
speakers now longer perceive any difference in the various written forms.
I think that the increasing use in German and Spanish is due to the
influence of French on these languages.
I don't know what the situation of the perfect was in Old English, but I
have the feeling that the use of the perfect was again due to French
influence, although the difference in meaning between the two in English has
ensure the preterite's continued use.

Regards

----- Original Message -----
From: David James <david@...>
To: <cybalist@eGroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, 10 February, 2000 6:33 AM
Subject: [cybalist] The Perfect Tense versus the Preterite


> It appears that in certain western European languages the Preterite
> tense has lost ground to the Perfect tense, at least in the spoken if
> not the written language.
> A perfect example is French which only retains the Preterite in the
> written form, although the Preterite was formerly used in speech. I
> believe the same process is also happening in German and may have begun
> in *European* Spanish as well; although *Latin-American* Spanish still
> retains its traditional tense usage which largely corresponds to the
> English usage of these tenses.
> Can anyone offer any insight as to why the Perfect tense is now being
> used in situations where the Preterite would have used formerly? Also
> is this process found in any other languages, and is it a manifestation
> of the mysterious Sprachbund phenomenon?
> Incidentally, from my admitedly anglo-centric viewpoint, I would have
> expected the trend to have been in the opposite direction, as the
> Preterite would appear to be a more economical and concise method of
> expressing the past.
> I look forward to your replies, and corrections.
> David.
>
>
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