Re: verb agreement in one stage of English

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Ray" <ray28238317@...> wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> I have learned from one book on historical linguistics that the
> English perfect aspect(has/have V-en) is derived from a stative,
> possessive construction, i.e. from a construction like 'I have a

few

> ribs broken.' According to the author, there is no indication that

I

> did the breaking. And the sentence means 'I have a few broken

ribs.'

>
> Later, this construction was reanalyzed, or reinterpreted, in a
> perfective sense. Hence it is the origin of the present-day

English

> perfective aspect.

> Now, I have encountered a curious sentence as follows:
>
> Ac hie haefdon tha¡Khiora mete genotudne
> But they had then¡Ktheir food used-up
> 'But they had then used up their food.'
>
> The sentence can be only interpreted as a perfect construction
> because something, being used up, cannot be possessed. That means
> what had been the original main verb(haefdon) was now an auxiliary
> and what had been an adjectival function(genotudne) was now the

main

> verb.
>
> However, something about this sentence deserves our attention: the
> suffix is attached to the verb 'genotudn-.' That is, the main

verb

> now agrees with the object 'mete' only!

> Isn't this phenomenon a counterexample against the implicational
> universal that states that if a particular phenomenon applies to
> direct objects, it should also apply to subjects?
> Ths implicational universal also predicts that there are no

languages

> in which the verb agrees with just the direct object. But in the
> above case, the universal doesn't seem correct.
>
> I understand the behaviour demonstrated by the English perfect
> construction was at a transitional stage. Therefore it still

retained

> a residue of the possessive construction.
> But is it possible for a language at a transitional stage to go
> against the implicational universal? Or the sentence was not

evidence

> against the universal at all?

But this rule is not a brief transitional rule at the Académie
Francaise - the past participle in avoir perfects agrees with a
preceding direct object to this day. The auxiliary verb agrees with
the subject, so I don't agree that the universal is violated.

The universal's probably even weaker - in Hindi (and many other
Indic languages), the verb of the past tense of a transitive verb
agrees with the direct object. (Historically, these are passives,
with the agent expressed in the instrumental, whence the 'split
ergative' of Hindi.)

Incidentally, where did the 'have' perfects of Germanic, Romance and
Modern Greek originate?

Richard.