MIRATIVITY QUESTION

[Paul J Hopper]

Mirativity (Carl Rubino's communication) reminds me of the many
languages where the perfect aspect has become a surprise construction
(Chinese -le, Turkish -mis, noted by Carl in his last paragraph, the
English Hot News "have"). I'm in the middle of end-of-semester stuff
right now, and can't dig up the exact references, but Dan Slobin and
Sandy Thompson have written about this, and there's been some recent
stuff about its typical diachronic trajectories.

Paul