R: Re: Tense & Aspect

[Larry Trask]

On Wed, 31 Mar 1999, roslyn frank wrote:

> Some years ago I was told by Andolin Eguzkitza, a Basque linguist, that
> in Euskal Herria the preference for the periphrastic perfect in Spanish
> (and/or French) was influenced by Euskera's insistence on distinguishing
> between what has happened in the same "day" and what took place in the
> time period(s) before.

Interesting, though I'm not aware that the use of the compond past
("present perfect") in Spanish is different in the Basque Country and in
northern Spain generally.

> However, a difficulty arises in reconstructing
> the cognitive background of this usage in Euskera since there is clear
> evidence that in the not too recent past, it was a "night count" rather
> than a "day count" that governed the 24 hr. period in question. The
> count went from "sunset" to "sunset" or if you wish from
> "night-to-night." Euskaldunak have told me that the periphrastic perfect
> needs to be used to talk about what's happened since "you woke up this
> morning."

Yes, this conforms to my experience.  Where an English-speaker uses the
simple past, a Basque, much like a Spaniard, uses the "present perfect"
for anything that happened earlier on the same day but the other form
for anything that happened before today.  But the "present perfect" also
has other uses in both Basque and Spanish, of course, most of them
corresponding to the functions of the English present perfect.

American Spanish is generally different here, of course.

> Larry would be able to give us more information on this phenomenon as
> well as the rules set forth by Euskaltzaindia (the Basque Academy of the
> Language) for its "proper usage."

I'm afraid I haven't been following the Academy's rulings at all
closely.  But the Academy is still largely involved in deciding which
forms should be used: it hasn't yet given a lot of attention to the
circumstances in whose those forms should be used.

Anyway, in my capacity as a linguist, I'm interested in what people
actually say, and not in the rulings of official bodies.

> My impression is that today there is significant variation in usage
> among native-speakers of Euskera.

Oh, absolutely, and there are important differences in the way the
verb-forms are used.  Just to cite one of my favorite examples, the
French Basques make regular use of the "super-compound" past tenses,
such as <ikusi izan zuen>, which is formally identical to French
<Il l'avait eu vu>.  The French Basques also use the French form freely,
though most other French-speakers I've consulted find this form bizarre.
I call this form the `grandfather tense', because it denotes a past so
remote that it can only be used of something that happened in the
speaker's grandfather's time or earlier: it can't be used with a
first-person or second-person subject, because no living person is old
enough to have done anything that long ago.

The Spanish Basques don't use the super-compound forms so much, and,
when they do use them, they don't use them in the same function, in my
experience.

> There also seems to be evidence of a kind of "narrative style" that
> uses the periphrastic perfect for stylistic effect when speaking
> about actions in the (remote) past. But I'm a bit out of my depth in
> this particular issue.

Me too, I'm afraid.  I have encountered a number of instances of
surprising forms in narratives, but I have little idea what rules exist
here.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk