<HTML><BODY><br><br><p class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="margin-top: 0cm; mso-add-space: auto;" data-mce-style="margin-top: 0cm; mso-add-space: auto;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;" data-mce-style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Dear colleagues,</span></p><p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-top: 0cm; mso-add-space: auto;" data-mce-style="margin-top: 0cm; mso-add-space: auto;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;" data-mce-style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">In the course of two-millennia recorded history of Akkadian (a long-extinct Semitic language), </span><span data-mce-style="font-variant: small-caps;" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant: small-caps;">PERFECT</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> as a specific “tense” first showed up in the epoch of historical record, around 2000 BC. And around 1500 this conjugation “degenerated” into </span><span data-mce-style="font-variant: small-caps;" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant: small-caps;">SIMPLE PAST</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> in independent narrative sentences, ousting the old (proto-Semitic) Preterit conjugation from this slot. Yet the older form of Preterit was preserved forever in wh-questions, negations, and relative clauses. This is as if in standard British English “He has written this paper” would have to be transformed of necessity into “the paper (that) he wrote,” but never into “the paper (that) he has written,” etc. Do you know of any parallels for this kind of development or distribution?</span></p><p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-top: 0cm; mso-add-space: auto;" data-mce-style="margin-top: 0cm; mso-add-space: auto;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;" data-mce-style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Thank you very much,</span></p><p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-top: 0cm; mso-add-space: auto;" data-mce-style="margin-top: 0cm; mso-add-space: auto;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;" data-mce-style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Sergey </span></p><br></BODY></HTML>