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<div style="direction: ltr;font-family: Tahoma;color: #000000;font-size: 10pt;">The same phenomenon (restriction of the simple past (preterit) to written narratives) in German. Different from novels and short stories, news items in a serious newspaper can never
start with a preterit in the first sentence (present perfect is always used), although they usually continue with preterits. Lately the preterit has become common in “news” items in non-quality newspapers as well (Bild-Zeitung), which suggests that they are
not really news, but stories: those newspapers use conventions from literary genres (short stories), since their purpose is not to inform, but to entertain.
<div>Hartmut<br>
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<div id="divRpF576983" style="direction: ltr;"><font face="Tahoma" size="2" color="#000000"><b>Fra:</b> Lingtyp [lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org] på vegne af paolo Ramat [paolo.ramat@unipv.it]<br>
<b>Sendt:</b> 28. maj 2015 10:19<br>
<b>Til:</b> list, typology<br>
<b>Emne:</b> Re: [Lingtyp] “young” and “old” PERFECT<br>
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<div>Dear Sergey,<br>
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if you are looking for limitations in the use of the 'old preterit'/'simple past' beyond the syntactic difference alluded to by Joan Bybee remember that the simple past is (almost) limited to narrative texts (novels and the like) in contemporary French (and
to a lesser extent in Italian): "il y a deux ans il a fait un grand voyage" (spoken French) vs. "il y a deux ans il fit un grand voyage" (literary style), 'two years ago he did a long trip'.<br>
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Paolo<br>
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<div class="gmail_quote">2015-05-27 5:39 GMT+02:00 Eitan Grossman <span dir="ltr">
<<a href="mailto:eitan.grossman@mail.huji.ac.il" target="_blank">eitan.grossman@mail.huji.ac.il</a>></span>:<br>
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<div dir="ltr">Hi Sergey,
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<div>As a starting point, there's Joan Bybee's article "Main clauses are innovative, subordinate clauses are conservative."</div>
<div><a href="https://www.unm.edu/~jbybee/downloads/Bybee2001MainInnovativeSubConservative.pdf" target="_blank">https://www.unm.edu/~jbybee/downloads/Bybee2001MainInnovativeSubConservative.pdf</a><br>
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<div>Best,</div>
<div>Eitan</div>
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<div dir="ltr">Eitan Grossman
<div>Lecturer, Department of Linguistics/School of Language Sciences<br>
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<div>Hebrew University of Jerusalem</div>
<div>Tel: <a href="tel:%2B972%202%20588%203809" value="+97225883809" target="_blank">
+972 2 588 3809</a></div>
<div>Fax: <a href="tel:%2B972%202%20588%201224" value="+97225881224" target="_blank">
+972 2 588 1224</a></div>
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<div>On Wed, May 27, 2015 at 12:53 AM, Sergey Lyosov <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:sergelyosov@inbox.ru" target="_blank">sergelyosov@inbox.ru</a>></span> wrote:<br>
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<p style="margin-top:0cm"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; font-family:'Times New Roman','serif'">Dear colleagues,</span></p>
<p style="margin-top:0cm"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; font-family:'Times New Roman','serif'"> </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 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 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 style="margin-top:0cm"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; font-family:'Times New Roman','serif'"> </span><span style="font-family:'Times New Roman',serif; font-size:12pt">Thank you very much,</span></p>
<p style="margin-top:0cm"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; font-family:'Times New Roman','serif'"> </span><span style="font-family:'Times New Roman',serif; font-size:12pt">Sergey </span></p>
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