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<p>Dear Björn,</p>
<p>There are two compound past tenses in Mari (Uralic) that might be
interesting / relevant in this respect - they seem like fairly
clear code copies from Turkic, though I have not examined the
minutiae of the corresponding tenses there. The Permic (Uralic)
languages - Komi, Komi-Permyak, Udmurt - have similar structures
too, but I'm not the best person to talk about those.</p>
<p>As for the relevant forms in Mari: structurally, they consist of
a past-tense form followed by a verb 'to be' in the past tense
third person singular - critically, there are two options here
corresponding to the two morphological past tenses in Mari, with
the first being used for direct evidence and the second for
indirect evidence or mirative expressions - so I guess one could
see reporativity as an obligatory factor here?) Many reference
materials refer to these forms as pluperfect, but there's a basic
problem with that classification: they are not the neutral forms
used to indicate that something temporally proceeded a different
event (converbs or adpositional phrases are used for this). Rather
(among other uses - see Silja-Maija Spets's work, such as
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://doi.org/10.1075/jul.00041.spe">https://doi.org/10.1075/jul.00041.spe</a> and
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://doi.org/10.12697/jeful.2025.16.2.08">https://doi.org/10.12697/jeful.2025.16.2.08</a>), they are used when a
long-lasting or even habitual event was interrupted, left
incomplete, or in some other way subverted or frustrated by to the
foreground action, so e.g.</p>
<p>"After I had finished the task, I went home" > converbal or
adpositional marking<br>
"I was working on the task when my phone rang and I had to leave"
> the compound past tense(s) often called "pluperfect".</p>
<p>"After I graduated from high school, I moved to the city." >
converbal or adpositional marking<br>
"I was in school when the war began and I was drafted into the
army" > the compound past tense(s) often called "pluperfect".</p>
<p>It's a didactic resource rather than a proper reference grammar,
but we have some examples in our learners' grammar
(<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://mari-language.univie.ac.at/grammar.php">https://mari-language.univie.ac.at/grammar.php</a>) on pages 224-229;
let me know if this is at all relevant to your investigation and
you want glosses and/or examples from corpora.</p>
<p>Best,<br>
Jeremy</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 16/06/2026 19:17, Wiemer, Bjoern via
Lingtyp wrote:<br>
</div>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Dear All,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">do you know of languages
in which a construction that evolved past prospective,
avertive or even future-in-the-past meanings, concomitantly
developed reportive uses?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:35.4pt"><span
lang="EN-US">In Polish, the construction
<i>mieć</i> ‘have’.PST + INF shows parallel development in
both directions, and these meanings can even overlap (or be
combined) in the same utterances. Here are two examples from
the Polish National Corpus (the English translations are the
best I can think of, although they don’t convey this
“dualism” faithfully):<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="PL">(1) Brygida
umartwiała się, parząc się gorącym woskiem w miejscach,
gdzie Chrystus miał rany. Przepowiedziała też koniec świata.
<b>Miał nastąpić</b> w 1999 roku.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">‘Brygida practised
self-mortification by burning herself with hot wax in the
places where Christ had been wounded. She also prophesied
the end of the world. It
<b>was to take place</b> in 1999.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<ul style="margin-top:0cm" type="disc">
<li class="MsoListParagraph"
style="margin-left:17.4pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1"><span
lang="EN-US">reportive + past prospective or
future-in-the-past (depending on one’s definition of the
latter)<o:p></o:p></span></li>
</ul>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="PL">(2) Panie
Ministrze, w poprzedniej kadencji dokonano zmian w
strukturze na najniższych na najniższych szczeblach:
zlikwidowano posterunki w gminach. To
<b>miało poprawić</b> stan bezpieczeństwa publicznego. A ja
doświadczam tego, że został pogorszony stan bezpieczeństwa
publicznego.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">‘Minister, during the
previous parliamentary term, changes were made to the
structure at the very lowest levels: police stations in
local authorities were closed down. This
<b>was to improve</b> public safety. Yet my experience is
that public safety has actually deteriorated.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">
> reportive + avertive (i.e. prospective with
contradiction to promise in the last sentence)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">There are other
languages in which a future-in-the-past meaning, or related
meanings, have developed from a construction with a deontic
modal, or a desiderative verb, in the past (‘had to,
should’, ‘want’) and an infinitive (or an equivalent form of
a lexical verb). Often these constructions appear as
conditionals (or are dubbed as such), as, e.g., for Balkan
Slavic and Romance languages. However, in these languages no
reportive meaning evolved out of the same construction.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">
Conversely, there might be languages which have developed
(or were on the way of developing) a reportive meaning out
of such a construction, but not a future-in-the-past
meaning.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:35.4pt"><span
lang="EN-US">The history of German seems to provide a case
similar to the Polish one, but the development stopped
short. In earlier stages of High German we find
<i>sollten</i> ‘should’ as a kind of future-in-the-past, and
it even seems to have occasionally been attested in
reportive use, but the latter use has disappeared, while the
future-in-the-past meaning has persisted (although it might
have been marginalized by its “rival” <i>würde</i> + INF).
This is complementary to the fate of <i>sollen</i>, the
present tense equivalent of
<i>sollten</i>: <i>sollen</i> + INF can be used as a
reportive construction (apart from deontic use), but it has
not established as a future auxiliary (although there might
have been pre-stages into that direction).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">One thus gets the
impression that, at least in Europe, Polish is unique for
its parallel development of both future-in-the-past and
reportive uses (from the
<b>same</b> construction). Both uses have existed at least
since the 17<sup>th</sup> century and are well attested in
the contemporary language. However, I doubt whether Polish
is the only known case from a broader typological point of
view.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> I’d
appreciate any information on comparable cases in other
languages, from different continents (and at different
periods).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<br>
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<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Jeremy Bradley, Ph.D.
University of Vienna
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.mari-language.com">http://www.mari-language.com</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:jeremy.moss.bradley@univie.ac.at">jeremy.moss.bradley@univie.ac.at</a>
Office address:
Institut EVSL
Abteilung Finno-Ugristik
Universität Wien
Campus AAKH, Hof 7-2
Spitalgasse 2-4
1090 Wien
AUSTRIA
Mobile: +43-664-99-31-788</pre>
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