[Lingtyp] lifespan of Perfect

[Sergey Lyosov]

Dear colleagues,  
by the “lifespan” of an “unstable” morphosyntactic category, I mean the time during which it is opposed to its nearest semantic partners. A good example is the interaction between the semantic Perfect and the semantic Preterit in a language. Say, in a certain variety of spoken German, “Ich habe gesprochen” and “Ich sprach” used to be opposed for some time, and then, in the course of the Präteritumschwund, “Ich sprach” fell out of oral usage, and  the erstwhile Perfect “Ich habe gesprochen” became a new Preterit. The same happened in various dialects of Spanish and Italian, with different outcomes, i.e., sometimes it was the new (analytical) form that has fallen in disuse. 
The question is: what is known, typologically, about a medium/average lifetime of these “fragile” (because of their complex semantic organization) semantic categories?
 
Best,
 
Sergey
 
  
>Среда, 13 апреля 2016, 8:23 +03:00 от Eitan Grossman < eitan.grossman at mail.huji.ac.il >:
>
>Hi Sergey,
>
>Could you explain a bit what you mean by 'lifespan'? 
>
>Eitan
>
>
>Eitan Grossman
>Lecturer, Department of Linguistics/School of Language Sciences
>Hebrew University of Jerusalem
>Tel:  +972 2 588 3809
>Fax:  +972 2 588 1224
>On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 6:12 PM, Sergey Lyosov  < sergelyosov at inbox.ru > wrote:
>>
>>Dear colleagues,
>>what do we know about the life-time of “unstable” verbal categories, such as Perfect or Resultative? My studies of the history of the verb in Semitic languages make me suggest that this lifespan  may amount to some 200-300 years or so. Are there studies of the problem based on a representative sample of languages?
>> Best,
>>
>>Sergey
>> 
>>
>>
>>
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>

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