[Lingtyp] parallel development of future-in-the-past and reportive

Wiemer, Bjoern wiemerb at uni-mainz.de
Tue Jun 16 17:17:43 UTC 2026


Dear All,
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?
In Polish, the construction mieć '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):

(1)          Brygida umartwiała się, parząc się gorącym woskiem w miejscach, gdzie Chrystus miał rany. Przepowiedziała też koniec świata. Miał nastąpić w 1999 roku.
'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 was to take place in 1999.'

  *   reportive + past prospective or future-in-the-past (depending on one's definition of the latter)

(2)          Panie Ministrze, w poprzedniej kadencji dokonano zmian w strukturze na najniższych na najniższych szczeblach: zlikwidowano posterunki w gminach. To miało poprawić stan bezpieczeństwa publicznego. A ja doświadczam tego, że został pogorszony stan bezpieczeństwa publicznego.
'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 was to improve public safety. Yet my experience is that public safety has actually deteriorated.'
               >            reportive + avertive (i.e. prospective with contradiction to promise in the last sentence)

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.
               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.
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 sollten '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" würde + INF). This is complementary to the fate of sollen, the present tense equivalent of sollten: sollen + 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).

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 same construction). Both uses have existed at least since the 17th 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.
               I'd appreciate any information on comparable cases in other languages, from different continents (and at different periods).
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20260616/566ed4a8/attachment.htm>


More information about the Lingtyp mailing list