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

Tue Jun 16 18:58:20 UTC 2026

Dear Björn,

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.

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 https://doi.org/10.1075/jul.00041.spe and 
https://doi.org/10.12697/jeful.2025.16.2.08), 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.

"After I had finished the task, I went home" > converbal or adpositional 
marking
"I was working on the task when my phone rang and I had to leave" > the 
compound past tense(s) often called "pluperfect".

"After I graduated from high school, I moved to the city." > converbal 
or adpositional marking
"I was in school when the war began and I was drafted into the army" > 
the compound past tense(s) often called "pluperfect".

It's a didactic resource rather than a proper reference grammar, but we 
have some examples in our learners' grammar 
(https://mari-language.univie.ac.at/grammar.php) 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.

Best,
Jeremy

On 16/06/2026 19:17, Wiemer, Bjoern via Lingtyp wrote:
>
> 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 17^th 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).
>
>
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-- 
Jeremy Bradley, Ph.D.
University of Vienna

http://www.mari-language.com
jeremy.moss.bradley at univie.ac.at

Office address:
Institut EVSL
Abteilung Finno-Ugristik
Universität Wien
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AUSTRIA

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