Re: Artyom Kouzminykh: Answers & proposal

> Date:         Mon, 23 Aug 1999 11:09:34 +0200
> From: Christophe Grandsire <grandsir@...>
>         I wonder if it is true. This makes perfect sense for
> English, but it is something impossible for French for example:
> "J'ai cuit de la viande" vs. "J'ai de la viande cuite". But maybe at
> an earlier stage French had the adjective before the noun (and
> before its article).
Well, I cheated. The 'have'-construction did not arise in any of the
modern European languages, but sometime back in Proto-Romance and
Common Germanic times, or perhaps a bit later. (Neither family had
strict word order or mandatory articles back then). It just happens to
work in Modern English too.

And it did used to have the participle agreeing with the object noun
phrase in gender and number, unlike the periphrastic perfect with 'is'
where it agreed with the subject. (Agreement getting lost as part of
grammaticalization is expected --- but what may be interesting is that
the 'have'-form generally lost it much earlier than the 'is'-form).

Lars Mathiesen (U of Copenhagen CS Dep) <thorinn@...> (Humour NOT marked)