The Perfect and the Preterite in Contemporary and Earlier English

453 Pages·1997·15.34 MB·English

by  Johan Elsness

The Perfect and the Preterite
in Contemporary and Earlier English
W
DE
G
Topics in English Linguistics
21
Editor
Herman Wekker
Mouton de Gruyter
Berlin · New York
The Perfect and the Preterite in
Contemporary and Earlier English
Johan Elsness
Mouton de Gruyter
Berlin · New York 1997
Mouton de Gruyter (formerly Mouton, The Hague)
is a Division of Walter de Gruyter & Co., Berlin.
© Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines of the
ANSI to ensure permanence and durability.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Elsness, Johan, 1947—
The perfect and the preterite in contemporary and earlier En-
glish / Johan Elsness.
p. cm. - (Topics in English linguistics ; 21)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 3-11-014686-X (cloth : acid-free paper)
1. English language-Tense. I. Title. II. Series.
PE1301.E45 1996
425-dc20 96-21755
CIP
Die Deutsche Bibliothek — Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Elsness, Johan:
The perfect and preterite in contemporary and earlier English /
Johan Elsness. - Berlin ; New York : Mouton de Gruyter, 1997
(Topics in English linguistics ; 21)
ISBN 3-11-014686-X
NE: GT
© Copyright 1997 by Walter de Gruyter & Co., D-10785 Berlin
All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this
book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechan-
ical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, with-
out permission in writing from the publisher.
Printing: Ratzlow-Druck, Berlin.
Binding: Lüderitz & Bauer, Berlin.
Printed in Germany.
For Turid

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone, besmear'd with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.
'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room,
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wears this world out to the ending doom.
So, till the judgement that yourself arise,
You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes.
William Shakespeare, Sonnet LV
What's in a name? that which we call a rose,
By any other name would smell as sweet.
William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

Acknowledgements
This book is a revised version of the dissertation I submitted for my doctoral
degree at the University of Oslo. A great deal of my work on the perfect and
the preterite was carried out while I had a three-year research grant from the
Norwegian Research Council for Science and the Humanities, which enabled
me to take leave of absence from my job at the University of Oslo.
The Research Council offered travel grants, too. I should like to thank Sid-
ney Greenbaum and the other people at the English Department of University
College London for letting me come and look at the files of the Survey of
English Usage. Also, on a couple of occasions I was a visiting scholar in the
Department of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences at Brown University in the
US, where I greatly enjoyed working in an atmosphere dominated by such
people as W. Nelson Francis and Henry Kucera.
Special thanks are due to three of my friends and colleagues here at the De-
partment of British and American Studies at the University of Oslo: Michael
Benskin and Arthur O. Sandved both read and commented upon a draft
version of Chapter 4, the historical chapter; and Stig Johansson read and dis-
cussed with me a pre-final version of all the other chapters. I should also like
to thank the two opponents at the defence of my dissertation, Niels Davidsen-
Nielsen and Leiv Egil Breivik, for rewarding discussions and useful advice,
both during the defence and afterwards.
Last but certainly not least I should like to thank my family: Turid in
particular for giving me time and for offering just the right mixture of patience
and encouragement; Turid, Frode and Eir for reminding me that there is more
to a perfect life than a perfect verb form.
Johan Elsness