Forming the perfect tense in Chevan (part 1)
To the chagrin of learners everywhere, languages such as French or Italian, in addition to using our beloved verb "have" to form their perfect tenses, may sometimes and often arbitrarily use their verbs for "be" when forming the perfect.
But what exactly is going on here? What determines the (seemingly arbitrary) selection of when to use which? And how does it tie into my Romlang Chevan? Let's find out.
Auxiliary selection in Romance
If you had study Latin, you will no doubt remember that Latin does not distinguish between preterites and perfects, using the same verb form (the so-called "perfect") for both functions. In the active, you get a set of synthetic verb forms and in the passive, periphrastic of the past participle + sum "be". In Romance however, the perfect specialised into an aorist/preterite (aoristic drift) and a separate category of perfect was created. Essentially everywhere, this form is formed from the (past) participle and either a descendant of Latin's HABERE "to have" (henceforth H) or ESSERE (E).
In some languages, only one of those two auxiliaries survive. In much of Ibero-Romance for example, H has completely taken over the perfect with essentially no trace of the E pattern.
In the remaining Romance languages however, both H and E are used for different purposes. In general, three broad trends in their split can be identified.
Rarest are the languages where the choice of auxiliary depends on the person of the subject. In the Abruzzese of L'Aquila (Loporcaro 2016), the split is between HAVE in third persons and BE otherwise.
Also attested are languages where the split is based on TAM factors. Romanian utilises H in the present perfect but E in all other perfect tenses. Do note however, many languages exhibiting this split cooccur it with one of the two other splits. In the Pugliese of Gravine di Puglia (Loporcaro 2016), H has been generalised every tense except the present perfect where instead a person-driven split is used instead. Both types of splits above are primarily found in Italo-Romance, especially in Central and Southern Italy. Some exceptions are found however. Romanian, as we have noted, but also Old Spanish, where the split between E and H was determined by modality (Loporcaro 2016).
The last remaining split condition, the most common and the most interesting in my opinion, splits the auxiliaries based on a Active-Stative system. Here, H is used with transitive and unergative verbs (that is, intransitive verbs whose subject is agentive) whereas E is used with unaccusative verbs (intransitive verbs whose subject is patientive). See the following Tuatschin Sursilvan Romansh and Central Trentino examples:
Romansh with unaccusative í \"go\" and unergative anflá \"find out\" (Maurer-Cecchini 2021)
Unaccusative verbs includes a rather ecclectic mix of verbs but a few general semantic categories can be recognised. In Romansh for example, motion verbs such as 'go' or "come"; state-of-change verbs such as "become" or "melt"; verbs of states such as "be" amongst others (Maurer-Cecchini 2021).
This system is widely attested across Romance, found from Tuscan in the South all the way up to the d'Oïl languages in the North with everyone in between. With such a broad diversity, there is of course substantial variation in the specifics of how this split plays out.
One basic difference is of course the amount of verbs considered unaccusative. Depending on the language, this can range from New Brunswick Acadian French which only has one such verb: mourir "to die" to Corsican with several hundred (Loporcaro 2016).
More notable, and more systemic, however is how this split interacts with the reflexive verbs we find in Romance. As is known, "reflexive" verbs in Romance have way more uses than literally encoding reflexives. In Piedmontese (Tosco, Miola & Duberti 2023), we also find reflexives being used to encode reciprocals: vëddse "to see each other [= to meet]"; anticausatives: bogesse "to move (intr)" and a few inherently reflexives: pentse "to repent". Generally, reflexive verbs, and all these associated functions occupy the space of agentivity between fully agentive actions such as "kill" and "dance" to fully patientive actions such as "die". As such, they in Romance may take H or E. The variation comes thus in which uses of the reflexive receive H or E. Here we find numerous gradients, as seen in the following table.
Some languages, such as Italian, use E for all "reflexives" where as others, such as Engadine, use H. In between however are a constellation of stepwise division between the more "transitive" uses of the "reflexive" (such as in actual reflexives) and more "intransitive" uses of them (such as in passive, middles and such, what the table calls "retroherent"). In between are also many languages where the choice of auxiliary shows free variation as seen the following table.
Cvl. = Castrovillarese; CVen. = Central Venetian; Gen. = Genoese; Ors. = Oristanese (Loporcano 2016)
Auxiliary selection in Chevan
Now, we can finally turn to Chevan. Chevan is located at the Northern edge of Romance, being originally from Picardy and Flanders but now mainly spoken in Kent and Sussex. As such, it mostly exhibits an active-stative split in its auxiliary choice. With transitives and unergative verbs, which compose the grand majority of verbs, aveur "to have" is used:
Os ombers a cobeute aw
[ʊ.ˈzɔm.bɚʐ ˌa.kʊ.ˈbøɥ.tə ˈow]
def.mpl=men have.prs.ind=drunk.fsg water
The men have drunk water
Pussich ain danchí
[ˌpʊ.sɪ.ˌtʃæn.dən.ˈtʃiː]
possible=have.prs.sbj=dance.ptcp
We could have danced
With unaccusative verbs however, ester "to be" is instead used. Under this class of verbs includes of course verbs of motion such as lar "go", venir "to come"; the copular verb ester "to be" itself and other unagentive verbs such as morir "to die". I haven't decided how expansive this class it and I suspect it would be linked to how dominant I decide labile verbs will be (as opposed to verbs which form anticausatives with reflexives).
As fembers sta cokíes
[əs.ˈfɛm.bɚʐ ˌsta.kʊ.ˈkiː.jəz]
def.fpl=women be.prs.ind=gone.fpl
The women have gone
Ché sta morí?
[ˈtʃej ˌsta.mʊ.ˈɹiː]
what be.prs.ind=died.msg?
What has died?
In between the two, the reflexives are more complex. In more transitive situations (namely direct/indirect reflexive and reciprocals), aveur is used.
Eche s'á ncontrais tes amís
[ˌɛ.tʃə.ˌzan.kʊn.ˈtɹæs tɛ.zə.ˈmɪz]
Q=SE=have.prs.ind=meet.ptcp.mpl 2sg.mpl=friends
Have you friends met each other? (direct reciprocal)
Ma mair s'á puríe ne cope di aw
[mə.ˈmæ˞ ˌʐa.pʊ.ˈɹiːjə nə.ˈkow.pə ˈdʒow]
1sg.fsg=mother SE=have.prs.ind=pour.ptcp.fsg indef.fsg=cup of=water
My mother has poured herself a cup of water (indirect reflexive)
With the non-transitive uses of the "reflexive", we use instead ester. More importantly, and unlike in the transitive condition, the reflexive pronoun is not present. I had thought about how this would diachronically arise and I have a few ideas. One could be that this is a direct inheritance of Latin's middle/passive perfect in past participle + sum which managed to resist the tide of reflexives. Alternative I had considered adding a rule such that the copula itself is forbidden to take a clitic pronoun. This somewhat makes sense since copular complements aren't usually the accusatives. However in Chevan they do command an oblique as one can say si fui té, ... "if I were you" with the oblique té instead of nominative tu. And also it won't be relevant anyways as the clitic is not a complement of the copula but has instead climbed from the lexical verb itself.
Eitherway, for an example, see the verb s'asseur "to sit down":
Ton enfan stat assí
[ˌtɔ.nɪn.ˈfan ˌsta.tə.ˈsiː]
2sg.msg=child be.prs.ind=sit.down.ptcp.msg
Your child has sat down
Compare this to non-reflexive, transitive asseur "to seat" where we see aveur.
Ech' át-el' assís ses otz?
[ˌɛ.tʃə.ˌtej.lə.ˈsɪs sɪ.ˈzɔts]
Q=have.prs.ind=3fsg.nom=seat.ptcp.msg 3sg.mpl=guests?
Has she seated her guests?
Conclusion
Hopefully, it has been a sufficiently interesting discussion on this specific aspect of Chevan grammar. As you might tell from the title, our discussion of Chevan's perfect is far from complete. Next time, we will turn to the other half of the perfect construction: the participle and focus on its behaviour, especially its agreement pattern.
Sources
Casalicchio, J. & Cordin P. (2020), Grammar of Central Trentino: A Romance Dialect from North-East Italy. Brill.
Loporcaro, M. (2016), Auxiliary selection and participial agreement. In A. Ledgeway & M. Maiden (ed.) The Oxford Guide to the Romance Languages (pp. 802-818). Oxford University Press.
Maurer-Cecchini, P. (2021), A Grammar of Tuatschin: A Sursilvan Romansh dialect (pp. 146-149). Language Science Press.
Tosco, M., Miola E., Duberti N. (2023), A Grammar of Piedmontese: A Minority Language of Northwest Italy. Brill.