The inflectional Latin perfect

In his analysis of the six indicative tenses, active and passive, the aspectual division, incomplete-complete, was the more fundamental for him, as each aspect regularly shared the same stem form, and in the passive voice the completive aspect tenses consisted of two words, though Varro claims that erroneously most people only considered the time reference dimension [Robins 1967, p.51].

Table 5.2 shows the symmetry of the arrangement of the “six [. . . ] tenses” for the passive voice. It should be clear that here the word tense is rather used as a synonym forverb form. One could say that the ‘aspectual’ oppositionincomplete

Table 5.2: Arraying of Latin (passive) verb forms according to Varro

Time past present future

Aspect

incomplete am¯abar amor am¯abor

I was loved I am loved I shall be loved

complete am¯atus eram am¯atus sum am¯atus er¯o

I had been loved I have been loved I shall have been loved

vs.completedoubles the number of the ‘natural’ tensespresent,past andfuture⁸. Latin morphology (infectum vs.perfectum) might have facilitated the notion of a second dimension ‘perpendicular’ to the classical trichotomy of past, present and future, but the idea as such is older and goes back to Stoic grammar: “In his treatment of the verbal category of tense, Varro displayed his sympathy with Stoic doctrine, in which two semantic functions were distinguished within the forms of the tense paradigms, time reference and aspect” [Robins 1967, p.51].

In Stoic grammar⁹ there was already a distinction between tense and aspect:

8It should be noted that – contrary to English and German – Latin has an inflectional future. The same applies to Greek, e.g. παιδε´υ-ω ‘I raise, educate’ → παιδε´υ-σ-ω ‘I will raise, educate’. The existence of an inflectional future might have facilitated the classical three-way division into past, present and future. To be more precise, thinking, i.e. developing linguistic terminology, in a language with inflectional past and futuretensesmight lead to the view that the ‘natural’ division into past, present and future time is reflected by the verbal system and vice versa.

9The Stoic school was founded by Zenoaround 300 B.C.

Two dimensions are involved, time reference, and completion as against incompletion or continuity. Four tenses can be arranged in relation to these two distinctions as follows:

- Time present past

Aspect - -

-incomplete - Present Imperfect complete - Perfect Pluperfect

The future (µ´ελλων) and the aorist (α´o%ιστ oς) fall outside this symmetrical system, and for this reason they were regarded as inde-terminate, µ´ελλων with reference to the future and α´o%ιστ oς with reference to the past; the morphological similarity of stem in many future and aorist forms may have reinforced this semantic interpre-tation [Robins 1967, p.29].

The Latinate grammatical tradition imposed Roman linguistic ideas on English and German but the same had happened to Latin. Greek linguistic categories were imposed on Latin.¹⁰ When it comes to the perfect, there is a fundamental difference between Latin and Greek:

Von den Verbalsystemen anderer altindogermanischer Sprachen wie etwa dem des Griechischen unterscheidet sich das lateinische erheb-lich. Dies gilt ganz besonders f¨ur das Perfektsystem: dem lateinischen Perfekt entsprechen im Griechischen zwei Kategorien, Perfekt und Aorist¹¹ [Meiser 2003, p.xi, Vorwort].

10“In linguistic science the Roman experience was no exception to the general condition of their relations with Greek intellectual work. Roman linguistics was largely the application of Greek thought, Greek controversies, and Greek categories to the Latin language. The relatively similar basic structure of the two languages, together with the unity of civilization achieved in the Greco-Roman world, facilitated this metalinguistic transfer” [Robins1967, p.47].

11The quote continues like this: “Diese Feststellung ist zun¨achst ebenso trivial wie die Ver-mutung, dass das Lateinische hier eine Kategorie verloren habe [. . . ]. Nicht trivial ist jedoch das Ergebnis dieses Katgeorieverlustes: ein buntes Nebeneinander unterschiedlicher St¨amme, die den Eindruck hervorrufen, jenseits der I. Konjugation sei die Bildung lateinischer Perfektst¨amme in hohem Grade regellos” [Meiser2003, p.xi, Vorwort].

Meiser alludes to the exceptional position of the Latin language by pointing out that Latinvidi means ‘I have seen’, whereas its Indo-European cognates, e.g.

Greek oιδα, Sanskrit v´eda, Slavic vˇedˇe, Gothic wait, mean ‘I know’ [ibid.].

The syncretism of the Indo-European aorist¹² and perfect in Latin can be understood semantically as follows, cf. [Ernout 1920, p.143/144]: a (present) perfectum such asv¯ıxit ‘s/he has lived’ can mean either ‘s/he has carried her/his life through’ or ‘her/his life is over now’, whereas the corresponding infectum (v¯ıvit) means ‘s/he is still in the middle of the course of her/his life’. Originally, the opposition between the two stems was aspectual, not temporal. As the idea of completion is closely related to the notion of past, the perfectum was prone to express pastness. Still, the expression of pastness (‘s/he lived’) in v¯ıxit is secondary, i.e. derived from the idea of completion, cf. the Greek aorist and the French pass´e d´efini. This reinterpretation of a completed action as a past action is a general phenomenon, which has been called ‘resultative metonymy’. This also happened to the Indo-European perfect¹³.

To recap,Varro’s arrangement of the2×3 = 6Latin ‘tenses’ is questionable when it comes to the placement of the perfect. Morphologically his arraying of forms displays an appealing symmetry. Semantically it suggests a reading of the Latin perfect that does not account for all its meanings. Robins characterizes the flaw in Varro’s system as follows:

Varro put the Latin ‘perfect’ tense forms didic¯ı, etc., in the present completive place, corresponding to the place of the Greek perfect tense forms. In what we have or know of his writings he does not

12“Der Aorist, von Haus aus ein

”punktuelles“ Praesens [. . . ]. Der Keim der Umwertung zum Vergangenheitstempus [. . . ] lag in der Bedeutung der mit ihrem Eintritt zugleich vollendeten Handlung bei punktueller Aktion” [Sommer1914, p.480].

13“Perfekta altindogermanischen Typs bezeichnen einenZustand des Handlungstr¨agers, der aus einer Handlung (meist Zustands¨anderung) desselben Handlungstr¨agers in der Vergan-genheit resultiert. Dieimplizierte Handlung in der Vergangenheitkann in dem bezeichneten Zustand weiter andauern [. . . ]. Im Normalfall resultiert der Zustand allerdings aus einer ab-geschlossenen Handlung in der Vergangenheit; das Perfekt ist daher normalerweise inh¨arent perfektiv, obwohl es in bezug auf den Verbalaspekt als Ganzes imperfektiv und einem Pr¨asens gleichwertig ist [. . . ]. Die inh¨arente Bezeichnung einer abgeschlossenen Handlung der Vergan-genheit f¨uhrte dazu, daß das Perfekt in mehreren idg. Einzelsprachen vom Gegenwartstem-pus zu einem Pr¨ateritum mit implizierter Gegenwartsrelevanz wurde (resultative Metonymie)”

[Tichy2000, p.88].

appear to have allowed for one of the major differences between the Greek and Latin tense paradigms, namely that in the Latin ‘perfect’

tense there was a syncretism of simple past meaning (‘I did’), and perfect meaning (‘I have done’), corresponding to the Greek aorist and perfect respectively. The Latin ‘perfect’ tense forms belong in both aspectual categories, a point clearly made later by Priscian¹⁴ in his exposition of a similar analysis of the Latin verbal tenses [Robins 1967, p.52].

The overwhelming influence of the Latinate grammatical tradition is reflected by the native German names for the traditional six German ‘tenses’, cf. table 5.3.

The term vollendete Gegenwart ‘completed present’ for the German perfect is a Table 5.3: Arraying of German (active) verb forms in the spirit of Varro

Zeit Vergangenheit Gegenwart Zukunft Aspekt

unvollendet ich sah ich sehe ich werde sehen

vollendet ich hatte

gesehen

ich habe gesehen

ich werde gesehen haben

case in point. Actually, the main use of the German Perfekt, which is markedly different from its English ‘counterpart’, refers to past time. Therefore, its native name is profoundly misleading. The name unvollendete Vergangenheit for the German past tense is also misleading. A brief comparison of the different types of past tense might elucidate where the terminological confusion comes from.

Ancient Greek has four ‘past tenses’: imperfect, perfect, pluperfect, and aorist. Classical Latin has three: imperfect, perfect, and pluperfect. The Latin perfect represents a syncretism of Greek (or rather Indo-European) perfect and aorist. The incomplete past position within Varro’s system is an appropriate

14“Priscian8.10.54” [Robins 1967, p.63].Priscianus Caesariensislived around 500 AD. His grammarInstitutiones grammaticae was “by far the most widely used grammar [. . . ] and formed the basis of medieveal Latin grammar and the foundation of medieval linguistic philosophy” [Robins1967, p.61/62].

place for an imperfect only. The English translation of disc¯ebam in table 5.1 is

‘I was learning’, not ‘I learned’, because the English non-progressive preterite, i.e. [pret: +, perf: ∅, prog: ∅], rather corresponds to the aorist, whereas the past progressive, i.e. [pret: +, perf: ∅, prog: +], corresponds to the imperfect. The situation in German is comparable to the English one – apart from the fact that in German the progressive is not fully grammaticalized. A replacement of ich sah in table 5.3 by ich war am Sehen would fit Varro’s chart better. It should be noted that the notion of completion depends on lexical aspect, e.g. ich schwamm ‘I swam, I was swimming’ is rather an imperfect, whereas ich erblickte ‘I caught sight of’ is rather an aorist/preterite.