Consider these two sentences: “I have the ball.” and “I have thrown the ball.”
In the first sentence, the word “have” is a content word, with its own meaning, synonymous with “own” or “possess”. In the second sentence, “have” is a function word to indicate perfect aspect.
Many other Germanic languages have a similar construction, where a cognate of “have” can be used on its own to mean something similar to English “have” and also used with another verb to indicate something similar to perfect aspect. For example, in German “Ich habe den Ball.” and “Ich habe den Ball geworfen.”.
So, presumably, Proto-Germanic or something earlier had that construction too.
But why?
Those two functions seem very different to me, so why do they share the same word? Is there some hidden connection I’m not seeing? Is it just a coincidence? Is there linguistic evidence to the evolution of this, or is it lost to the mists of time?
In French similarly: “Elle a mangé”, literally “she has eaten”, although the tense has a different meaning than in English. (The meaning is more like “She ate”.)
Spanish “tiré la pelota” is “I threw the ball” (simple past) and “he tirado la pelota” is “I have thrown the ball” (compound past). “Había tirado…” is “I had thrown…” (pluperfect), and “hube tirado…” is “I had thrown…” (past anterior) (I don’t think English is capable of distinguishing between pluperfect and past anterior (something like “I used to have thrown…” vs “I had thrown…”)).
“He”, “había”, “hube” are all conjugations of “haber”, “to have”, so the use of that verb is not uniquely Germanic.
When I learned Spanish many decades ago, all of these tenses were in use. When I later learned a bit of Italian and French, while all the same tenses existed, they’re not all as prevalent. As I understand it, the simple past is rarely used in those languages, compared to the compound past.
When I took a refresher class, the Italian teacher asked me to demonstrate the past tense for the class and was really confused when I said I didn’t know how to do it, because I’d been all “ho lanciato la palla” since the beginning. In my mind, the compound past was “cheating”, but I couldn’t remember the simple past verb endings. Turns out I didn’t need them.
It probably comes from Late Latin, and the construction spread to nearby languages. Use of habeo to form the perfect is not a Classical Latin thing at all, but a later development. See sense 9 at habeo - Wiktionary, the free dictionary for Latin, equivalent to sense 10 of English have have - Wiktionary, the free dictionary
That’s an example of grammaticalization, a widespread process through which some content words are turned into function words. In other words, they lose most of their semantic value to acquire an almost purely syntactic value.
This phenomenon is by no means limited to Germanic languages. It’s found in a lot of languages worldwide, notably in Romance ones. Actually, the Spanish examples given above are also examples of grammaticalization.
The simple past has become rare in French, indeed. It’s now mostly restricted to literary texts or used for comic effect in conversations.
This I know, barely remembered from French class. But does French then have an equivalent to our “have eaten?” In other words, how does French indicate something has happened before something that happened in the past?
French uses the plus-que-parfait to indicate something has happened before something that happened in the past. Il a mangé une pizza. Avant ça, il avait mangé une lasagne. That’s actually the equivalent of the English “had eaten”, however, not “has eaten” as you wrote, but perhaps I’ve misunderstood your question.
“Has eaten”, meaning something that happened at some unspecified moment in the past but is still relevant now, has no direct equivalent in French, which is the source of many mistakes French speakers make, i.e. using “have eaten” instead of “ate” and vice versa.
Maybe the question is, what is the difference between “il avait mangé une pizza” (pluperfect) and “il eut mangé une pizza” (past anterior). Perhaps the latter sounds more literary, like in a narrative?
Note that in straight Latin there is no need for an auxiliary verb: “placentam ederat”
We’re getting into absolutely-never-used-in-conversations tenses here, so take this a grain of salt.
Il avait mangé une pizza.
Past of the past, i.e. a past action that took place before another past action. Still used daily nowadays.
Il eut mangé une pizza.
Past of the past also, but for some reason that I can’t quite understand, it doesn’t work at all in the example I’ve given. I feel it works better when the sequence of events is more chronological, and only with the past simple afterwards : Après qu’il eut mangé une pizza, il mangea une lasagne
Il eût mangé une pizza.
Subjunctive pluperfect. Use it only if you want people to beat you up.
Interesting. I never really thought about that, but it also happens to some extent in Polish. On ma pies. “He has a dog.” On ma pracować “He has to work.” (Or more of a sense of “he is supposed to work” but similar idea.)
On a related topic, am I right to think that in American English, you can’t say “you haven’t” or “have you” for the active verb of possession, but only for the modal verb?
In both British and American English, you can say “I haven’t eaten”, “Has he woken up yet?” but my question is whether “Have you any cigarettes?” and “I haven’t a clue” are ungrammatical in American English.
As mentioned above, it’s from a late Vulgar Latin construction with “habere” (and a parallel one, perhaps a calque, in Germanic), before the past participle.
The semantic idea is that, if you’ve done something, you “have” it — own it — among the assortment of your past experiences.
Interestingly, an earlier Latin construction with the same verb (but after an infinitive) to mean the FUTURE, and was grammaticalized as the future tense: amar(e)+ (h)a(bet) = amerat (Spanish “amerá”), “he/she will love.” There, the semantic idea is that you “have to” as in you “must” — you own the obligation to do something (in the future).
Everyone here has taken a linguistic route. I’m going to go much simpler. Something in the future has not happened yet. You don’t “have” it as a part of your experiences.
That’s it. That’s the connection I see. “Thrown the ball” is something that I own because I remember doing it. I have (own the experience) of throwing the ball.
Ownership is likely one of the first concepts that evolves in a population where resources are scarce and taking someone else’s resources can cause injury or death. Logically, it would develop before tense, which is more abstract: the immediate matters more than what happened already. I’m interested to know if this makes sense to other people or was already obvious and I missed the point of the question.
I did French for 5 years at school and we didn’t even get taught it.
I think it’s obsolete rather than not allowed in English. You could say “I’m gone” or “So, I’m arrived at the bar and the dude says to me…” and it wouldn’t necessarily sound wrong. I think “Christ is risen” is an example of it being actively used in early modern English.
I think American English uses these tenses differently from British English. There’s an episode of Sex in the City where Miranda tearfully says on the phone to Carrie “My Mom died”. Obviously in that context you could guess that it has just happened, but British people would always say “My Mum has died”.
When a British person hears “My Mom died.” part of them is subconsciously thinking “and the point is …?” since it could have happened any time in the last few decades, depending on the age of the speaker.
Regarding continental European misuse of the past perfect in English, I knew a German academic whose profile said “… has completed his Phd in … at … University”. That makes it sound like it’s the most recent development in their career, whereas in fact it happened over 20 years ago.