The Old English <i>Have</i> -Perfect and Its Congeners

Abstract

The English have-perfect can be traced to Old English [ habban ‘have’ + noun + perfect participle]. A comparative look at the development of the have-perfect in Romance suggests a way to reassess the Old English corpus, which in turn reveals that the string [ habban + noun + perfect participle] had three distinct structures and values aside from the periphrastic perfect. The author shows that the likeliest source of the have-perfect is a periphrasis denoting the achievement of a result or a persisting resultant state. This implies that the relationship between possessive and auxiliary habban is less direct than previously claimed.