Innovative past perfect in Standard and Cypriot Greek: Semantic and sociolinguistic variation
Stavroula Tsiplakou1, Spyros Armostis2, Spyridoula Bella3, Dimitris Michelioudakis4, Amalia Moser3 & Rena Torres-Cacoullos5
Open University of Cyprus1, European University Cyprus2,
University of Athens3, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki4
& Pennsylvania State University5
In Modern Greek the past perfect has the principal reading of past in the past as well as an innovative remote pastreading (Hedin 1987; Moser 2003):
(1) ixa pai sto paˈrisi paʎa
have.PAST.1S go.PERF to.the.S.ACC Paris.S.ACC ong ago
‘I had been (: went) to Paris long time ago’
A recent variationist study (Tsiplakou et al. 2019) examined the differences in the semantics of the past perfect in Standard and Cypriot Greek; a major finding was that in Cypriot Greek an innovative past perfect is emerging which is unlike the Standard Greek one in that it can appear in positions in the narrative sequence where the past in the pastreading is semantically odd or unacceptable; this indicates that in Cypriot Greek the innovative past perfect is a variant of the simple past:
(2) eˈmilisa me ton ʝanːi tʃe ˈixa
speak.PAST.1S with the.S.ACC Yannis.S.ACC and have.PAST.1S
tu anaˈferi inda mbu eʝine
him.S.ACC mention.PERF what is.that happen.PAST.3S
‘I spoke to Yannis and I had mentioned (: mentioned) to him what happened (: had happened)’
This ‘mid-sequence’ past perfect was deemed unacceptable by speakers of Standard Greek on the basis that the reading past-in-the-past is out-of-sequence in contexts such as (2). However, the data provide strong indications for apparently similar innovative uses of the past perfect in Standard Greek as well, as uses such as the ones in (3) and (4) below are emerging in the repertoires of younger speakers:
(3) ˈixa ˈpai se ena ˈparti xtes
have.PAST.1S go.PERF to a.S.ACC party.S.ACC yesterday
‘I had gone (: went) to a party yesterday’ (non-remote past)
(4) ˈpiɣame ˈprota sto ˈpilio ce meˈta
go.PAST.1P first to.the.S.ACC Pelio.S.ACC and then
ixame ˈpai stin aˈloniso
have.PAST.1P go.PERF to.the.S.ACC Alonnisos.S.ACC
‘We went to Pelio first and then we had gone (: went) to Alonnisos’ (‘end-of-sequence’)
Interestingly, the findings in Tsiplakou et al. (2019) indicate the higher acceptability of ‘end-of-sequence’ past perfect with verbs denoting emotion, such as the one in (5), for Standard Greek speakers:
(5) mas evalan na aˈkusume kati paraðosiaˈka traˈɣuðʝa
us.ACC make.PAST.3P to hear.PERF.3P some traditional.P.ACC songs.P.ACC
ce ˈixame peˈθani sta ˈʝeʎa
and have.PAST.1P die.PERF in.the.P.ACC laughter.P.ACC
‘They made us listen to these traditional songs and we had died (: died) laughing’
In this study, using both naturalistic data and data from a grammaticality judgement task, we explore further the semantic properties of the innovative past perfect in both varieties as well as the sociolinguistic factors affecting variation among the innovative uses. The data suggest that for Standard Greek speakers the relevant semantic property may well be the availability of a result-state component in the past perfect predicates, coupled with the pragmatic function of backgrounding the past perfect forms to fulfill various narrative functions (cf. Bertinetto 2014). In contrast, in Cypriot Greek the innovative past perfect shows the same rates of acceptability irrespective of the semantic properties of the predicates, confirming that it is merely a variant of simple past. As regards sociolinguistic aspects of the semantic shift, the data indicate that younger, less educated participants are leading the innovation.
References
Bertinetto, P. M. 2014. Non-conventional uses of the pluperfect in Italian (and German) literary prose. In E. Labeau & J. Bres (eds.), Evolution in Romance verbal systems, 145–170. Berlin: Peter Lang.
Hedin, E. 1987. On the use of the perfect and the pluperfect in Modern Greek. Stockholm: Almquist & Wiksell International.
Moser, A. 2003. Tense, aspect and the Greek perfect. In A. Alexiadou, M. Rathert & A. von Stechow (eds.), Perfect explorations, 235–252. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Tsiplakou, S., Armostis, S.,Bella, S. Michelioudakis, D. & A. Moser. 2019. The past perfect in Cypriot andStandard Greek: Innovation because — or irrespective — of contact? In J.‑A. Villena-Ponsoda, F. Díaz-Montesinos, A.‑M. Ávila-Muñoz, & M. Vida-Castro (eds.), Language variation — European perspectives VII: Selected papers from the 9th International conference on language variation in Europe (ICLaVE 9), Malaga, June 2017, 232–243. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.