On the disappearance of the BE perfect in Late Modern English

Abstract

Abstract Previous work on auxiliary selection in the history of English has revealed that perfect-like constructions in earlier stages of the language were quite distinct from those in the modern language, and furthermore that important changes in the construction with have around 1350 rendered it quite distinct semantically and syntactically from the one with be. While this led to a marked expansion of perfects with have, it did not effect a decrease in those with be, which remained quite stable up to around 1700. The current paper presents research based on more recently available corpus data, exploring what happened in the period after 1700, when the construction with be, which is no longer found in the contemporary language, finally did begin to recede. The most straightforward finding is that the inflection point of this change can now be dated to around the year 1800. Evidence is then presented showing that, contrary to appearances, the loss of be does not seem to be related to increasing lexical restrictions on the perfect construction. Finally, the mechanics of the change and its relevance for the syntactic distribution of participles are discussed, along with arguments that what underlies the loss of the be perfect is actually a restriction on the kinds of VPs that can build stative-resultative participial structures in the language.