The perfect in the history of English
The shift from the be-perfect to the have-perfect
Mainly discussing the shift from the be-perfect to the have-perfect of mutative intransitive verbs, I have worked on two papers so far:
- Hundt, Marianne and Yoko Iyeiri. 2025. “Tracing the development of the perfect alternation in Early Modern English”. Diachronica 42(1): 47-81.
- Uchida, Mitsumi & Yoko Iyeiri. 2025. “BE vs. HAVE in the perfect of mutative intransitive verbs: A study on the Middle English translation of Paris and Vienne“. Kwansei Gakuin University School of Sociology Journal 144: 17-29. (Downloadable PDF)
The first is on Early Modern English and the second is on a Middle English text, both a little earlier than the period when a major movement of this shift took place.
This is also a major topic in my book entitled Benjamin Franklin’s English: Form to Function Analyses (Abingdon: Routledge, 2025), where I discuss the two forms of the perfect, exploring arrive, become, come, fall, go, grow, and return, and show how come, fall, and go are relatively advanced in this shift in Benjamin Franklin’s English.
