I cut your last note where I did to capture the last sentence.  Seems to me that

what traditional grammar calls the present perfect and the future perfect may

indeed tell someone about something that has not occurred.  Look at these

sentences and tell me what you think.

I've been going through OE grammars as well as Old Norse and can't see

the connection that has been attempted. (past perfect passive?)

tj

Joe has drunk two cups of coffee before he goes to work each morning.

Joe will have drunk two cups of coffee before he goes to work tomorrow.


On Friday 02/18/2011 at 9:15 pm, Craig Hancock wrote:

Karl,
     I had the great pleasure of an Old English class and Beowulf seminar
(we translated the text) in a graduate program in the 70's, but that's
all pretty stale, so I follow these arguments from secondhand. The key
evidence, as I take it, is that past perfect didn't grammaticalize for
intransitive verbs right away. I say this, though, without direct
exposure to the empirical evidence.
     Here's an interesting take from Talmy Givon: "In human language there
is always more than one structural means of affecting the same
communicative function." Within context, I think he means we sometimes
see it cross language, but it is often true in a single language as
well. We still have a number of ways to express perfect aspect, or the
sense of a process having been or being completed in relation to a
point in time. In that sense, perfect aspect in the verb phrase works
in harmony (sometimes redundantly) with these other processes. It
might be lexicalized (a verb like "finished" or "completed") or
expressed through time oriented subordination ("before" or "after").
You can't tell someone about something or report something until after
it occurs. And there are, as with your OE example, adverbial options.