As to origin, in Old English up through Early Modern English (to about 1750), as in other Germanic languages, there were two different ways to express the perfect, depending on the type of verb. Verbs of change of state and of motion formed the perfect with 'be' + past participle; other verbs used 'have' + past participle. Expressions like 'I'm done' and 'I'm finished' are fossils going back to these older structures. Expressions like "I am come" are found in Elizabethan English. Very often irregularities in morphology and syntax reflect just such earlier historical stages of the language.
Herb
Janet,
I don't know what the origin of the construction is, but I usually explain
this to my students in terms of auxiliary choice for the perfect:
in the present perfect, for certain verbs, you have 2 possibilities (in
American English at least; I don't think the variants are acceptable in
British English):
finish: I have finished I am finished (also with 'done')
go: She has gone She is gone
So I don't think they are passive at all, although you could say that they
have a more 'stative' meaning than the corresponding version with 'have';
they seem to refer more explicitly to the result whereas the 'have'
version refers more clearly to the action (but this is all very
speculative).
Marie
France
>
> I was working with a group of ESL students discussing complex verb
>> phrases. We discussed this sentence: "He had finished with his homework
>> by
>> the time he arrived." One of the students asked whether it would be
>> acceptable to say "He was finished with his homework by the time he
>> arrived." I said it would be, but to my chagrin, I could not explain
>> the
>> verb phrase. I sent query below to [log in to unmask]
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
>> Sent: Friday, May 18, 2007 8:00 PM
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: QUESTION FOR THE GRAMMARIAN
>>
>>
>> From: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: passives, phrasal verbs
>> Message: I was recently confronted with this sentence: He was
>> finished with his home work by the time he arrived. Problem: Although
>> the
>> construction is BE + Past participle, this doesn't appear to be either a
>> passive or a linking verb plus adjective. Additionally, I suspect that
>> the
>> main verb is phrasal: finish with. Most uses of this construction seem
>> pretty straightforward: He will finish with his studies in June; he had
>> finished with his studies by the time I knew him, etc. I'm just not
>> sure
>> how to analyze the 'was finished with' construction. Now I'm wondering
>> if 'to be finished with' is verbal idom. What am I missing? Thanks
>> Janet
>> Castilleja
>>
>> And I got this reply:
>>
>> Here is a list of phrasal verbs. "Finish with" is not part of it, as you
>> can see. As for analyzing that particular sentence fragment, I think
>> it's
>> just the imperfect tense. Hope this helps.
>> Athena Sargent
>> http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/phrasals.htm
>>
>> 'Finish with' is listed as a phrasal verb in Phrasal Verbs (Courtney,
>> 1983,
>> Longman), but with not quite the same meaning. I already knew this when
>> I
>> sent the question to grammar_q. I had also spent some time with Quirk,
>> Leech, Greenbaum and Svartik as well as the Oxford and Cambridge
>> grammars
>> without coming up with a satisfactory explanation - false passive?
>> idiomatic phrasal verb?
>>
>> Most of the resources I've looked at don't even seem to acknowledge an
>> imperfect 'tense' in English, although I've found some interesting
>> discusions of 'imperfective' vs 'perfective.'
>>
>> What are your thoughts? This is currently occupying way too much of my
>> time.
>>
>>
>> Janet Castilleja
>>
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