The have + past participle formula is widespread in the Latin and Germanic languages, which is strange when you think about it.  Why use the word have, which has its own meaning, as an auxiliary?  After all, the proper meaning of have has no special property.  Why not use hear, offer, compute, or any other seemingly random choice of word?

The answer, as one might expect, lies with Latin.  At the time that the formula have + past participle came into being, it was used only sporadically.

The best example I can think of involves finding a key.

In Latin, you’d apply the participle as an adjective, to describe the key as found.  Once you rediscovered the location of the found key and had it on your person, you could say I have the found key.

In there you’ll notice have and a participle.  Latin didn’t have articles, so a Latin-speaker would say I have found key or I have key found.  (Think of the German form Ich habe den Schlüssel gefunden and you’ll see this same form mirrored.)

This usage became more and more frequent, applying itself to situations which were logically impossible.  Rather than saying that you had found the key, you might say that it is lost.

Of course, you don’t actually possess that key, but it didn’t matter to the Latin-speakers.  They had come to see I have found key not only to mean that you are speaking about currently having the key that was found, but also that you happened to find it earlier in order to have it now.  It referenced the past just as much as the present.

From this I have lost key came into use, obviously referring to the past action of losing it rather than a current action of possessing a key that is lost.

And from there the form became commonly used to describe past events, and was absorbed into other languages, even those that weren’t derived from Latin itself.

Latin habere came to be used in English (have), German (haben), and Spanish (haber).

I find it interesting to note that Spanish introduced the form haber purely as an auxiliary (and in the one-off third-person singular forms to mean “there is/are” and expressing obligation, such as in Hay que hablar contigo, meaning I have got to speak to you).

The Spanish don’t have the same cross-over that we others do, where the verb used for possession serves also as an introductory auxiliary to indicate past action.  No, since the Spanish verb to have is tener (taken from the Latin tenere, meaning to hold), there is none of the pluarality of meanings that seems so odd to speakers of the other Romance and Germanic languages.

I love language history like this.  Maybe I’ll make it a semi-regular feature

Tags: Auxiliaries, Past Tense

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