Change in Verbal Systems- Issues on Explanation

The Editors: Kerstin Eksell is Professor of Semitic Philology at the University of Copenhagen. Her focus of interest is comparative and diachronic Arabic. She has published on the analytic genitive in Arabic dialects as well as several articles on the development of Arabic syntax.Thora Vinther is Associate Professor of Spanish at the University of Copenhagen. Her research interests include language acquisition, pragmatics, and language development. Apart from teaching material and papers on the language acquisition process, she has published on the development of the Spanish auxiliary ir.

• Contents: Henning Andersen: Periphrastic futures in Slavic. Divergence and convergence – Ulrich Detges: Aspect and pragmatics. The passé composé in Old French and the Old Spanish perfecto compuesto – Kerstin Eksell: The origin and development of the cursive b-imperfect in Syrian Arabic – Anne Jensen: The emergence of progressive aspect in modern Nahuatl – Kirsten Kragh: Aspects of grammaticalization. The French subjunctive - a reduced paradigm – Jan Lindschouw: Grammaticalization, assertion and concession in French and Spanish – Johan Pedersen: The Spanish connective and verbal mood. Changes in the mood-selection of de ahí/aquí que – Lene Schøsler : « Vivre ça me fout la trouille. Mourir plus encore, mais vivre ça me fait vraiment peur. » A diachronic perspective on support verb constructions – Thora Vinther: The development of the Spanish verb ir into an auxiliary of gradual process.