Crosslinguistically, the development of the verb go into a future tense is a common path of grammaticalization. In contrast, the past meaning of the go-periphrasis in Catalan is unexpected. Detges (2004) claims that the process of grammaticalization of the Catalan periphrastic perfect went from inchoative to foregrounding to past. We compare data from the Corpus informatitzat del Català antic with modern Sicilian, where a similar go-periphrasis is used with a foregrounding function that resembles that of Old Catalan. This comparison confirms a foregrounding usage but fails to support the origin in an inchoative usage. We propose that the grammaticalization from movement to foregrounding does not require an intermediate inchoative stage, but that it rather results from a modal implicature of surprise and unexpectedness that was associated with the construction. Indeed, the function of go to foreground and express surprise or noteworthiness can be inferentially viewed as movement away from the speaker’s expectations. Under this usage, Catalan go-periphrasis was employed to refer to ‘surprising’ events that took place in the past. Once this additional meaning was lost, the reference to the past was generalized beyond the implicature.

-iu, instead of the Occitan -atz, -etz, -itz. One feature of Catalan is the periphrastic preterite tense for referring to the remote past, which is constructed This article discusses the conjugation of verbs in a number of varieties of Catalan-Valencian, including Old Catalan. Each verbal form is accompanied by its phonetic transcription. Widely used dialectal forms are included, even if they are not considered standard in either of the written norms: those of the Institut d'Estudis Catalans (based on Central Catalan) and the Acadèmia Valenciana de la Ll S… Indefinite preterite (pretèrit indefinit) (recent past, cf. English present perfect), e.g. he parlat ("I have spoken") Pluperfect (pretèrit plusquamperfet d'indicatiu) (cf. English past perfect), e.g. havia parlat ("I had spoken") Future perfect (futur compost), e.g. hauré parlat ("I will have spoken") Past conditional (condicional compost), e.g. hauria parlat ("I would have spoken") Subjunctive preterite perfect (pretèrit perfet de subjuntiu), e.g. hagi parlat ("that I have spoken, me to have spoken") Subjunctive pluperfect (pretèrit plusquamperfet de subjuntiu), e.g. hagués parlat ("that I had spoken") The perfective tense in the indicative mood has two remote-past forms, analogous to the English simple past. The more common is the periphrastic preterite (pretèrit perfet perifràstic), a compound tense formed with conjugations of a special present indicative of anar ("go", used exclusively in the formation of this tense) followed… The infinitive is used with present-indicative forms of anar (to go) to form the periphrastic preterite: vaig parlar ("I spoke"). A gerund, which is unvarying, functions as an adverb; it is used to form non-finite adjunct adverbial clauses of time or manner, roughly corresponding to the present participle in English. The past participle, a verbal adjective, may inflect for gender and number in certain constructions. It is used with the auxiliary haver ("to have") to form the perfect of the simple tenses: simple present parlo ("I speak, I'm speaking") and present perfect he parlat ("I've spoken"). In the compound perfect tenses of transitive verbs (those with a direct object), a past participle may inflect to match gender and number of the object. In Old Catalan and some modern varieties the compound perfect tenses of intransitive verbs (those without a direct object) can also be formed with the auxiliary ser ("to be") and the past participle, inflected for gender and number of the subject: som arribats ("we have arrived", switching to masculine plural); the typical contemporary construction is hem arribat, with an invariable participle. This construction remains in only a few vestigial forms: és mort/és morta ("he's dead/she's dead").

has substituted for it a periphrastic perfect, composed of the infinitive of the verb and the present of the auxiliary anar : vaig pendre, for example