Re: Conditional Tenses in Romance Languages

On Saturday, July 10, 2004, at 04:30 , Roger Mills wrote:

> Actually it was Barry Garcia who answered you, but I'm up on Spanish too
> :-)
>
> The future and conditional in Span. (and French and I'm pretty sure Port.
> )
Yep - true of French, Portugues & Caltalan.

> is based on _infinitive + haber_. The pres. indic. forms of Span. haber,
> as
> you probably know, are he, has, ha, hemos, habéis, han, so the future (all
> reg. verbs) is: infinitive + -é, -ás, -á, -emos, -éis, -án. The
> conditional
> doesn't use identifiable imperf. forms of haber (había, habías etc.), just
> the _imperfect_ endings, which gives infinitive
> + -ía, -ías, -ía, -íamos, -íais, -ían
Yep - same with French, Catalan & Portuguese: basically inifinitive +
endings of the imperfect indicative.

> Italian like the others uses the present forms of avere for the future,
> but
> oddly, the preterit forms for the conditional. I think that's unique in
> the
> Romance world.
Not sure if it's entirely unique - but it is among those that now enjoy
official status.

> IIRC Romanian forms its future with the verb for 'to want';
Sort of. The auxiliary originated from Latin _uolo_ just as the verb _a
vrea_ (<-- *vole:re, cf. French _vouloir_) did. But the auxiliary and the
full verb are different; the present tense of each is:
       future auxiliary: voi,   vei,  va,   vom,  veţi,  vor
a vrea (to want, wish): vreau, vrei, vrea, vrem, vreţi, vor

(For those with unicode-unfriendly mailers, ţ is t-cedilla, Unicode Hex.
1063, = /ts/)

One of the ways of expressing the future in Romanian, is to use voi, vei
etc + the plain infinitive (i.e. without the inifinitive marker _a_), e.g.
  voi pleca (I will leave), va pleca (he will leave)

An alternative, more colloqiual, method of expressing the future is to use
the present tense of _a avea_ (to have) plus a să clause with subjunctive
verb. The present tense of _a avea_ is: am, ai, are, avem, aveţi, au.

There is a third method, the most colloquial of all, and that is to use
the invariable particle _o_ followed by a să clause.

(să BTW is s + a-breve = /s@/)

So, e.g. there are three ways of saying "I will leave...", namely: voi
pleca; am să plec; o să plec. Similarly, s/he will leave: va pleca; are să
plece; o să plece.

Also, if the context is clear, just the plain ol' present tense will do to
express futurity: plec (I'm leaving, I'll leave); pleacă (s/he's leaving,
s/he'll leave)

BTW, present subjective & present indic. are the same except, usually, in
the 3rd person forms.

> I'm don't know
> whether it has a conditional tense.
It has. It is formed by using an auxiliary verb with the plain infinitive.
  The auxiliary for the conditional tense is: aş, ai, ar, am, aţi, ar.
e.g. aş pleca (I would leave), ar pleca (sh/he would leave; they would
leave)

(ş is s-cedilla = /S/).

Ray
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