Re: About Romance natlangs and conlangs (Re: ) (LONG)

"Grandsire, C.A." wrote:
> Don't forget that in all Romance languages, the
> verb agrees in person with the subject.
Even if it's just barely, as in French.  :-)

>         imperfect (used for the progressive and/or habitual past): widely used
> in all the Romance languages I know (French, Spanish and Italian), it is
> generally very regular.
Indeed, IIRC, the only irregular imperfects in Spanish are _ir_ and
_ser_.

> In Portuguese, AFAIK, it is the analytic compound
> form which is still used (or is there also a synthetic form?)
In Portuguese, one can put the object pronoun between the infinitive and
the ending, e.g.:

Ver-me-a = (s)he/you will see me, but it's also common to avoid that,
but I don't remember how.

> (as in Spanish
> where all verbs make their compounded tenses with to have).
They make the PERFECT tenses with _haber_, but they also have
progressive with _estar_ and passive with _ser_.

>         Those two tenses have of course the corresponding compounded forms.
> Note that Portuguese has developped a subjunctive future by using the
> subjunctive present of to have with the infinitive of the verb (like the
> future is formed by the present of to have with the infinitive).
Spanish has a subjunctive future, but it's archaic.

--
"Old linguists never die - they just come to voiceless stops." -
anonymous
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/Conlang/W.html
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/Books.html
ICQ: 18656696
AIM Screen-Name: NikTailor