Conlang: Re: latin verb examples and tense meanings (Raymond Brown, Jan 18 '00, 18:58)

Re: latin verb examples and tense meanings

From:	Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...>
Date:	Tuesday, January 18, 2000, 18:58

From:

Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...>

Date:

Tuesday, January 18, 2000, 18:58

At 12:43 pm +0100 18/1/00, Christophe Grandsire wrote:

Sorry - I should've said: "no precedent for conflating the two tenses in any Romance natlang *here* :) What may happen in any Romance conlang (or natlang *there*) is anyone's guess ;)

>It happens that in my Romance conlang, each tense >has been split into perfect and imperfect (with analytic forms for the >imperfect) so the latin imperfect disappeared. The past has thus survived, >and the passive past has been formed by fusion of an analytic form using >the passive participle and an auxiliary (much like the future in most >Romance langs with the infinitive).

Yes, but that is surely the opposite of conflation where two (or more) collapse to form one. In Steg's case the perfect gives the active forms of the single preterite tense, while the passive equivalent is formed from the old imperfect. Thus the imperfect & perfect pass tenses have collapsed together to give one 'all-purpose past tense'. But Reman has surely gone in the opposite direction. The Latin perfect has blossomed into two different tenses: an imperfective past & perfective past.

>But Reman is a very special Romance >conlang which generally doesn't follow any pattern of the Western Romance >languages (that was my goal, I wanted a Romance language as different with >the other Romance languages as English is with the Germanic languages).

:-) [snip]

>>surprised at this development in Jûdajca. (Hope the u-cirmcumflex come out >>OK) >> > > It did with me :) .

So it did. But Steg's mailer changed it to some weird symbol. All very annoying.

>> >>Not so - the -b- forms are used for -E:RE verbs also. In early Latin they >>were also found with -IRE verbs; and such forms still occasionally appeared >>in verse in the Classical period. >> > > If I remember correctly, the Latin future came from the >subjunctive of PIE >which was marked by a suffix -bh- before the personal ending.

I had understood that the -b- of the imperfect and future was in fact from PIE bhu- (to be) which, initially, became intial fu- in Latin (cf. fui "I have been") but medial -b- (<-- [bw]) The endings are the same as those added to er- (<-- es- ) to form the Classical imperfect & future of "to be", thus: IMPERFECT FUTURE eram -bam ero: -bo: era:s -ba:s eris -bis erat -bat erit -bit era:mus -ba:mus erimus -bimus era:tis -ba:tis eritis -bitis erant -bant erunt -bunt I thought the controversy was what exactly the suffixed 'to be' had been attached to - the infectum base? The present participle (*mitte:ns bam --> mitte:bam)? The original infinitive (*mittesi-bam --> mittezbam --> mitte:bam)? a case form, maybe locative, of a verbal noun ending in -a: or -e:, thus 'mitte: bam' = I was (in the act of) sending, (cf. I was a-sending; Welsh 'roeddwn i'n anfon' ) ? Personally I think the participle theory sucks; nor am I convinced by the infinitive theory. I inclined to the last theory, myself. The preterite suffix -a:- is one of those Italo-Celtic isoglosses. It is also, I am told, found in Lithuanian. The endings -is, -it etc of the future are thought to be derived IE 'short-vowel' subjunctive formed with thematic vowels -e- or, before nasal consonants, -o- (-imus was -umus in early Latin). So, yes, indeed they are thought to be derived from subjunctive forms.

>So it's no >surprise that the future in -b- was the first one in Early Latin and that >the other futures are recent developments. I wonder where they came from.

Subjunctives :) In Homeric Greek we find both 'short vowel' subjunctives & 'long vowel' subjunctives. This seems to have been an PIE feature. The theme vowel for this subjunctive was -e:- alternating with -o:- .Latin generalized -e:- giving the futures of the 3rd & 4th conjugations and the present subjunctive of the 1st. (Difficult to use this productively with the 2nd :) The -a:- subjunctives are a bit of an enigma. They appear to have been a peculiarly Italic development :)

>>In France -E:RE --> -OIR while -ERE --> -RE. Thus, one can see the drift >>was entirely in the opposite direction there. The -OIR verbs are very much >>a minority in modern French. > > Yes, but a ruling minority! They are some of the most used verbs >in French >(the equivalents of the English modals are all -OIR verbs).

Indeed, that's exactly why this bossy little group have resisted assimilation! Ray. ========================================= A mind which thinks at its own expense will always interfere with language. [J.G. Hamann 1760] =========================================