Latin future in -b-

[gd116 at cam.ac.uk]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Dear all,

Various people sent me very helpful answers, but for some reason, none 
of these seems to have been transmitted to the whole list. So in case 
you have been losing sleep over the Latin -bo- future, here is a short 
digest.

The problem, it seems, is made complex by alleged parallel formations 
in other I-E languages (Celtic), and more importantly, by the parallel 
formation of the imperfect in -bam- in Latin itself. So in fact, most 
of the people who responded actually favour a third alternative, which 
was not mentioned in my query, namely that the -bo- future is a later 
analogical formation on the imperfect in -bam, which itself is taken 
(by most, not all) to derive from *bheu. (Arguments for this view in 
print can be found in Baldi 1976, 1999, and Hewson and Bubenik 1997). 
According to this view, then, the -bo future is related to *bhu only 
indirectly (via analogy), and not as a direct grammaticalisation from 
*ama-bh(w)u. Carol Justus, on the other hand, thinks that it’s 
*possible* that *bheu grammaticalised independently in two roles (to 
give imperfect and future, as later ‘habeo’ in Romance: ‘habeo 
cantatum’ and ‘cantare habeo’), but she would certainly not claim that 
this was a secure reconstruction.

In short, in view of the responses (reproduced below), while it would 
be unfair to call the *canta-bh(w)o etymology ‘discredited’, it’s 
certainly far from ‘credited’. I guess that the reason why the canta-bo 
future is so often quoted by linguists must be that it is so neat to 
have two parallel cycles of grammaticalisation of periphrastic future 
in the history of Romance: pre-Latin *canta-bh(w)o, and Romance cantare 
habeo.  But since we have many other cases where we can be on less 
shifting ground, it’s probably better to find other show-case examples.

Many thanks to all who responded (John Hewson, Gonzalo Rubio, Carol 
Justus, Martin Huld, Andreas Ammann, Paul Hopper), and a digest of 
their views follows. 

Guy Deutscher.

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>From John Hewson:

Phil Baldi's 1976 article in Language (Lg 52.839-850) is an excellent
overview of the question. When Vit Bubenik and I looked at the question 
(Hewson & Bubenik, Tense & Aspect in IE Langs, Benjamins 1997) we 
concluded that future tenses in IE langs are rare (only Italic, Baltic, 
and some Celtic), and all late developments (most IE languages express 
the future by aspect, not tense). They are definitely not inherited, 
but new formations. 

If you look at the whole Latin system, you will find three forms (past,
present, and future tenses) for the perfect, and similarly three forms 
for the non-perfect, the perfectum/ infectum constrast being aspectual.

To form the past and the future in the perfect, -erat and -erit (etc) 
are added to the perfect stem, the future having the endings of the 
ancient subjunctive. Here we can see that what was originally the stem 
of the verb "to be" (-er-) has become the marker of the non-present, 
with -at and -it distinguishing past and future. In other words Latin 
formed a future perfect with the inflections of an ancient subjunctive 
of the *es- stem of the verb "to be".

In the three tenses of the infectum the -ba- is also a formation from 
the *bhu- stem of the verb "to be" (see Baldi 1976); this form is not
problematic. The problem is the future. Looking at the total picture, 
and avoiding an atomistic approach, it is clear that just as -er- came 
to be