Latin verbal system: how perfect and aorist joined in the new perfect?

[petegray]

Stephane said:
> I see nothing artificial about Classical Latin,

This debate could resolve into a fruitless discussion of what "artificial"
means, and so it may be best merely to agree to differ here.

> as Witold Manczak has
> argued, Vulgar Latin (or Proto-Romance, or however one cares to call the
> ancestor of the Romance languages) is quite plainly a "daughter" of
> Classical Latin (Not a "sister" as so many Romance scholars have argued).

If so, how do you explain:
(a) the Vulgar Latin use of forms and grammatical constructions not in
Classical Latin, but which just happen to be identical to forms in earlier
Latin?   If these are not derived from pre-classical Latin, is it just
coincidence?   How much coincidence is too much coincidence?
(b) the evidence for Vulgar Latin forms alongside Classical Latin at the
same period?   For example, the well known -au- / -o- business (like it or
not, in some words -o- is not classical, but is vulgar and contemporary with
classical), or the evidence from the Satiricon and from inscriptions and
such, showing pre-Romance forms even during the classical period.

Both of these seem to me to indicate that Romance developed from Latin
actually spoken at the very time when Classical Latin was being written.
Like many languages, Latin had a sginficant divergence of written and spoken
forms.    Classical Latin was really only the written form.    It is counter
to what we know of language development to think that pre-literary or
non-literary forms should develop from the written, rather than the spoken,
language.

Peter