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

[petegray]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Steven's posting on Latin has some points that can be clarified further.

> vulgar and Romance evidence suggests that the -i- in the
> -vi perfets was apparently not present on the lips of many speakers;
> some Romance forms seem to require *amaut, &c., instead of CL -amavit-.

Amaut is the regular non-classical development of CL amavit.   We know that
the sequence vowel - v - vowel was often subject to syncope.   Compare
Caesar's shock on hearing a street seller in Brindisium shouting "don't go"
(cave ne eas).   He was actually shouting "figs" (cauneas).

> Similar confusion reigns ... between subjunctive and future endings, and
> forms like -audibo- are attested.  ... in Romance languages ... the future
> has been made over.  (It is possible that given the phonology of VL,
> -monebis- sounded like it was really a contraction for -monere (h)abes-,
> since short 'i' and 'e' fell together in many areas, and h- was dropped.)

There is a better reason for the collapse of the inherited future system.
With the change of /b/ to /B/ (or /v/), the classical distinction between
future amabit, and past amavit, was no longer possible.   Both ended up
/amaut/ > amo: (distinguished from the 1st sing present by the different
placing of the accent - preserved in Italian to this day.)   This form ended
up as the past, and a new future was developed from the infinitive.

> In Classical Latin, we associate the -b- future with the "first and
> second conjugations," verbs with a stem-vowel of -a or -e:  but dialect,
> vulgar, and archaic evidence shows that it was not quite so cut and
> dried in the unpolished world of ordinary speech.

Yes, but look at the actual patterns.   The first conj. has -a- =
indicative, -e- = subjunctive, so needs a periphrastic future.   The second
has -e- = indicative, -a- = subjunctive, so needs a periphrastic future.
Only the 3rd and 4th do not need such a future, and so do not show it in
Classical Latin.   If there is spread of the -b- future, it is part of the
normal intrusion of the dominant forms into other conjugations.   Much more
significant would be -a- or -e- forms used in place of the -b- forms in the
first or 2nd conjugation, but even there, it might only indicate the usual
overlap in meaning of subjunctive and future.

> Going mostly from memory, I doubt that any criteria can really be
> pinpointed.

I don't think we have to be quite that desparing - see my earlier posting.

>Classical Latin is a highly artificial
> literary creation.

I would have said "highly artificial selection".   It rejects some forms
(both morphology and grammar) but these often remained in common speech, and
have resurfaced in late Latin and become the norm in Romance:  e.g. dico
quod (Plautus, Vulgate, and Romance).

Peter