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

[Nik Taylor]

"Steven A. Gustafson" wrote:

> /au/ was probably the last of the Latin diphthongs to go.  We can be
> reasonably sure of that because in certain situations in both Spanish
> and Italian, stressed /o/ was diphthongized {fuego, fuoco, uomo &c} but
> that didn't happen when the /o/ resulted from CL /au/

However, that diphthongizing only resulted when it was /O/, descended
from Latin short /o/, long /o:/ evolved into /o/, which remained /o/,
thus ho:ra became hora, not *huera, while ossum (?) became hueso.  /au/
became long /o:/, so of course it wasn't diphthongized.  /aurum/ became
/o:ru/, which naturally became /oro/ in Spanish and Italian.

> but it may indeed be reasonable to say that the written
> norm of CL is somewhat archaizing and definitely artificial sample of
> the actual river of Roman speech.

Sure, why not?  "Correct" English has a number of artificial elements
added in for "logic", like the double-negative rule, or the "split
infinitive", and the like.  It's reasonable that the Romans might've
introduced such artificial elements.

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