Timeline for How did the same perfect-tense structure become so widespread in Europe?
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9 events
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| Jan 17, 2018 at 16:17 | comment | added | Sir Cornflakes | This new system abolished with one stroke those numerous perfect forms that have become irregular. A bold claim in the view of the survival of the Passé simple in French and similar forms in Italian (still in active use in the southern dialects of Italian) | |
| Jan 19, 2015 at 21:32 | comment | added | Colin Fine | You did say that. You also said "It looks like the source might have been forms of habere ( to have)", and that is the part I was addressing. | |
| Jan 19, 2015 at 18:43 | comment | added | rogermue | Actually I said we don't know where the endings of the perfect tenses in Latin come from but it may be that they are tiny remainders if forms of habere or even a mix of habere and esse or fui. But it would be a book to show what might be in those endings and how they evolved. Anyway, they did not fall from heaven, but were logically developed by paraphrases, simple compositions of two or even three parts that somehow expressed the specific time. There is a system in the endings of the perfect tenses that is no randon result. | |
| Jan 19, 2015 at 17:52 | comment | added | Colin Fine | Yes, but what has that to do with my comment? Your answer, if I understand it correctly, suggests that the -averam etc. represents a form that contains habueram, on the basis that the -v- represents the hab-. That would not be unreasonable, except that my point is that the -v- is present in only some pluperfects: those where the perfect has a -v- infix; so there is no reason to suppose that hab- plays any part in these. | |
| Jan 18, 2015 at 21:07 | comment | added | rogermue | habuit can be shortened to buit and uit and vit and it. The Perfect with s is mostly a Perfect with an inserted s, mostly to distinguish Present as scribit and Perfect *scribit. By inserting s you get an unambiguous Perfect form and, of course, bs changes to ps and you get Perfect scripsit. | |
| Jan 18, 2015 at 20:56 | comment | added | Colin Fine | Your speculation about the pluperfect (what you call the "past perfect") does not work. The -v- in those forms is from the perfect stem (cf amavi, amavisti). Verbs which use the -s preterite in their perfect (eg scribo, scripsi) use that in their pluperfect. Your suggestion that the forms of esse are involved makes sense, but there is no reason at all to bring in habeo. | |
| Jan 18, 2015 at 18:12 | history | edited | rogermue | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jan 18, 2015 at 17:28 | history | edited | rogermue | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jan 18, 2015 at 17:14 | history | answered | rogermue | CC BY-SA 3.0 |