THE STRONG PERFECTS IN THE ROMANCE ... - Page ON

THE STRONG PERFECTS
IN THE ROMANCE LANGUAGES
(Part I)
Hugh E. Wilkinson
1. Introduction. In my earlier paper on the Vulgar Latin
(Proto-Romance) Conjugation System (Ronshu, Vol. 10) I devoted a lot of
space to the strong perfects and the related past participles, but my attention
was mainly directed to establishing what regrouping of the verbs among the
four conjugations had taken place in Proto-Romance (PR) as compared
with Classical Latin. Since writing this paper I have read other stimulating
works, notably R. de Dardel’s Le parfait fort en roman commun (Geneva,
1958) and E. G. Wahlgren’s Étude sur les actions analogiques réciproques
du parfait et du participe passé dans les langues romanes (Uppsala, 1920),
which have shown up various errors and inadequacies in my presentation. I
therefore feel the time has come to write one more paper on the Romance
verbs, this time with special reference to the strong perfects and in
particular the questions raised by Dardel. I will, at the same time, often
mention the past participles, but these to my mind present no special
problems that have not been adequately dealt with already, whereas in the
case of the perfect Dardel has brought forward a new conception which,
while hardly to be accepted in its entirety as it stands, nevertheless
challenges further investigation. In this paper I propose to examine the
various classes of strong perfects as they appear in the Romance languages
from the purely morphological point of view, to see how far I can go along
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with Dardel in his assertions, while at the same time enlarging on and
modifying my previous paper.
To define my terms, I wish to treat all the perfects except those
ending in -āvi, -īvi added to the unchanged root (I am marking the long or
short vowels only where necessary), as amāvi, sentīvi, in which all the
forms are arrhizotonic (arrhizotonic -ēvi did not survive and need not
concern us), that is, to treat those perfects in which, with a few exceptions,
certain of the forms are rhizotonic, to wit, reduplicated perfects (dedi, steti),
perfects in which the perfect stem is marked by a lengthened vowel (vīdi,
fēci), perfects with the endings added direct to the root of the verb
(prehendi, descendi), perfects in which the stem is marked by the addition
of an -s- to the root (dixi, clausi), other perfects similarly marked by the
addition of -u- (which I will write as -v- when it is consonantal; tenui, posui,
crēvi, cognōvi, quaesīvi), and those of the compounds of dare, which end
in -didi (vendidi). I am conscious that this last class has given rise to a new
weak perfect in Romance, as It. vendei, but its history is so closely linked
with that of the other strong verbs with which it originally belongs that it
needs to be considered in connection with them.
These perfects underwent many changes throughout the history of
Latin, especially in late Latin, and in the modern languages they have,
where they have not disappeared altogether, largely been replaced by weak
forms, especially in the patois. These weak forms are mostly based on the
stem of the imperfectum, but there are some formed on a special perfect
stem, as MCat. poguí, tinguí, Fr. valus, Rum. batui (these last two with a
-u- that does not appear in the imperfectum), while in French those that are
strong in origin now behave like weak perfects, so dis, conclus as finis,
valus. Italian, again, exhibits another pattern of rhizotonic perfect stem
forms alternating with arrhizotonic present stem forms in the same
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paradigm — a very curious and, one would have thought, unstable
state of affairs; it may be, as Posner suggests in her critique of
Dardel (see below), that this paradigm has been kept as it is because
it does not belong to popular speech, and so is less subject to change.
In referring to Dardel’s theory, I do not propose to
discuss it in detail; R. R. Posner has dealt with many of its defects
in her review in Romance Philology, Vol. XVII, No. 2, Nov., 1963,
and its general reception by the philological world can probably be
fairly represented by a remark of Fouché (in his Morphologie
historique du français — le verbe, new edition, Paris 1967, §156)
when he says, with reference to the -ui perfect, “... la tendance à la
réduction de -wisti a -isti paraît un fait certain, et R. de Dardel a eu
raison d’attirer l’attention sur elle. Mais comme toute tendance, elle a pu
se réaliser ou non.” In other words, to draw a general conclusion, there is
something to his theory as long as it is not pushed too far, and it is in
this spirit that I would like to pursue my own investigations.
2. Dardel’s thesis. Briefly summarised, Dardel’s contention is that the
strong perfects in Proto-Romance were like those in Italian, that is, a
distinct perfect stem was used in the creation of the rhizotonic forms,
while the arrhizotonic forms were based on the undifferentiated root;
compare It. dissi, ebbi, vidi, feci and dicesti, avesti, vedesti, facesti. He
finds the reason for this distribution in the fact that the forms which had
distinctive endings, such as bibisset, incendisti, did not need a special
stem to indicate that they belonged to the perfect paradigm. Thus in his
scheme dixisti and habuisti yielded place to *dicisti and *habisti, while
occīdi and bibi were replaced by occīsi, *bibui; dixi, habui, occīdisti and
bibisti, on the other hand, remained. In support of his thesis he quotes
many forms from late Latin and the various Romance languages, and in so
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doing provides a valuable treasure-house of material. At first, in my
reading of him, he takes a moderate standpoint, only claiming this
pattern for a certain number of verbs for which the evidence is quite
strong, but as he advances in his work he seems to get more and more
carried away by his idea, until finally he is accusing all the arrhizotonic
forms of the strong verbs in the Romance languages which show a special
perfect stem of having been re-formed on the rhizotonic forms, which
seems to me a plain case of twisting the facts to suit a theory. However,
in spite of this, there does seem to me to be enough in his theory to
warrant a closer examination.
Such an examination requires a comparative study of the forms as
they appear in the various Romance languages, and the quoting of
innumerable examples. For the sake of conserving space I hope I may
be forgiven if I do not give references for the forms quoted; these
forms will, in many cases, be found fully documented by Dardel or
Wahlgren, or else are the common property of the standard manuals, as
listed at the end of Part III of this paper. Where I have supplied a
reference, it will be because the source may not readily be found, and
even here I will content myself with only the briefest of references,
using abbreviations to direct the reader to the Bibliography. In
principle I will give the earliest forms found in a language, but if I
inadvertently quote a modern form — because it serves my purpose just
as well — I crave the reader’s indulgence.
We obviously need to start at the beginning and see what basis
there is in Latin for such a theory, that is, we need to see if there is any
evidence that the varying perfect forms found at the different stages of
Latin were ever differentiated along the lines suggested by Dardel. In so
doing it will be simplest to divide the verbs up into different classes
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according to the perfect stem, and first of all let us take the -ui class, as
it has generally been supposed that the Italian type of strong perfect
started with contrasting forms like ebbi, avesti, where the u of habui was
lost before the accent, whereas Dardel considers that a *habisti type
already existed in Latin, rightly pointing out that in words like gennaio
(ianuarium), mannaia (manuaria) the u was not lost before the accent,
its presence being indicated instead by the doubled consonant.
3. The origin of the Latin -ui (-vi) perfects. There is indeed
justification for believing that such a type may have existed in Latin
from earliest times, at least in the -vi perfects, to which I would like to
pay special attention first, at the expense of digressing somewhat from
my subject. G. Bonfante, evidently basing himself on A. A. Burger
(Études de phonologie et de morphologie latines, Neuchâtel, 1928,
which I unfortunately have not read), has shown in his “The Latin and
Romance Weak Perfect”, in Language, Vol. 17, No. 3, July, 1941, that
in the weak -vi verbs the so-called contracted forms like -āsti, -ārunt are
the original forms, and that the origin of this class of verbs is the primary
verbs with monosyllabic stems, which originally formed their perfects as
flēvi, flēsti, flēvit, flēmus, *flēstis, flērunt, or nōvi, nōsti, nōvit, nōmus,
nōstis, nōrunt. (In many cases these primary verbs show no -vi- (-ve-)
forms beside the “contracted” forms, thus only flēmus, complēsti(s),
complēssent, consuēsti(s), consuēmus; in others the -vi- forms are usual
but others are found, as strāsset, strārat, prostrāsse, sprērunt, sīris, sīrit,
trīsti. See Gaf., Lew. & Sh.) So in the first conjugation nāvi, nāsti, nāvit,
nārunt etc. changed the old -āre type *cantāi (cf. probai, calcai in App.
Prob.), cantāsti, *cantāt (cf. inritat, Lucr., fumat, Virg.), cantārunt to
cantāvi, cantāsti, cantāvit, cantārunt, and finally the -vi- (-ve-) element
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spread to all the forms (including old *cantāvĕrunt), though the older
forms continued alongside the new, and passed (with one u-form,
*cantaut) into Romance. (Here cantāvimus would be especially useful for
distinguishing the perfect from the present form.) In the same way the -īre
verbs were partly affected by sīvi, sīsti, sīvit, giving audīvi, audīsti,
audīvit, but both the -īre verbs and sinere were then influenced by the
more frequently used īre and its compounds, giving sii, siit, audii, audiit.
As with the -āre verbs, the older forms as in audī, audīsti, audīt, and
possibly desī, desīsti, desīt (1 and 3 attested in inscriptions — though
these forms might be contractions of désii, desiisti, désiit) are the ones
which survived in Romance, and also those like *audīrunt, *sīrunt, for
which classical Latin substituted audiērunt, siērunt, on the model of
iērunt; however, from sinere there are survivals of the older forms sīris,
sīrit, sīritis, sīrint, corresponding to the Romance type. (It is unlikely that
the Spanish forms -iero, -iera etc. reflect Latin -iero, -ieram etc., given
the fact that only *-īro, *-īram survive elsewhere; also, phonetically
speaking, the -i- would be likely to be absorbed one way or another, as
in mujer, pared. See also §26 below.)
With regard to the origin of the -vi element itself and its
distribution, Bonfante points out that nōvi, nōsti, nōvit (earlier gn-)
and -plēvi, -plēsti, -plēvit etc. show the same distribution of -v- forms
as the corresponding Sanskrit paradigms with 1 and 3 jajñāú, paprāú
(one may similarly compare nāvi, nāvit, from root *snā-, with Skt.
sasnāú), and that one Tocharian A paradigm also has -w-, this time in 1
only, while Armenian has -w, in 3 only. So this -v- element is
evidently not peculiar to Latin, though it met with its widest extension
there. Other such forms in Sanskrit are dadāú, tasthāú, (çrad)dadhāú,
where Latin has dedi, steti, (cre)didi without -v-, but perhaps this -u is
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the same one as is seen in the old subjunctives duim, duam, and in
Russian davat’, v-stavat’, d’evat’ as compared with dat’, v-stat’, d’et’.
English know also seems to have the same element as (g)nōvi, but
here it has been generalised in contrast not only to Latin but also to
OHG -chnāen; cf. also Rus. u-znat’, u-znavat’. In the same way we may
compare sēvi and sow (OHG sāen/sājan and sāwen; Rus. s’eyat’ and
za-s’evat’), flāvi and blow (OHG blāen), trīvi and throw (OHG
drā(j)en and drāwen), strāvi and strew/strow (OHG strawjan, strewen),
nēvi and OHG nāwan, nā(j)an, vi(ē)vi (‘twined’) and Skt. vivyāya, Rus.
vit’, za-vivat’, and find a certain parallelism between crēvi and grow
(from the root of Lat. grāmen), and sprēvi and MHG spraejen/spraewen.
These disyllabic -vi perfects were joined by those of the u-stems, as suere,
spuere, pluere (from IE roots ending in -w- widely represented also in
other language groups), which had a long ū in the perfect in Old Latin,
as plū(v)it, fū(v)i (fui will be discussed later, §32), where the -v- must
simply represent a glide as the -w- was absorbed into the u. Here we
have, corresponding to suere, sew, OHG siuwen, Skt. sīvyati, Gk.
(kas)súo, Rus. shit’, za-shivat’; to spuere, spew, OHG spīwan, Skt.
sthīvati, Gk. ptúō, Lith spiáuju, cf. Rus. plevat’; to pluere, flow, Skt.
plávate, puplāva, pupluvé, Gk. pléō < *pléwō, Rus. plyt’, plavat’,
vy-plyt’, vy-plyvat’; and to fui, from an IE root *bheu-/*bhou-, Skt.
bhávati, babhūva, Gk. phúō, péphūka, Rus. byt’, byvat’ and similar
forms in other languages. It is also possible that some of the perfects
from roots ending in -v- as cāvi (cf. Eng. show), fōvi, fāvi, were formed
simply by adding the perfect endings to an altered form of the root with
lengthened vowel, though there is another, more probable, explanation
offered (see below). All these verbs, then, set the pattern for the creation
of the weak -vi perfects of the -āre and -īre conjugations, which greatly
reinforced the originally small group of primary strong perfects.
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Besides this group of verbs in which -vi was added to a long
vowel, there was another group, the one with which we are here
concerned, in which -ui is found added to a consonant. In origin, this
-ui seems to have been the same as the -vi of nōvi, -plēvi etc., but
whereas in the above cases the -w- element was added to a
monosyllabic stem with a long vowel, in this case it was added to
disyllabic stems ending in a short vowel. Thus the -ui of the perfects
secui, domui, habui, tacui comes from *-ə-wai (with IE reduced grade
of the root), just as the -(ĭ)tus of the participles comes from *-ə-tos.
Though I can find no parallels to this quoted from other languages, it
seems reasonable to me to suppose that this -w- was added in the
same way to forms 1 and 3 of the perfect, especially when we consider
that -plē(v)-, (g)nō(v)-, strā(v)-, trī(v)-, fū(v)- are originally disyllabic
stems (Buck, §§126-7), and that the stem of the imperfectum of this
second group of verbs often ends in a long vowel (IE strong grade of
the root), as secā-, domā-, habē-, tacē-. As we have just seen, some or
all of the -vi perfects from roots ending in -v-, such as mōvi, iūvi, lāvi,
probably belong here, though they can also be explained in the same
way as cāvi above; if they go back to forms like *mowə-wai, or were
formed at a later stage by adding -ui (extracted from sec-ui, dom-ui
etc.) to the root, then they are to be analysed as mov-vi, iuv-vi, lav-vi.
(Forms in -ui among the -āre verbs, like secui, domui, disappeared,
though fossilised traces of the corresponding participles in -ĭtus
remained; see my previous paper.) Lavā- is clearly a disyllabic stem
(cf. Gk. ló(w)e-ssa), and because of this Burger, as quoted approvingly
by Bonfante, says lāvisti, mōvisti should be divided lāvi-sti, mōvi-sti,
but such disyllabic stems with a long vowel in the first syllable cannot
be traced back to IE, so I prefer the *-ə-wai interpretation. In this case
the first vowels of lāvi and mōvi would only be what is commonly
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described as “long by position” (before the doubled -vv-); lavāre/OLat.
lavere come from *lovāre/*lovere (cf. Gk. loúō < *lówō), which became
-luere in compounds (as abluere, di-), so it is easiest to imagine lav-vi
from *lov-vi (with the unaccented -ov- changed to -u- in -lui) as lautus
beside lōtus (with analogical ō for the etymological ū seen in -lūtus, cf.
lūstrum < *loustrom). *Mov-vi is required for Romance, as is *cognov-vi,
though it is not clear whether the vowel was long or short. On the other
hand the contracted forms found in compounds, as commōrunt, and the
p.p. mōtus point to mōvi. This is clearly due to the analogy of nōvi, as
Bonfante points out that there are no forms without -v-, such as *lāsti,
*fāsti, in the case of other roots ending in -v-. Perhaps mōvi, as nōvi, was
the literary form, while the common people said *mov-vi, and then
*cognov-vi. In the same way there may have been two types for the other
perfects like iūvi, fāvi; cf. late Latin expabui (i.e. expav-vi for expāvi
(either with a long vowel or written with a long vowel because this
vowel was “long by position”), and ferbui beside fervi.
If all these verbs originally followed the pattern of nōvi, then
we should have early Latin habui, *habisti, habuit, *habimus, *habistis,
*haberunt (with short e; the classical -ērunt came from conflation with
-ēre; we find an earlier fēcĕrunt in Plautus). In support of this, Dardel (p.
67) quotes Burger as saying “Le peuple a toujours fléchi sapui/sapisti.”
Bonfante also refers to this, saying that Burger sees in this the origin of
the Italian paradigm, as ebbi (earlier abbi), avesti, ebbe etc., to which it
certainly bears some resemblance, the only difference being that the ebb-
has been extended to the other rhizotonic forms, ebbero and dial.
ebbimo, which are based on late Latin hábuĕrunt, hábuimus. However,
as Dardel maintains, this conception has not been generally accepted by
others. Burger’s particular choice of sapui/sapisti would not seem to
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me to be a very happy one, as sapui is only attested from the 4th c. A.D.
(though Cicero has resipui), and sapisti can be explained as belonging to
sapi(v)i. However, though there is no great body of evidence here for
forms without -u- as there is for forms without -vi- in the other class of
verbs, there are nevertheless a few pre-classical forms such as monerim,
moneris, monerit, tenisse, which point to early monui, *monisti, tenui,
*tenisti (note that tenui is not the earliest perfect of tenēre, but tetini). It
is possible that these forms, supported by other post-classical ones,
represent the tip of the iceberg, which was the popular speech of Italy,
surviving unchanged up to the present day, in fact to my mind there
seems a strong possibility that this is so. But on the other hand one
cannot ignore the fact that in classical Latin only -ui forms are found
throughout the paradigm, and that these are the forms found in the
greater part of Romania. We must suppose, then, that if the paradigm
did originate in the above way, the average educated speaker, supported
by the grammarian, felt the need to regularise it. Just as cantāvisti,
cantāvērunt came to be felt, by writers at any rate, as the correct forms,
of which cantāsti, cantārunt were just vulgar contractions, so the -ui-
(-ue-) forms were given the blessing of grammarians, to the extent that
no other forms are found in classical Latin. What is more, we must go
on to assume that this “correct” Latin was the Latin exported outside
Italy, though with possible exceptions, as we shall see.
If this is true, it will explain, at least as far as the -ui verbs
are concerned, why Italian differs from the bulk of the Romance
languages, and we shall not find the difference surprising. It will mean
that the popular speech survived on its home ground, though it was
overlaid by another standard in literature, which also became the
colonial standard. In this case Dardel, following Burger, may have
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seized on a point of truth, but then spoilt his case by pressing it too far,
as we shall argue later. Furthermore, another possible argument for the
existence of *habisti is the later creation of forms like *bibui for bibi; if
people said habui, habuit beside *habisti, then they might be prone,
where they said bibisti, equally to say *bibui, bibuit (attested). But on
the other hand one might equally argue with Wahlgren that where one
said habēre, habitus, habui, one might come to say bibere, bibitus,
*bibui.
4. Later developments; -i for -ui, and vice versa. When it comes to
later occurrences of -i forms for -ui, Dardel provides several examples.
It needs to be stated at this point that he has divided up the forms he
quotes according to whether they are rhizotonic or arrhizotonic, with a
special category for the forms in -(u)eram, -(u)erit etc., which might
have been accented either way, in the hopes of finding some pattern to
support his theory. Here he indulges in some very involved speculation,
but ultimately the Romance languages seem to have uniformly accented
hábueram as díxeram. (In this case, Spanish and Portuguese most probably
have adopted the -ederam ending, as did Provençal and Catalan later, thus
accounting for the paroxytone accentuation; see below §§6, 26.) I myself
have reassembled his examples according to the individual verbs, and am
bound to say that I find the picture so confused as to supply little
support for the idea that the u or s stem suffix tended to be dropped
when the ending alone was sufficient to indicate the function.
However, in this instance most of the examples given (from late
Latin sources) belong to the same category in Dardel’s classification.
These are colerunt (with the short e of Proto-Romance), occulerat,
studerunt, vomeris, vomerit (also (e)vomit), ponerit, tenerit (and
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detenissemus, Italy, 10th c.), volerit (and volestis), nolerit, poterit,
poterint, and possibly also poterunt, poterant (these, and poterit,
confusable with the future and imperfect). Besides these, there are
the parallel forms nexi and nexui, and contexit, conteximus beside
texui, of which more later (§13). Of these, tenerit, volerit and poterit
(Lex Rom. Utin., 9th c.) and similar forms are of especial interest
because some of the forms of many of the later languages point to
*tēni, *voli, *poti. It will also be seen that as *potebo, *potebam (cf.
potibat, in Tardif’s Cartons des Rois, M. & T., p. 200) took over the
roles of potero and poteram, these latter (and perhaps potessem,
quoted by Buck as “rare”, cf. pre-classical potisset, potesse) could
have survived as alternatives to potuero, potueram and potuissem.
Anyway, all in all, we have here some slight evidence of -ui forms
losing their u, though under what conditions is not clear. If we accept
the evidence of OLat. monerim, moneris, all these must serve as
examples to corroborate Dardel’s theory.
Dardel finds stronger evidence on which to base his theory
in another class of verbs ― those which originally had no perfect
suffix and came to adopt the u. These can be divided into various
categories. Firstly there are those mentioned just now which had -vi
in classical Latin, where the v probably stood for a doubled
consonant, and so we have later pabuit, expabui for pāvi (= *pavvi),
and ferbui for fervi; we may also mention here the trisyllabic solui
found for solvi in poetry, though the more typical late forms for this
verb have s, as absolsi, solserit, solserunt, transolsisse. In the next
class, -ui is found added to the present stem to replace an -ui or -vi
perfect differently formed; so we have sapui, saupisset (Lex Rom.
Utin.), (con)terui, terueris, atteruisse, linuit, sinui, sinuerunt,
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(de)sinuerit, desinuisse, disserui (for dissēvi), conseruerit (for
consēverit), incumbui, delui, abolui, adolui. In addition, -i and other
forms are also found, so terii, lini/linīvi, linistis, sinissent,
accumsimus, spernerunt, cognoscessem (Gl. Leidensis), and praerepsi,
sorbsi, elexi for praeripui, sorbui, elicui. It will be seen that with the
forms delui, abolui, adolui for delēvi, abolēvi, adolēvi the weak -ēvi
perfects virtually died out. Another substitution that we may
mention here, though it belongs to an earlier period, is that of posui
for the original perfect posīvi/posii/posi, which ponere inherited as
a compound of sinere. This last form is presumably a contraction of
posii, but I have the feeling that it soon became treated as a regular
-si perfect, which is what the Romance languages require (with the
long o of ponere), and that these parallel forms gave rise to the
forms quaesīvi/quaesii beside quaes(s); (which became regardeed as
a contracted form). The Romance languages in the same way require
rhizotonic quaesi, and the noun quaestus, which evidently reflects
the old participle, points to an original -si perfect for this verb; this
gives us, incidentally, another point of contact with ponere, for
which the poets use another p.p. postus for positus. (Quaesīvi could
alternatively have been taken from quaeso < *quaesso, conjugated
as capesso.) If posi was a popular form, then posi/posui,
posisti/posuisti etc. must have lived alongside. In this case we might
also suppose *sapi < sapii beside sapīvi/sapui, in which case Burger
would be justified in his sapui/sapisti. Another -ui for -īvi required
by Romance is *petui for petīvi (Sard. petti), and conversely -īvi is
sometimes found for -ui in late Latin, as tenīvi (Gaf.), penetīvit (M.
& T.), so there may have been some slight connection felt between
-ui and -īvi. The compounds of īre are in a similar position; for
these, -ii is the usual perfect, and -īvi is hardly found, but on the
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other hand -i and -it for -ii, -iit are not unusual; as an early example,
a Christian inscription (M. & T.) has trasit. As the accent was
presumably on the first syllable, forms like peri, perit would
approximate the ordinary -i perfect (and perit would be
indistinguishable from the present), and so it is that we have obuit
for obit, and also obuerunt, while the Romance languages point to
other -ui perfects in this class.
In a third category, distinct from those verbs which have
either an unmarked pefect stem or one marked by the addition of u or
s, are the reduplicating perfects, which could re-form in any of those
three ways — with -ui, -si or just -i added to the present stem; so we have
here the new forms canuit, canuerit/canerit, currit, currerit, curristi,
currisset, currimus, currerunt, currere/accursit, incurserit (Dardel also
gives corruerunt, but this surely belongs to the verb corruere; however,
it is quite conceivable that corrui came to be felt as a -ui perfect of currere,
with corrutus as a p.p.), parcui/parsi, fallit/falierit, tuli/abstoli/tulli/tolli
(but cf. offersi for obtuli), repulerit/repelluit/repellerant/repulsi, pulserat,
expulsisse/expuluerit, adpulserit/appulluerit, compulseris, perculsi, reculsi,
poscuerit, tegeris/tanxi, adtinxit/tangit, contingent, adtingerit/
continguisse (some only show -si forms, as panxi, inpinxerit, punxi,
pu(n)xeris etc.).
Then there are the verbs with a lengthened vowel in the perfect,
which may add -ui or -si to either the perfect or the present stem, or use
the plain present stem; these are deguerit/coguit/coxerunt/agerit,
agerunt, legueris/lexerit/collexet (Lex Rom. Utin.), collexerat, colleximus,
collexistis etc./elexit/neglegerit, neglegisset, diligeritis, dirrupuerunt,
corrupuerit, erupuit, prorupuerunt/erumperunt, praerumperit, rumpisti,
corrumpimus/rupsi (Bour., §91), dirempsi, convicuit/convincuit/
14

vincisti, convincerunt, confringeram, capui(t), capuerunt, capuisset,
fecuit/facerit, iacui/adicerit, convenuit, subvenuit, venuerit (Lex Sal. —
surprising in view of Fr. vin(g), unless this reflects *vēnui; see the dial.
forms in 6c), Catalan Lat. residui (R.-G.). We may also add here
derelinquit, derelinqueris, delinquerunt, relinquerit, relinquerunt. Dardel
notes that there is a distinct dearth of forms that lost their -s- with which to
support his thesis, some of them clearly re-formed on the present stem;
among examples quoted are coniungerint, viverit, both in Gregory of
Tours, and extruderit in the Lex Sal. See §§17, 24.)
Finally there are the verbs which had no distinguishing mark for
the perfect stem, which may also add -ui: convertuit, avertuit (also
versisse), bibuit, pinsuit, lambuit, lambuerunt. For some of these verbs
only variant -si forms are found, as in the case of vulsi and its
compounds beside velli, and versi for verri. (The perfects formed by the
addition of -sui will be discussed later, §13.)
It will be seen that these verbs provide excellent examples of
variant perfect forms, though again without any indication of any
special distribution among the parts of the verb. However, unfortunately
for our purposes, very few of these verbs survived into the daughter
languages, though those that have are important. All we can say, on
the evidence of the late Latin forms, is that the variety of forms might
conceivably have led to a situation where certain forms had certain
functions assigned to them.
As far as the creation of the new forms goes, verbs with past
participles in -sus were likely to create -si perfects, while those with -tus
might do so if there were similar models to follow (panxi–pa(n)ctus,
punxi–punctus as iunxi–iunctus, collexi–collectus as neglexi–neglectus,
and conversely neglēgi as collēgi), or might turn to -ui on the model of
tenui–tentus, docui–doctus. It is also to be noted that past participles in
15

-ĭtus tended to develop for -ui perfects, on the model of future participles
such as caniturus, bibiturus, nasciturus, moriturus, ruiturus, so bibitus,
parcitus (with parsus matching parsi), tollitus, impulitus, vincitus,
lambitus, with traces of the approaching change to -ūtus as well.
5. The -ui perfects which survived in Romance. The chief verbs to
have survived to later times with -ui perfects or the equivalent are: iacere,
placere, tacere, licere, nocere, decere (slight traces in It.), habere, debere,
movere, calere, dolere, olere, solere, valere, parere, tenere, sedere, (in
part videre, implere, (sub)monere), cadere, capere, sapere, posse, velle
(all showing -ēre infinitives on the whole); fremere, gemere, tremere,
timere, vomere, (in part premere, redimere), recipere and the other
-cipere verbs, eripere, attribuere, battuere, fut(t)uere, consuere,
conspuere, bibere, fervere, pluere, rumpere, lambere, vincere, (in part
sequi, vertere), cognoscere, crescere, pascere, experg(isc)ere, irasci,
nasci, miscere, texere, (in part vivere), colere, molere, (in part tollere,
solvere, volvere, frangere, legere, eligere, trahere, traicere, credere,
currere), cernere, sternere, with infinitives in -ĕre for the most part
(timēre, miscēre were largely attracted); and in the -īre conjugation
venīre, with a few other verbs that show isolated forms. Of these, as we
have seen above, those with classical -ui perfects remain largely
unchanged in late Latin (except for, e.g., forms like tenerit, volerit,
poterit), in fact, considering the amount of fluctuation in general, they
form a very stable block, so we would be justified in expecting -ui
forms in the daughter languages. The late Latin fluctuations are found
for the most part in the verbs which adopted -ui forms later, so here
we might expect a variety of forms in the Romance languages.
16

6. The verbs with -ēre infinitives and -ui perfects. The actual facts of
the Romance languages largely bear out these conclusions. I propose to
take the -ui perfects in groups, starting first with the verbs with -ēre
infinitives in PR (for the allied verbs in -cipere (compounds of capere),
also eripere, see §10) and including with them venire, which was closely
associated with tenere in many regions, but leaving aside sedere, cadere
and videre for consideration later with credere. I will also postpone monere
for consideration together with manere in §31.
a) Rumanian. Taking Rumanian first, we find here that all these
verbs have weak -ui perfects and p.ps. in -ut, as plăcui, plăcut, except
veni. This has the old perf. vene/vine, now replaced by venii, with p.p.
venit (as the Latin venire was an intransitive verb there was no p.p.
corresponding to the fut.p. venturus). There is no trace of *venut, unless
it can be seen in the contracted dialectal p.p. vint/vent. (There is no
trace either of *vēnui, as this verb did not undergo influences from
tenere here, as it did it in other areas.) It is not clear how the Rumanian
-ui perfect came to be formed (influence of fui (see below, §32), or of
the p.p.?), but it is sufficient for our purposes to assume that it is
somehow the modern successor of the Latin -ui perfect. The actual Latin
perfects, placui, iacui, tacui would have become *placiŭ etc., with the
development seen in cere, cet from quaerere, quietu, forms that were
confusable with the present.
b) Italian. In Italian we can find the -ui forms (matched by p.ps.
in -uto) giacqui, piacqui, tacqui (with ORoman p.p. tacuto for taciuto),
nocqui, ebbi/abbi/Sic. appi, OIt., dibbi and debbe, movvi (M.-L.; cf. also
ONeap. p.p. muoppeto), dolvi, parvi, tenni, venni, OIt. cappissero
17

(Mon.), seppi/sappi, OIt., Sic. potti, Umbr. poddi, Cors. pobbi, volli,
valli (Dar., p. 80, Rohlfs, §582), but always with the arrhizotonic forms
formed on the root, as giacesti, avesti, tenesti, OIt. venesti (now venisti
with the i of venire), except in Old Aquilan, Old Roman and other old
dialectal forms such as cappissero, hábbera/(h)ábera (condit.), ebbesti,
appisse, sappessemo, dippisse, plaquesse, iacquesse, pótteri, pótera,
tennesse, sosténnera, vennesse, convénnera. We have already seen that
compared with the possible primitive Latin type Italian differs in having
a strong form 6 also, as ebbero, and the same situation is found also in
form 4 in the dialects, which have forms like ébbimo/ábbimo/áppimu,
sáppimu, póttimu, tínnimu, vínnimu (Dar., p. 96, following Rohlfs, §566),
with which can be compared Sard. appimus, that is, the rhizotonic forms
are all strong. The same position is found dialectally in the -si perfects,
and here the antiquity of a form like díssimo seems to be corroborated by
ORum. zísemŭ, and cf. Sard. lessimus; furthermore these forms agree
with the accentuation of Lat. hábuimus (late), díximus, and seem clearly
to be strongholds of resistance against the tendency to change to
arrhizotonic form 4. As regards the forms like ebbesti, sappessemo,
iacquesse, opinions differ, some explaining them as being formed on the
analogy of the strong forms, but I myself do not see why we cannot
allow a continuation of the classical Latin state of affairs. After all,
especially in the case of the imperfect subjunctive, if forms like giacessi
once become established, there is little reason for them to be associated
with giacqui, as the imperfect subjunctive has no semantic connection
with the preterite and tends to be associated rather with the present
subjunctive, as in Catalan above all, where the stems interact. In most
cases — and this applies to ébbimo too — once the weak form is established,
there is no return to the strong form, and in fact in some areas avesti has
led to avei, avé, averono. Anyway, we will return to this problem of the
18

alternation in Italian after we have had a look at the other languages.
Also, the difference between dolvi, parvi on the one hand, and volli,
valli on the other is one which we will consider later in connection with
French and Provençal.
Besides these -ui perfects, there are other types in Italian; we find
that the verbs in -lĕre tended towards -si perfects, following sciogliere,
sciolsi (cf. Lat. solsi), cogliere, colsi (and collessi, cf. Lat. collexi), and
the similarly attracted togliere, tolsi. So, following the same pattern, we
have in the -lēre verbs calsi, dolsi, valsi, volsi, and similarly mossi,
parsi, and dial. tensi, vensi (with p.p. vensuto), for which models can
be found in verbs like vivere, correre and porre. (Cf. also the
coincidence of NIt. p.ps. volto < *volĭtus, dolto < dolĭtus with sciolto, colto,
tolto.) The other tendency is the one referred to in the case of avei
above, that is, the change to the weak -ei type, which has given dovei,
solei, potei in the standard language, and -ei or -etti forms for all the
other verbs in the dialects. This tendency is especially strong in Italian,
evidently because it is favoured by the existence of the weak
arrhizotonic forms of the strong perfects.
c) French. In French, -ui perfects and p.ps. in -u are the
normal for nearly all these verbs, which can be split up into three
categories. In the perfects of the verbs with stems ending in c, v, b, p,
d, t, this final consonant has become absorbed in the u of the ending,
and the result, in central French, is paradigms like oi, oüs, out, oümes,
oüstes, ourent, ploi, ploüs, plout, toi, toüs, tout, soi, soüs, sout etc., dui,
deüs, dut, nui, noüs, nut, jui, geüs, jut, mui, moüs, mut, lut etc. (in the
p.ps.the consonants were lost). Those ending in l, r have perfects with
accented endings, as valui, valus, valu(t), parui, parus, paru(t) etc. (see
19

elow). Vouloir, tenir (also early tenoir), venir have voil, volis, volt,
volimes, volistes, voldrent, tin(g), tenis, tint etc., vin(g), venis, vint etc.
Other types are found, and of these let me first mention here the
attraction of the -cere verbs to the ducere, trahere type, especially of
nuire, which, following luire (which created a new perf. luis, luisis, luist,
beside luisi, luisis, luisit, formed on the inf. luisir), has developed nuis,
nuisis, nuist forms; plaire and taire, too, have forms like plaisis, taisis,
while for gesir Fouché gives both jui, geüs and gis, gesis (as sis, sesis
below, based on the semantic affinity) paradigms. Dardel would see the
origin of these -sis forms in Latin forms like *placisti, *nocisti, which
he regards as the PR forms; while he cannot be disproved, his case also
cannot be proved unless it can be shown positively that a particular
author conjugated ploi, plaisis, plout or nui, nuisis, nut. Against this, it
seems to me clear that any writer who was using such a conjugation
would be unlikely to revert to ploi, ploüs, plout, nui, noüs, nut, as there
would not have been any verbs in which strong forms alternated with
-üs to serve as models for such a paradigm (in this case he would also
have been pairing the similar oi and dui with *avis and *devis). So
forms like plaisis, nuisis, even if they go back to PR (which is in fact
doubtful), can never have been more than alternatives for ploüs, noüs,
which can themselves be traced back to placuisti, nocuisti.
With regard to these central French forms ploüs, noüs, deüs etc., I
agree with the explanation that the u of the arrhizotonic forms came
about through the rounding effect on an original i of the w which we
suppose was present in the PWR forms (seen also in oi for *awi and
dui for *diwi), rather than through the workings of the p.ps. in -u. It is
doubtful if there were any perfects and p.ps. with the pattern -u-, -u at
the time this process took place, and the example of other conjugations,
20

like portai, portas etc. with p.p. porté, or vendi(et) and p.p. vendu,
would not have provided a stimulus in the direction of having the same
vowel in the perfect and p.p., the -ir conjugation being the only one to
do so. (In this I follow Pope and Fouché rather than Wahlgren and
Dardel.)
In the northern dialects we have instead the forms au, awis,
aut, plaut, taut, saut etc. and diu, dewis, diut, giut, liut etc., where
neither the stem vowel nor the vowel of the ending has been rounded
by the w as in central French (though other forms duïst, nu, nuïs, nut
are cited; Fou., p. 320, Wahl., p.163), and the existence of these forms
is for me another argument against the influence of the p.p. (The auret,
awret of Eulalie and St. Léger also belong here, and do not go back to
*háberat as Dardel (p. 86) suggests.) The forms awis, dewis are also
found written auis, deuis, and paralleled by promouist (Fou., p. 343), so
that it is not clear whether the pronunciation /w/ or /v/ is intended
(Dardel (p. 40) also raises the question that the w of powissent might
be a glide consonant — cf. the v of pouvoir ); however, as the explicit
spellings with w are found, most grammarians seem to accept this as
indicating the pronunciation /w/, in which case we can assume that, as
in central French, all these perfects go back to -ui forms throughout the
paradigm. (I note that a similar modern Franco-Provençal form with a w,
pwišo, is quoted by Dardel (pp. 40, 125), presumably resulting from
semi-vocalisation of the o.)
In both the centre and the north the verb pouvoir stands apart
from the others in having weak forms like po(d)is, po(d)ist (d = /ð/). In
pursuit of his theory, Dardel once again sees a clear example of the
inheritance of Latin arrhizotonic forms without u alternating with
rhizotonic forms with u, and says that they were later supplanted by the
21

standard forms like poüs, poüst. But once again I cannot feel that his case
is necessarily indisputable. It is a well-known fact that beside pout,
pourent the forms pot, porent were found, and likewise ot, orent, sot,
sorent etc., and I would like to say that one should not exclude the
possibility of two complete inherited paradigms, one poi, poïs, pot, porent
etc. (NFr. the same) and the other poi, poüs, pout, pourent etc. (NFr. pou,
powis, pout, pourent, as given by Pope), which then got confused and set
the pattern for the change of out, ourent, sout, sourent etc. to ot, orent,
sot, sorent. (It is interesting that the Chanson de Roland has pout and
poüst throughout, whereas Chrétien in general uses pot, poïst. In the case
of forms like poüs, powis one has to suppose an intermediate *poðw-
which became *poww-, pow-, just as oüs, awis arose from *aβwis,
*awwis, and ploüs, plawis (attested?) from *plaγwis, *plawwis.) Once
again, I doubt if any clear case can be made either way, unless we can find
writers who consistently used either poi, poïs, pot or poi, poüs, pout, but
anyway there is a chance that pouvoir was like vouloir and tenir in
having paradigms with and without u (see below), though whether this
loss of u goes back to Latin forms like poterit, volerit, tenerit is another
matter. In the case of potui, potuisti the u could have been absorbed,
possibly, in a different way from that seen in the other verbs (that is, the
ones with Proto-Fr. *-ww- that I have just described), seeing that this is
the only verb in -tere (cf. the Spanish and Portuguese forms); clearly pot
(without diphthongisation), if inherited, could not have come from a form
*potit, and we would have rather to imagine *pottit or *poutit or Proto-Fr.
*poððit (cf. vouloir below). In conclusion, let me emphasise that French
usually has the same type throughout the paradigm, whether with or
without -u-, and does not follow the Italian pattern; we shall see a similar
parallel development of different types when come to vouloir, tenir,
venir.
22

The -lēre verbs basically have weak -ui forms (to be discussed
under parui) as valui, valus, valu(t), and so dolui, solui, chalut, olurent,
later followed by voulu(s) (first found in E. French). But vouloir
generally has voil, volis, volt etc., and also vols, volsis, volst etc., s-forms
being found especially in the imp. subj., and similar strong forms so(l)t,
dout are also found, as well as arrhizotonic forms in -is, -sis etc., such as
valist, valsist, chalsist, from which new weak forms like vali, chalit,
cheusit developed, replacing the rhizotonic forms. It is generally
supposed that the s-forms started with vols, and then spread analogically
to the other verbs; this development is parallel to that seen in It. volsi,
valsi, etc. Valist, valissent point to a perfect as *vail, *valt, which is not
attested but would parallel voil, volt, solt, dout. With these last forms
we are faced with the same problem as in the case of poi, poïs, pot.
Once again Dardel sees the alternating pattern, as volui, *volisti, voluit,
and imagines *volli < volui; this last is a reasonable assumption, as we
might posit *vollui as *tollui (see §14), with the u then lost in both verbs
after the double consonant. But we can as well imagine *volli, *vollisti
(rather than *volisti), *vollit as the basis of the French forms, and this
accords better with the generally observable French pattern, making
Dardel’s alternation unnecessary. Finally, for vouloir there is one more
northern form, modern Walloon vôve, backed up by older vowist,
vowissent (and a modern fôve from falloir; Fouché, §162). If these forms
are not analogical, on powist, powissent, they point to an -ui perfect with
vocalisation of the l. Thus it looks as if we have, in voil, voulu(s), vôve,
three different resolutions of Lat. volui, each with a complete paradigm
based on u-forms throughout.
The case of tenir, and with it venir, is parallel to that of vouloir in
that we find a threefold development. The basic central French forms are
23

tin(g), tenis, tint, and vin(g), venis, vint etc. (ting, ving, like voil, with
palatalisation before a following vowel), with other forms like tensis,
vensis (this time to be referred to the action of prendre, which has prensis),
EFr. tenui, venust, NFr. tinve, vinve (with development as in the adj.
tenv(r)e from tenuis). The parallelism between the forms must mean that
tenui and vēni influenced each other, producing the pairs *tēnui/*tēni and
*vēnui/vēni (the long e’s being required to produce the i’s in French). As
we have seen, Latin has examples of forms with and without u for both
verbs, and vin(g), vinve, at least, can be traced directly back to them, so we
do not have the problem of speculating what happened to the u. Once again,
French keeps the paradigms with and without u separate. Here Dardel, in
quoting as usual the contrast between ting, “dont la voyelle a été influencée
par celle de 1 ving”, and tenis, does not explain whether he thinks ting
comes from *tēnni < tēnui, but evidently wishes to convey this impression;
if so, then I would counter that by the same token tenis should come from
*tēnnisti < tēnuisti. (For another parallel to EFr. tenui, venust see semonui
under the -si perfects below, §31, which may go back to Lat. submonui.)
Paroir gives parui, parus, paru(t) etc. and p.p. paru/pareü, and
courre follows the same conjugation. It will be seen that in French this
conjugation is typical of the stems ending in a liquid or nasal
(criembre/cremoir similarly has cremui, p.p. cremu), and from the point of
view of French alone it may be said that these weak perfects were formed
under the influence of the p.ps. (this would seem to be the natural
explanation of the regional developments voulu(s) (later to become the
standard), tenui, venust), aided by the weak forms like oüs, poüs and also,
perhaps, by fui, fus, fut (see below, §32). But when one looks at the -rere
verbs (parēre, currere, quaerere) in Provençal, Gascon and Catalan, one is
struck by the fact that they have developed special forms as Prov. parec,
correc, querec, with corresponding p.ps. paregut/parut, corregut, queregut
24

(see §§12, 31). Also, as we have seen above, Italian has the unusual -vi
forms parvi, dolvi (Dardel also gives corvi (p. 80) — though elsewhere (p.
102) he says *currui had no successor in Italian — and the p.p. currutu is
found in dialects) in contrast to volli, valli, and for -lēre, -nēre verbs Old
Catalan (Majorcan) also has calech, prevalech, tenech. It would therefore
seem conceivable that over a wide area (including French) the -ui
underwent a special development after a liquid, probably producing a glide
vowel before the u, which came to have the accent placed on it, that is,
párui > párəwi > parəwi > parúi, cf. *dewi > dui. It is even possible that
the same thing happened in Rumanian to all the -ui verbs. In this case the
p.ps. paregut etc. would be formed from the perfect (as were all the Prov.
and Cat. p.ps. in this class), and so also the Fr. pareü, while Fr. paru, Prov.
parut represent the older type. However, in the case of French I have seen
no perfect forms like *pareüs, *coreüs quoted which would lend weight to
my theory (see, however, cadere below, §7). There are no -si forms for
paroir, but encourre seems to have had some, to judge from Dardel’s
encursist (p. 115) and the p.p. encours (God.).
In addition to all the above forms there are several weak forms
found in Eastern French documents, such as the sermons of St. Bernard and
Gregory’s commentaries on Ezekiel, and in Burgundian, Lyonnese etc.,
which follow the EFr. vendei type. Such forms are volest, vuillest, doillest,
appartenest, revinnerent, poeront, havest, avesse (Wahl., pp. 105-6; Dar., p.
49). The problem here is whether they are all entirely new formations based
on the present stem, or whether there is a possible connection with *habisti
etc.; vuillest, doillest clearly are new forms based on the stem that appears
in the present subjunctive. Other examples from other kinds of verbs are
diet and diest (beside disest), aemplissest and soraamplisest, apasset
(beside nasquet), and ceindeirent, which are clearly derived from the
present stem; besides this, many strong and weak forms are found together,
25

thus trassest and sostraest, disest and diest (though Dardel would say the
former represents *dicisset; sostraest and diest seem to follow the pres.
subj. stems), and this not only in the arrhizotonic forms but where the
traditional forms are rhizotonic, as ardet/arst, matet/mist, quaret/quist;
enleisest is a further example of a strong arrhizotonic form.
Franco-Provençal also has many similar forms: Dardel (p. 125) quotes
modern pwišo, deišo, vališo, ulišo, šaešo, piaizisse and old aest, while the
texts printed by Bec have preterites venit, veniront, tenit, ayit, muit, and
subjunctives puit, volit, volissant. On the other hand there are the strong
forms (condit.) ore, deuperant, souran (Dar., p. 88), ot, ouront, ousso, usse,
(condit.) auret, por(r)et, pourret (Bec), u, dyu/devu, pu, su/sapu (Wahl., pp.
220-1). Cf. also biuront (Bec) as against bevešo/beišo (Dar., p. 125) from
boire. While there is not a clear-cut contrast here between strong rhizotonic
forms and weak arrhizotonic ones, as Dardel would like it, still the fact that
there has been such a swing here over to weak forms, with the use of the
vowel e (which later gave way to i in some areas), makes me wonder
whether there were not perhaps weak arrhizotonic forms in use in this area
from earliest times, alongside the strong ones. It will be seen that this area
is contiguous to Italy and the Rhaeto-Romance-speaking area, and we shall
find that the latter agrees with Italy in the use of weak arrhizotonic forms,
so it may be that Dardel’s conception holds good for just this part of France,
which is further linked to Italy and Switzerland by the preference for e over
i. (The south-western dialects also have e, but in this they resemble
Provençal, and they do not show the same extension of weak forms.)
d) Provençal. When we come to Provençal we find that nearly all
these verbs have the perfect in -c, -guist, -c etc., which the grammarians
seem to agree in attributing to phonetic development from *-ww- (or *-γw-)
< -cu-, extended to all the verbs of this class; so ac (and aic), aguist, ac,
26

aguem, aguetz, agron, and similarly plac, jac, dec, moc, noc, poc, lec/lic,
valc, volc, and tinc, tenguist, tenc, vinc, venguist, venc, with the same stem
consistently throughout the paradigm. In the case of tazer, Wahlgren gives
tac, but Anglade gives tais and queries tac; this verb was not so common
anyway, being challenged by calar. The verbs without -c, -g- are caber,
saber, which have caup, caubist etc., saup, saubist etc., with anticipation of
the u but no absorption of the consonant. The p.ps. similarly end in -gut,
inherited in some cases, as plagut, jagut, nogut, and then extended to the
others, as Wahlgren says, on the proportion plac:plagut, ac:agut; traces of
earlier forms are found, as avut, mentabut, parut, venut, and, for another
verb, (es)molut. Parec, paregut have been mentioned above. Saber makes
sabut, also saubut under the influence of the perfect; for caber Anglade
only gives cabit, from the inf. cabir (cf. It. capere/capire), but the modern
dialects have ca(u)bu(t) and similar u-forms. For the -c, -g-verbs, the
modern dialects have forms developed out of the old, with perfect -guère,
p.p. -gut and similar forms, though sometimes the stem of the present has
intruded, as in plaseguère, plaiguère beside plaguèri. Poder is interesting
in having modern pousquère/pousquèi, p.p. pouscu, with the stem of the
present subjunctive, beside regular pouguère, pougu; this, and similar
Gascon and Catalan forms, will be examined later (§23). The remarkable
thing to note about Provençal is the lack of forms based on the root of the
verb; Dardel has, it is true, dug up an isolated imp. subj. tenes, but this is
not a representative Provençal form. He also quotes sabes and sabessa,
which seem allied to the Gascon and Catalan forms, but otherwise the
uniformity is almost monolithic, until we come to Gascon.
e) Gascon. Here the position is somewhat confused by a special
phenomenon peculiar to Gascon, which is the use of the vowels o or u to
27

form the weak perfect in these and other verbs. However, the evidence is
almost conclusive beyond doubt that these vowels were substituted for an
earlier e to avoid confusion with the imperfect which is, unusually, formed
in e, and that their origin is to be found in fui, fost, fo etc. (see below, §32).
One piece of evidence for this is that in the areas bordering Languedoc,
where -ia survives in the imperfect, the original e is found in the perfect. In
the case of this class of verbs, as in Provençal, the forms derived from the
Latin -ui perfect have a g in the older language (the modern language has
re-formed the perfect on the present stem), and those without this
distinguishing mark may be presumed in all likelihood to have come from
forms without Latin u, even if the ending in Gascon contains o or u. Thus
examples of Latin -ui perfects are 1 pogui, 3 pogo, subj. pogos/pogues (and
also 3 poscoc, subj. poscossen, modern pouscoui, as Provençal), 3 plago, 6
plagon, 3 mogo, 6 mogon, subj. magos/moguos, 1 aguy, 2 agust, 3 ag/ago,
6 hagro/hagon, subj. agos, 3 dego, subj. degues/degos, 1 (ar)thiencu, 3
tenc/tengo, 6 tengo(re)n, subj. tengos, 1 binc/viencu, 3 venco/bingo, 6
bengeren/convengoren, subj. vengos, subj. valgossen, 3 bolg/bolge/bougo,
6 volgoren, subj. bolgos, 6 comparegoren; p.ps. pogut, yagut, plagut,
mogut/magut, agut, degut, tingut/contengut, vengud/biengut, balgut, bougut.
Here it will be seen that there are a few early strong forms, as ag, hagro,
but most of the forms have added to them the new arrhizotonic o or u
endings, or, in a few cases, e, as in bengeren, bolge. Forms without Latin u
are podessem, podesen, podo, podora, podos, movessen, havo, sabo, sabom,
sabora, sabossi, balos, valossan, volu/boluy, bolt (Dar., p. 44)/volo,
voloren/volon, bolossen/bolessan, paros, with p.ps. podut, aut, sabut,
volut/bolut. It will be seen that, as in the case of Provençal, the majority of
verbs have -g- forms; those that have others have them in addition to the
-g- forms, with both sets of forms occurring throughout the paradigm, as in
French, with the exception of saber. In the case of this verb and the -cipere
28

verbs, a comparison with Catalan below will show that the lack of any form
like saub- with anticipation of the u does not necessarily imply that these
forms did not come from the Latin -ui paradigm. For the rest, the forms
without g recall Fr. avesse, poïs, valis, voil, volis without u (though the l of
Gasc. volu, volo must come from a Latin form with a single l, as -ll- gives
Gasc. r, showing that it is taken from the present stem), so that here we
may be faced with a more widespread duplication of forms than in French
(but originally limited to poder, voler, valer ?), both sets of forms conceiv-
ably inherited from Proto-Romance, and both in use concurrently. Later,
with the replacement of e by o/u in the weak perfects, for example, rendo,
bendo, this latter form of perfect with the o/u added to the present stem
became the dominant type, and so the -g- perfects were remodelled, giving
the modern forms like poudoui, bouloui, plasoui, Béarn. aboui. Paros
possibly followed the example of corro, toro (tollere), which correspond to
Fr. corret (EFr.), tollit, and will be discussed below (§§12, 14, 31).
f) Catalan. The position in Catalan almost exactly reproduces
that in Provençal, with the old paradigm ac, aguist, ac, aguem, aguets,
agren, later agueren (adopting the -ederunt ending, as did Spanish, see g)
below) and the modern hagui, hagueres, hagué, haguérem, haguéreu,
hagueren, with the weak endings throughout and the extension of -er- as in
Provençal; so also plac, jac, dec, moc, noc, (l)lec, valc, volc, solc, olc, tinc,
vinc, later replaced by weak forms; the -gr- of agren is also found in old
pluperfects, as agra, valgra, volgra. Poder has, besides poc, poguist etc.,
subj. 4 pusquessem (R.-G.) with the extension of the pres. subj. stem;
García de Diego also gives the modern p.ps. poscut/puscut. For this verb
Dardel also quotes Huber’s grammar for a modern perf. podí beside poguí;
the other grammarians do not refer to it, and it seems to be the only verb in
29

this class to have a perfect without g. However, this need not surprise us in
view of the French and Gascon forms, but in this case it seems to be a new
formation. (We can dismiss Dardel’s avessi from Alghero (p. 146) as a
clear Italianism.) Parech, valech, prevalech, calech, tenech we have
referred to in c) above, and they (or casech from caure) seem to have
provided a model for plaech (Fou. R.), and aeg (R.-G.), which seems to
belong to haver. This verb also has the old p.p. aut beside (h)agut.
Catalan, like Gascon, differs from Provençal in having a weak
perfect based on the verb root for saber, caber. There are a few old strong
forms, however. Badía Margarit gives 3 sap, and Russell-Gebbett has
instances of 3 saub and subj. saubessen in a document copied from a
Roussillonese original, and 1 sub and a substantival participial form sobud,
both in a document of the 11th c. with conservative characteristics. Gili (p.
127) also has an infinitive sauber used substantivally. The occurrence of 3
sap beside saub inclines me to believe that in Catalan, as in Gascon, the
tendency was not to anticipate or metathesise the u of Lat. sapui, with the
result that the weak perfect was developed early to avoid confusion with
the present; in this case a form like sabés would come from sapuissem, and
not *sapissem. The p.p. is usually sabut. Caber only has weak cabí, p.p.
cabut. Tenir, venir have old tenc(h), venc(h), and p.ps. tengut, vengut, but
in the perfect the stems ting-, ving-, with i, are also commonly found in the
old language, probably introduced from the pres. subj. rather than reflecting
an old mutation; the modern language regularly has tinguí, tingut, vinguí,
vingut, to avoid confusion with -tendre, vendre (there is confusion with
-tenyer, -tendre, however; see below, §§18, 30). For venir García de Diego
also gives vin, venist, ven, venim, venis (no references), and
Russell-Gebbett has an example of 3 reflexive venesen (but I wonder if this
is a misreading of vencsen, with the usual velar, as seen in the vengra in the
30

next line), while a document from the Pamplona area in a language similar
to Catalan has venissen (G. & H., No. 72; cf. No. 96, tiengutz in the same
language). These forms seem to reflect Lat. vēni, as do the Spanish and
Portuguese ones, rather than *vēnui. All in all, we may say in sum that
basically Latin -ui survived in Catalan throughout the paradigm.
g) Spanish. In Spanish there is great variety. To take poder first, as
Dardel does, the original OSp. forms are pude, podiste, pudo, podiemos,
podiestes, podieron (with -ieron < *-ederunt, see §26), and then the pud-
stem was extended throughout the perfect paradigm, and even to the
present participle, which is unusual for an -er verb (cf. viendo, siendo
below, §7). As far as Dardel is concerned, he sees metathesis of the u of
Lat. potui(t) as producing the u of pude, pudo, and says that therefore the
pod- forms must come from an original without u. However, it seems to me
more likely, as others have suggested and as he admits in the case of
Portuguese, that pude represents a metathesised *poudi with ou > u by
metaphony due to the following i, and with pudo following pude as puso
followed puse. (There is no need to assume here, as Dardel does, that if this
was the case, ove would have to have become *uve, as ove would still have
been *auvi when pude was *poudi.) If this is the case, it seems to me that
there is no objection to supposing that podiste represents earlier *poudisti,
as oviste represents *auvisti. But it is, of course, also possible to see podiste
as coming from *potisti, and in this case there is some support for this idea,
not only from the examples of French and Gascon, but also from the fact
that Berceo uses a weak paradigm, podí, podiste, podió/pudió. But even
this is not absolutely conclusive, as there are other equally old weak forms,
such as tovió, quisió, pusió, which are clearly derived from earlier strong
perfects. So all we can say is that Dardel has a possible case but not a
31

clearly proven one. For the p.p. I have not seen any form in -udo quoted for
this verb either in Spanish or in Portuguese, which is strange.
OSp. aver, caber, saber have ove (and ovi, of — identical with
OPied. of), oviste, ovo etc., cope, copiste, copo, sope, sopiste, sopo/sobo
(the Leon. Alex. O), with p.ps. avudo (Alf. Χ), cabudo, sabudo. (There is
also prebudo from prebir < Lat. prae(hi)bere.) As can be seen, these show
anticipation or metathesis of the Latin u, without metaphony, as explained
above. In the case of these verbs, as possibly also in that of poder, there are
forms found that clearly lack u. Such are OLeon. auiesemos, avier, avieres,
OArag. auiesses, auieron, auieret/ab- (Gl. Sil.) and many others (among
them, the Arag. Alex. P); OArag. sapieret (Gl. Sil.), sabiesse, xabieron
(Yúçuf), and sabieron, sapiessen (Alex. P); Leon. cabiera (M.-P., 120. 6). It
will be seen that these forms are not Castilian, and are all arrhizotonic,
though Alvar & Pottier (§178) also quote forms like havió, sabió for
OArag., while Mod. Arag. has the weak perfect habié etc. Most interesting
to me is the alternation between the xabieron quoted above (Yúçuf, 61b)
and strong xopo (68a), paralleled by dixo (65a) and diziexe (66d). (These
forms are taken from G. & H., No. 54; but Ford’s text No. XV, from the
later MS. B, has strong arrhizotonic supiera (90a), dixestes (99d), dixeron
(108c).) From their occurrence in the Gl. Sil. it will be seen that these forms
are very old, but evidently limited to certain areas, and always in
competition with -ui forms. Dardel, predictably, traces these back to Lat.
*habisti, sapisti, but once again it is possible to argue from the other side.
OLeon. and OArag. have sevi, seviste, tevi, teviste, crevi, creviste, which
are evidently -ui forms without metathesis or anticipation of the u,
corresponding to OCast. sove, tove, crove; so we could say that aviste,
sabiste were similarly formed, and that 1 and 3 *avi, *ave, *sabi, *sabe
were replaced by weak forms as above (cf. Cat. sabí, sabé). But on the
32

other hand, given the antiquity of the Roman colonisation of Spain, and the
supposed Oscan settlement of Huesca, it may well be that early Latin
*habisti, sapisti became established in Spain, and were later challenged by
habuisti, sapuisti, which became dominant in Gaul. So Dardel may well be
right here in seeing the same pattern as is found in Italian still surviving in
certain isolated pockets of territory, whereas the rest of the country (and
Portugal too) adopted the -ui type general in the rest of Western Romania.
But it should be emphasised that this was a process which took place
during the Latin period, and that oviste, sopiste are not later analogical
Spanish forms, which is what Dardel would like them to be. For the other
two verbs of this type, mover and deber, only weak forms of the type MSp.
moví, debí are found, so far as I know; for mover old p.p. movudo is found,
but for deber only debido. If we could be sure that moviste, debiste go back
to Lat. movisti, *debisti, it would make the changeover to the weak type,
found not only here but in very many Spanish verbs, easy to explain. But
unfortunately there is no sure evidence, and we can only speculate.
Of the -cēre verbs, only nocere, placere and iacere are found in
Spanish. For the first, the inf. nozer is only found in OArag., and this verb
is generally found conjugated as an -ir verb, perf. 3 nuzió, p.p. nozido. The
other two, plazer and yazer, have in OSp. -ui forms throughout the perfect
paradigm, as plogo, ploguiere, ploguiesse, yogo, yoguiere, yoguiesse, but
they are rivalled from an early date by weak forms like plaçió, yaçió, with
p.ps. placido, yacido (I have seen no -udo forms quoted), and even forms
like pluguió, ploguido. (There is also a strong plego (Pell., Sp.), formed on
the pres. subj. plega, itself formed on the proportion sopo:sepa,
plogo:plega.) Pluguió, ploguido show the Aragonese tendency to form
weak perfects from strong (cf. podió, tovió) and align the perfect and p.p.
Whether plaçió, yaçió go back to Latin forms without u is uncertain; the
33

fact that these replaced strong rhizotonic forms at an early date, plus the
occurrence of strong arrhizotonic ploguiere, yoguiere, would seem rather to
point to a trend in Spanish to replace strong perfects by weak ones. But
once again, there may have been old arrhizotonic forms without u which
provided the impetus for this change; we just cannot be sure.
The Sp. -ler verbs show only weak forms, with p.p. doludo, and cf.
(es)moludo, and parere is represented by parecer, to be discussed later
(§13), so the only remaining verbs in this group are tener and venir. In the
latter case the dialects show that the original paradigm was vine, veniste,
veno, veniemos, veniestes, venieron, from Lat. vēni, with the vin- produced
by metaphony early extended in OCast.; there is an old p.p. venudo (Fer.
Gonz.) from PR *venūtus, seen in the name Venutus, but no trace of *vēnui.
For tener the OCast. perfect forms are tove, toviste, tovo etc., p.p. tenudo,
but the other dialects show forms based on tev- or tiv-, such as tevi, tevo,
tivo, teveron, tevier, and even tudiere, as pudiere (M.-P.), and also weak
tovió, p.p. tovido/tuvido. The loss of n in tov-, tev-, tiv- points to analogical
re-forming of this strong perfect on other perfects like ove, sovo/sevo/sivo.
Once again, OArag. produces examples of forms without u, such as
tenieron, teniés (S. Juan de la Peña; the teniesse that Dardel quotes from
Berceo, Mil., 720a (p. 46), is an imperfect reflexive form), and MArag. has
the weak perfect tenié (and so also venié), while the Fuero Juzgo gives
tinió, which once again obscures the question of the antiquity of such forms.
Given the general Spanish tendency to form weak perfects for all verbs, we
cannot say that the evidence of Spanish alone enables us to reach any firm
conclusion about Romance in general, especially when we find that this
class of verbs is more conservative in Portuguese. All we can say is that in
Spanish itself there may have been an early stratum of the monerim,
moneris type of Latin, which led to forms like auiesses, sabiesse, and
encouraged the widespread change to weak perfects which will become
34

apparent when we study other classes of verbs later. (This early stratum
theory would also explain the existence of a duality of other forms in
Spanish, such as participles in -udo and -ido and paired but distinct
conjugations in -ir and -ecer, where Spanish does not accord with
Gallo-Romance.)
h) Portuguese. The corresponding forms in Portuguese are
pudi/pude, podeste/pudeste, poude/pôde etc. (pude from *poudi by
metaphony), ouvi/houve, ouviste/houveste, houve etc., and soube, coube,
jougue/jouve, later jazi, prougue/prouve, with weak forms only in the cpd.
comprazi (jouve, prouve as houve), vĩi/vim, vẽeste/vieste, vẽo/veiu,
vẽemos/viemos etc., tivi/tive, teveste/tiveste, teve etc., and some -ui forms in
the l-stems, as dolveron, valver, valvera, valvesse, besides the usual weak
forms. -Udo p.ps. are avudo, sabudo, devudo, movudo, vĩudo/vehudo,
tẽudo/teudo, and cf. mudo as Sp. moludo. Nozer/nuzir has 3 nuziu, and
movi, devi are weak, as in Spanish; however, there is an unusual form 6
diverão, with i, which might conceivably be an -ui form, as tiverão, with 1
*divi by metaphony. But there are no weak forms corresponding to the
Spanish auiesses, sabiesse, tinió etc., though Dardel quotes havera from
the Portuguese of Brazil and Madeira; this seems to me a modern dialect
form, like fazeste, fazesse from fazer. There are no traces, then, in
Portuguese of inherited Latin forms without u.
i) Rhaeto-Romance. Here there is a dearth of strong forms. For the
verbs in this class Dardel quotes Friulian ob, and Engad. 3 pous, 6 pousen,
3 uous, 6 uousen — paralleled by Friul. volç (Samp.) — (and also 3 stous,
corresponding to OFr. estut, from a new verb based on Lat. est opus), 3
uen/ven, 6 uennen, beside weak vanginen. Otherwise there are only weak
forms without u throughout the paradigm, and even among the strong
35

forms, as we see, there are new formations with s. These weak forms may
be compared with some North Italian forms, for example the 1st persons
wleck, tascheg in OEngad. with Bergamasque avec, savec (could this -eck,
-eg come from secondary palatalisation of *-edi — cf. launguaick
‘language’, -egiar/-ager < *-idiare ?). The modern language forms the
perfect with the use of -ett, as avett, taschett, savett, which will be
discussed later. The OEngad. paradigm of avair, if we extrapolate from the
forms of other verbs, was probably 1 *haveck, 2 havist/havest, 3 havet, 4
havischen/havesschen, 5 havisches, 6 hawenn (aven)/havetten, so that it
looks as if the -ett started with the 3rd person (from *-edit ?). Modern
Sursilvan has no perfect, but the older language has 1 pudí, 6 rumanenan
(from another class of verb). The only forms still found in both groups of
Swiss dialects, as also in the old languages, are those of the imperf. subj.,
and here we have (a)vess (Friul. havès), podess/pudess (Friul. podès),
less/vuless (Friul. volès), dovess/duvess, savess, tgness/tagness,
(ve)gniss/vigness/vagness etc. It will be seen that these forms agree with
those of Italian rather than French (except, perhaps, EFr.) or Provençal, so
we may be justified, with Dardel, in tracing them back to Lat. *habisti,
*volisti etc., and saying that the Italian pattern spread to this neighbouring
territory. The past participles go back to *-ūtus, with the palatalised stem
where this occurs, as, for example, in Friul. tignut, vignut/ve-,
j) Sardinian. Here we have many strong rhizotonic forms attested,
as OSard. 1 appi/api, 3 appit/apit, 4 appimus/apperus, 6 apperunt; potti,
potuit, potterun, potirunt (perhaps accented on the i); tenni, tennit; benni,
bennit/venit (perhaps Latinised; Mon. No. 10, i), bennerunt/vennerun;
paruit; bolvit/voluerun; jaquet; piaqui. There are also some new s-forms, as
parsit, tensit, bolsi (Dar., p. 165). Other forms can be inferred from the past
participles, which are formed, amongst other things, on the perfect stem, as
36

áp(p)idu, déppidu, bénnidu/bennídu, ténnidu/tentu (also mantesu; Bec,
2/303), nókidu, dékidu (infs. nogere, degere; H. W. S., p. 32), (ap)párfidu
(and also (kum)partu, parsu, cumpássidos (Wag., p. 415) ), bálfidu/bálidu
(H. W. S., p. 67), dólfidu, bóffiu, póttidu/pózziu, and móviu (Rohlfs, §626;
for the rest see Wag., Fl.); cf. also iackitoria, and OSard. placitu, used as a
noun as it is in other areas also. There are also the shortened forms ait,
arunt etc. used in the combination habere + infinitive. In this class of verbs
there are apparently no 2nd person forms found in OSard., and as the Latin
pluperfect subj. did not survive in Sardinian it is hard to know whether the
arrhizotonic forms were based on the same stem; however, another -ui
perfect, kerui/kerfi (Lat. *quaerui) has 2 keruisti, 5 querfistis, and ockisi
has okisisti, so we may well suppose this was the general type. Dardel,
however, dismisses these as analogical re-formations.
Besides these strong forms there began to develop already in OSard.
new forms with -is- inserted, as apisirunt, ap(p)isint, detisirunt (Bec,
2/280-2), and from the 16th c. a new -isi/-esi paradigm began to appear,
which has developed into the modern paradigm 1 -esi/-ei, 2 -esti, 3-esit/-eit,
4 -esimus/-emus, 5 -edzis, 6 -esini/-eini. The interesting thing about this, as
can be seen, is that there is an alternation of forms with and without s
resembling that in Italian, but there is no agreement as to the origin of this
paradigm, which was also extended to the verbs with weak perfects;
perhaps the origin was with verbs like ockidere, which then lost the
intervocalic d, giving a new infinitive in -ire (occhire, Wag., p. 379,
modern Camp. boččíri, H. W. S., p. 95), while the perfect remained ockisi,
and okisisti perhaps became *okisti by haplology, as apparently happened
in the case of the evasi/evasti quoted by Dardel (p.165). (See also §30
below.) In the case of this modern perfect, the endings may be added to the
perfect stem (appesi, deppesi, potisi) as in the old forms quoted above, or
to the root of the verb (venisit, haisti, haimus, haizis, vulisi, pudisi/podei,
37

mulgesimus), or to the palatalised present stem (benzesi, tendzesi,
balzesimus); for this multiplicity of forms compare modern Prov.
pouguère/pousquère and Gasc. pouscoui/poudoui/OGasc. pogui. There is
also a modern imperfect subj. in -essi created in imitation of Italian, which
usually has the stem of the present subj. (appessi, benghessi/bengessi); we
also find an earlier Gallurese (highly Italanised) aissi for appessi (Bec,
2/291), which is possibly the forerunner of the modern regional essi, and,
besides these, OSard. auissi/auesse occurring together (with fosse also) in
the same document. Dardel seizes on these last forms as “très rares et
précieux vestiges de l’ancien subjonctif”, which will support his theory of
alternation; Wagner, however, clearly explains them as Italianisms,
betrayed by the first e of auesse (and the o of fosse) and the
Sardinianisation of the same Italian vowel in auissi (he could also have
noted that the stem av- is Italian, as opposed to the Sard. app- or a-). In his
chapter on Sardinian, Dardel begins by conceding that he has difficulty in
finding any support for his theory here, but then goes on to achieve a
triumph of hope over experience by convincing himself that the modern
forms based on the root of the verb go back to old arrhizotonic perfect
forms without a suffix. True, there is no solid evidence with which to refute
his argument, but equally his theory is only conjectural, and the wide
extension of the strong perfect stem (found also in the present, as parfo,
balfo, dolfo) would seem to argue strongly against it. There are also some
slight traces of Dalmatian forms: ORagus. potì and subjs. pudis, avisi, p.p.
abudu, Vegl. subj. avás.
7. Videre, sedere, cadere and credere. Next I would like to consider
together three verbs from the PR -ēre conjugation and another which is
closely associated: videre, sedere, cadere and credere. The Romance
languages point to a PR inf. *cadēre, but credĕre remained, though OCat.
38

also has an inf. creher (B.-M., 153, II), as ve(d)er, se(d)er, cader (Hom.
d’Org.). I will begin first by listing the relevant parts in each language:
Rum.: văzui, şezui, căzui, crezui, p.ps. văzut, şezut, căzut, crezut (all
with z extended from forms with yod).
It.: 1 vidi, 2 vedesti, 3 vide etc. (and 1 viddi/vitti/veddi/vedei/vedetti,
etc.); p.p. visto/veduto (NIt. veçuo, vezu(dho) etc.)/viso etc.
1 sedei, 2 sedesti, 3 sedè etc. (and 1 sedetti etc., 6 sediero); also OIt.
3 sedde and possette; p.p. seduto. Cf. also assidere, assisi, assiso.
1 caddi, 2 cadesti, 3 cadde etc., and 1 cadei/cadetti (NIt. caçí, chaí)
etc.; p.p. caduto (NIt. caçuo, cazu)/NIt. cáito, chéito.
1 credei, 2 credesti, 3 credè etc. (and 1 credetti etc.); also OIt. 1
creddi (crebbi)/cresi etc.; p.p. creduto (NIt. creçuo, crezu), and old or dial.
creso/cresto/credesto/creto. (Note that the northern dialects also have z for
d, like Rumanian; cáito/chéito and creto are old -ĭtu p.ps.)
Fr.: 1 vi, 2 veïs/vidist (St. Lég.), 3 vit, 6 virent/vidrent (St. Lég.), subj.
vedisse (St. Alex.) etc., and various later weak forms, as EFr. 1 veü, 3
veüt/veiit, 4 vesimes (cf. se(s)imes), 6 veïrent; p. p. veü (and veeit, vis etc.).
1 (a)sis, 2 se(s)is, 3 (a)sist, 4 se(s)imes, 6 (a)sisdrent etc. (also 2
sisis), and weak dial. forms as asseiit, (as)seïrent, EFr. s(e)üt, aisseüst; p.p.
(as)sis and dial. asseü, aissu, ess(e)ute (Wahl.), seeit etc.
1 chaï (cheï), 2 chaïs, 3 chaï(t) etc., and EFr. chaiet, chaerent, cheü,
cheüs etc., WFr. 6 decheürent, also analogical enchesest; p.p. chaü (cheü),
cheüte and chaeit (cheeit).
1 crui, 2 creüs, 3 crut etc., and 1 creï, 2 creïs, 3 creï(t) etc., WFr.
subj. creesse; p. p. creü (and creeit).
Prov.: 1 vi, 2 vist, 3 vi/vic etc., subj. vis and vezes; later 3 veguet, mod.
ve(i)guère/vesquèri etc.; p.p. vist/vis/veut/vezut/vegut.
3 (as)sec, (as)sis/assic/rasidet (Gir. de R.), mod. se(i)guère; p.p.
(as)segut/assis/asses.
39

3 cazet/cazec, 6 cazeron/cazegron (cadegren), mod. caiguère; p.p.
cazut/cazegut/cazech.
1 crezei, 2 crezest, 3 crezet/creét etc., mod. creseguère/cre(i)guère;
p.p. crezut/creut/crezegut/cregut.
Gasc.: vi/bi, mod. bedoui/besoui/besquèri; p.p. bist/bedut/bezut.
p.p. segut; mod. inf. sèder/sèter, perf. setoui, p.p. setut.
cado/cajoc/subj.cados/caiosen/escaygos, mod. ca(i)joui; p.p. escadut,
mod. ca(i)jut.
credo, credoren, mod. credoui/cresoui/cregoui; p.p. credut.
Cat.: 1 vi/vid/viu/vehí, 2 veist/vist, 3 vit/viu/veu/vese(c)/vehé/veé/ve(c)/
veyé/veié, 4 vesem/veem/vim, 5 veets, 6 videren/viren/veeren/veren/veieren,
mod. also vegí, veguí (Gar., B.-M.), veieres etc. (Gili); p.p. vist, and also
vegut (Wahl.).
residui.
1 (as)sec (Moll), mod. (as)seguí; p.p. (as)segut. Also Cat. Latin
3 casech (R.-G.)/caec (Gili, p.108)/caegué (R.-G.), mod. caiguí, also
ORous. casé (Fou. R.); p. p. caigut.
1 cresegí, 3 credeg/crezeg (R.-G.), and crec (Moll), also 6 creren
(Fou. R.), mod. creguí; p.p. cregut.
Sp.: 1 vid(e)/vidi/vi, 2 vist(e), 3 ví(d)o/vío > vió, 4 vi(e)mos, 5
vi(e)stes/vidiestes, 6 vi(e)ron/vioron/vidieron/veyeron (Ber., Mil.); MArag.
vié; p.p. visto, OArag. v(e)ido; pres.p. viendo (cf. proveer, proveí,
proveido).
1 sovi/OLeon. sevi, 2 sovist, 3 sovo/OLeon. sevo/OArag. sivo, 5
soviestes, 6 sovieron/-ioron, also OArag. subj. seyés; p.p. seudo/s(e)ido;
pres.p. siendo (cf. poseer, poseí, poseido).
1 caí, 2 caiste, 3 cayó (cadiót), 6 cayeron etc., fut.subj. cadieret (Gl.
Sil., Dar., p. 87), subj. cadiesse (Cid, 1351); p.p. kadutu (Gl. Sil.)/cayudo
(P. C. G.)/caido.
40

1 creí, 2 creiste, 3 creyó (credió), etc., and 3 crovo/OLeon. crevo, 4
croviemos, 6 crovieron; p.p. creudo/creido.
Ptg.: 1 vi, 2 viste, 3 viu, 4 vimos, 5 vistes, 6 virom (proví, proveste,
proveu etc.); p.p.visto/veudo (viudo)/provido.
seeda).
1 sevi/sive, 2 seveste, 3 seve, 6 severom; p.p. s(i)ido (cf. subst. old
1 caí, 2 caeste, 3 caeu, 6 caerom etc., subj. caesse, now caí, caíste,
caíu etc.; p.p. caudo/caido (subst. queda).
1 cri, 2 crêste, 3 creu etc., and 1 crevi/crive, 2 creveste, 3 creve, 6
creverom; p.p. creudo/cr(i)ido.
Rh.: vaset/v(e)zet, p.p. vis, Friul. p.p. vis/vidut > viodut; subj.
sasess/szess; subj. cartess/crajess, p. p. cret (M.-L.), Friul. crodut.
Sard.: 1 bii, 3 vidit, 6 viderun, p.p. vistu/bistu (Wag., p. 366; Bec,
2/282)/bid(i)u/biu/bittu.
cret(t)idu.
6 setisint; p.p. seidu/settidu/settsidu/settsiu (inf. seere, settsere).
6 creterun (Wag., p. 328), mod. crettesi/creesi, p.p. crettitu/
It will be seen that in many languages the four possess both -ui and
-edi forms, or a combination of the two, and this needs to be checked first
against the known Latin forms. Here we find, for videre, besides vidi and
p.p. visus, videderant in the Vulgate; for sedere there seem to be no
alternatives to the classical forms except Catalan Lat. residui (R.-G.). For
cadere, besides the classical forms, there are only the late caderunt and
cadissent in the Gl. Reich., while the p.p. *cadutu is found in Latin guise
only in the Gl. Sil. kadutu. Wahlgren and Grandgent interpret caderunt and
cadissent as representing *cadederunt (a form that is supported by the Gl.
Sil. cadieret), *cadedissent, in the light of the French forms, while Dardel
sees in them perfects without suffix. Given the late date of their appearance,
I incline to the view that both these forms belong to a weak perfect
41

paradigm, and that caderunt, at least, reflects *cadederunt (cf. the weak
forms as found in most areas, including Sp. cayeron (matched by OSp.
cadieret, cadiesse), OPtg. caerom); in the case of cadissent Dardel may be
right morphologically — see the -dedi perfects below (§30). For credere,
besides classical credidi (late crededi), there are crederimus, -itis, -int
(Jerome, Orosius and the Itala), and concredui (Plautus), and, besides
creditus, Creduta as a name.
Of these, it is interesting to note that credere has both credidi and
credui, together with simple cred- (in the parts that support Dardel’s
theory), as this appears to be the verb that influenced the others. It seems to
have got separated early from the other compounds of dare, as did tradere
also in part (see §§26, 29), because, unlike perdere, vendere, abscondere,
reddere, it had a single intervocalic d with no consonant in front to support
it, besides not being formed with any recognisable prefix. It then seems to
have influenced cadere, for which, despite the noun form casus, no s-forms
are found (this being an intransitive verb it had no p.p.*casus, on which an
s-perfect could be formed, and the supine casum and fut.p. casurus died
out), and to have given rise to both *cadui and *cadedi, and perhaps also
*cad- forms. For videre, vidi seems to have survived over such a wide area
that it may be questioned whether other forms like văzui, viddi, veddi, vedei,
vehí, veü go back to common originals at all; Wahlgren (p. 245, n.) raises
this doubt concerning văzui and veddi. Certainly It.vedei can be explained
by vedesti, Cat. vehí by veist, and Fr. veü by the past participle.
In the case of sedere, I feel there is strong evidence for a PR *sēdui,
which shows the natural development for this kind of perfect; moreover -ui
forms are found in all the major daughter languages, in some form or other.
Sardinian has a duplicated t which points to *seddi < *sēdui. In Italian
there is just a slight trace of sedde (D. & G., p. 66, though Mon. takes it to
be a pres.); there is also a form possette in the early oaths, in which it
42

seems to me the -tt- might be a southern substitution for -dd-, though the
editors assume that this is a contraction of possedette. (The sitte in
Wartburg, 31.15, means ‘was’ and is evidently connected with the setti
given by Rohlfs, §577, n., though his explanation of this as an -ette form
from essere seems far-fetched — in combination with a word like bene,
sedere could mean ‘be’.) The French forms, sut/seüt are dialectal, mostly
Eastern, and therefore may be purely analogical, but then again they may
not, and may go back to Latin; I am not clear whether the form sut quoted
by Dardel (p. 123) is older than seüt, and might have come from *sēduit, or
whether it is a later contraction; this seems to me more likely, and lends
credence to the idea that seüt was formed on the p.p.; but even so, the
existence in itself of a p.p. in -u for this verb is unusual in French.
The French forms perf. sis, p.p. sis are usually explained with
recourse to Lat. sessus (which did not exist as a p.p., cf. cadere, and only
came down to Romance as a noun meaning a person’s physical ‘seat’, cf.
OFr. ses), on which a perfect *sessi was formed; appeal is then made to the
analogy of pris, mis, quis, to explain the vocalism. But surely it is easier to
start from the compound assis, coming from *assīsi, *assīsu, formed from
assīdĕre on the analogy of other PR -īdĕre verbs like rīdĕre, occīdĕre; the
grammars usually give sēdi as the perfect of sīdĕre, but forms like sīdi,
consīdi, subsīdi, desīdi are equally, if not more, common, giving this verb a
close point of contact with occīdĕre–occīdi, which later developed a perf.
occīsi (see §28). Assīdĕre is frequently used in medieval Latin in many
senses, and in all cases the p.p. is assīsus, clearly formed as occīsus, so
there must also have been a perf. *assīsi as occīsi. This assīdĕre is also
represented in Romance as well as assĭdēre; Fr. assire (with pres. 1 assi),
assis, assis is exactly paralleled by It. assidere, assisi, assiso, Prov. assire,
assis (and, notably, simple sis), assis (beside assezer, assec, assegut), while
Catalan has assiure/asseure (see also §28). (Unfortunately, it seems at first
43

sight difficult to fit Sp. asir(se) in here because of its single s, though one
could easily imagine the semantic transition from ‘besiege’ (It. assidersi) to
‘seize’. However, Pellegrini (Sp., 147:5) quotes old subj. forms assa, assas,
so it may be possible that there was an old *assir < assīdĕre which was
changed to asir through contamination with asa ‘handle’; this would also
account for its being a primary verb and not changing to *asecer. (We
might even hazard that asgo, asga started out as *assio, *assia, which then
followed the process that turned *tenyo, *tenya into tengo, tenga; cf. the
consonant combination in plazgo, plazga, yazgo, yazga.) I am not happy
with Malkiel’s suggested derivation from *ansire, based on ansa ‘handle’,
as I would then expect it to have the meaning ‘equip with handles’; the
excuse put forward in support of this derivation is that a formation such as
*ansare would have been liable to confusion with the verb for ‘roast’, but
in old Spanish the latter was spelt assar, cf. assadas, L.B.A. 1385c; note
that Portuguese has asado ‘having handles or ears’, kept distinct from
assado ‘roasted’. In French it will be noticed that -s- forms, as sesis, are
also found analogically in vesimes, enchesest (based on similar forms in
other verbs which are found with and without -s-, cf. §§21, 28, 30, 31), and
that all four verbs also have p.ps. in -eit, usually in the East and North-East.
These p.ps. Fouché (§193) explains on the analogy of bene(d)ir, bene(d)eit,
based on the similarity between beneïr and the infinitives chaïr/cheïr, seïr,
veïr. Cf. also Prov. cazech. To explain the adoption of sis in French, one
needs to remember that an -ui perfect and -ūtu p.p. for this verb would have
been too much subject to confusion with the perfects and p.ps. of savoir
and suivre. This seems to me one more argument in favour of supposing
that French originally did agree with the other languages in having such
forms, besides the fact that sessus was not a p.p. and only survived in PR as
a noun.
When we look at Provençal and Catalan we find a situation
44

eminiscent of that with parec, correc, querec in the forms Prov. cazec,
cazegut, crezegut, Cat. ca(s)ech, caigut, crezeg. In the case of the first verb
Provençal also has cazet, cazut, while Fouché gives casé for Old
Roussillonese; for Gascon, cado, cados, escadut are the old forms given by
Wahlgren, while Dardel also gives caios, escaygos. In view of the later
forms cajoc (Bec, 1/549), caijoui (Mist.), with the infs. cager/caiger, I take
it that caios, escaygos are to be interpreted as cajos, escaijos, agreeing
further with the pres. subj. caja/caija (Bec). If this is so, this verb has no
g-forms, and agrees with Prov. cazet, cazut; and anyway, if it did have
g-forms, they would come out as -deg- and not -ig-, as -d- was not lost in
Gascon. In the case of credere Provençal basically has cre(z)ei, cre(z)ut,
and Gascon has only credo, credut, but the existence of Prov. crezegut
makes Wahlgren suspect there was also a perfect *crezec. In the case of
Catalan, Moll and García de Diego speak of a crec as the original of creguí,
cregué, but I am not clear whether this comes from an earlier cresec, or is a
separate form; judging from the forms given by Russell-Gebbett —
credeg/crezeg in the Hom. d’Org., cresegí a century later, and the modern
form cregut a century later still — I would suppose creguí, cregut to be
the natural successors of creseg- forms, which leads me to question
whether crec has not been falsely extrapolated. Fouché also gives an
example of Rous. creren, formed on the Provençal model. The problem is
to decide what happened; it looks as if Lat. *cadui merged with *cadedi,
and credui with crededi, but we cannot be sure. Modern Prov. and Cat.
creguè(t), cregué, cregut cannot help us to decide whether crec, cregut
antedated crezec, crezegut, and the Prov. crezegut occurs later than Cat.
crezeg, at a time when it was natural to add -c to the 3rd person of the weak
perfect, on which a new paradigm might then have been created. A similar
-c has been added in Catalan to the weak perfect ve(s)é, giving vesec
(R.-G.), evidently on the analogy of casec, crezeg, leading to a modern
45

form veguí (Gar.), and -ec forms are occasionally found in other verbs
instead of -c , as in plaech (Fou., R.), aeg (R.-G.) and the calech, valech,
tenech quoted above in §§6c, 6f.
Of the attempts at explanations, Wahlgren feels that Prov. cazec is
too early to be explained by the substitution of -ec for -et, which would not
account for cazegron or cazegut either, at that date, and suggests, very
persuasively, the mixing of *cac < *cadui and cazei < *cadedi, possibly
backed up by the analogy of elec, p.p. elech, giving cazec, p.p. cazech.
Dardel (pp. 140-1) sees the analogical working of correc, parec, supposing
that hypothetical arrhizotonic forms like *corrist, *cazist acted as the link;
this is in line with his theory, but seems rather tenuous to me. It looks as if
we must leave the matter as a mystery, but what does seem clear is that
these verbs had two forms in Proto-Romance. For credere Italian, French,
Spanish and Portuguese offer both -ui and -edi forms; here Dardel believes
in an early paradigm crui, creïs, crut etc. for French, but I can find no
justification for this from a sampling of early texts, in which -edi and -ui
forms seem to be used indiscriminately, while in Spanish and Portuguese
also the two paradigms appear to be independent and fully developed in all
the tenses and moods. It is therefore rather remarkable that the creguè(t)
type does not appear in the oldest stages of Provençal. For cadere, on the
other hand, the other languages do not offer the same degree of duality;
caddi, cadesti is the standard Italian type, cadei/cadetti being popular, and
Spanish and Portuguese know only caí. In French chaï/cheï is standard, and
cheüt dialectal, mostly Eastern, barring the decheürent in the Western
Roman de Rou (cf. the similar seüt). This cheüt can easily be explained in
the light of the p.p. cheü, for which compare similar veüt, veü; Wahlgren (p.
178 and n.) points out that *chui, *chut, formed as jui, jut from iacui(t), are
not found, so that there is no question of forms coming from *cadui, but
given the Prov. and Cat. cazec, casech and the correspondence between Fr.
46

pareü, coreü and Prov., Cat. paregut, corregut, I just wonder whether there
could not equally be a correspondence between WFr. decheürent, p.p. cheü
and cazec, cazegut (the EFr. cheüt is more likely to have been based on the
p.p.). (See also my paper in Ronshu, Vol. 10.)
As far as Dardel’s theory goes, once again there seems to be no
clear evidence of a mixture of forms with and without u in Proto-Romance;
the relationship between -edi forms and suffixless forms will be discussed
later (§29).
We have now discussed all the PR -ēre verbs with -ui perfects, apart
from implēre and complēre, which have various weak forms that are
uninstructive for our purposes, and monēre and its compounds, which also
have weak forms in most cases, except for submonēre, which will be
discussed later together with manēre (§31). In general, we have found the
-ui perfect to be most thriving in Rumanian, French and the group
Provençal/Gascon/Catalan, where phonetic or other reasons have produced
a distinctive class of perfects, with accented u-endings in Rumanian and
French, and a stem ending in -g- in Provençal/Gascon/Catalan. In Italy and
Iberia -ui developed phonetically in many different ways according to the
nature of the preceding consonant, producing a group of “irregular” verbs,
with a certain amount of interplay (tovo as ovo, tudiere as pudiere, jouve as
houve), but little power to stand up against the encroachments of the weak
perfect type. That the spread of this latter type was helped in Italian by the
arrhizotonic forms, which were identical with those of the weak perfect,
seems clear; a case for the same kind of process can legitimately be made
for Spanish, at least for some dialects, but cannot be proved conclusively
for lack of sufficient evidence. We shall find this lack of a clear -ui type in
Italy and Iberia to be a deciding factor once more when we come to look at
the VL -ĕre verbs, which we will do now.
47

8. The PR -ĕre verbs with -ui perfects; those in -uĕre. I would like to
take first the -uĕre verbs, because they seem to have set a pattern for others
to follow. These verbs are battuere, fut(t)uere, consuere and conspuere,
which in Latin had perf. -ui, p.p. -ūtus. Now, the Romance forms go back
to *battere, *fut(t)ere (this includes Eng. fuoter beside a variant futtir,
which is paralleled by a similar futtire in Sardinian, perhaps coming from a
crossing of effutuo with effutio ‘blurt out’), *cosere, and even, in some
cases, *cosīre, and to the -īre forms *cospīre/*escopīre, for conspuere,
including a Fr. écopir, not usually noted. (Rum. scu(i)pi changed later to
scuipa.) In this case we may well wonder whether the u also disappeared
from the perfect; some -ūtus p.ps. survived (including OSp., OPtg. batudo,
fududo; note also Ptg. coseito, as cozeito, ‘cooked’), but seem to have been
rivalled by -ĭtus, as Sard. battitu (Rohlfs, §626) and the It. noun battito
(note a late Latin fut.p. battiturus, formed as ruiturus). Only Rumanian has
-ui perfects, bătui, futui, cusui, while elsewhere these verbs have all
changed to the weak -edi type. In French and Spanish the -edi perfect is
now identical with the -īvi perfect (and in Spanish bater has been replaced
by batir), but that they were originally distinct is shown by the battederit of
the Lex Sal. and OFr. abatiet, cousierent, and OSp. forms like meteo. In the
case of consuere the weak perfects follow the infinitive type, which is in
Italian cucire beside dial. cucere, cosere; cf. Prov. coser/cosir, Cat.
cosir/Rous. cuser, Sp. coser/cusir, Gal. coser/cusir, Sard. kosíre, Dalm.
koser with -er < -īre (OGasc. has perf. cozo, p.p. cosut). Given all these
weak perfects, we may well question whether this does not represent a PR
development, in which case the Rum. -ui perfects are new formations based
on the p.ps. In fact, on the basis of battederit, it is generally supposed that
there was a PR conjugation *battere, *battedi, battūtus (and *battĭtus ?),
which then set the pattern for vendere, vendedi, vendĭtus/*vendūtus. It may
also, as we shall see, have set the pattern for the replacement of -ui by -edi
48

in other perfects, though we cannot be sure of this, just as we cannot be
sure whether battui survived the change of battuo to *batto. We also need
to define what we mean by “replacement by -edi”; once again we are in
danger of being over-influenced by battederit, which is clearly an
archaising spelling for what would probably have been pronounced
*bat(i)er, if that tense had survived at all in the vernacular (cf. abatiet
(Rol.) and EFr. abatet, NFr. batterent). It may be truer to say simply that
we are faced with a change to a Romance *-ei perfect, originating with
vendedi but owing its extension to the existence of suffixless arrhizotonic
forms, in this case *battisti, *battissem etc., which were parallel to
*vendisti, *vendissem. (See below, §29, for a fuller discussion of this.) We
shall find this extension to originally strong perfects is still limited in the
early stages of French and Provençal, but already further advanced in Italy
and Iberia. One other verb which seems early to have followed this type is
*sequere, which deserves to be mentioned here as another -uere verb where
the u was dropped from the pronunciation in part of the Romance territory.
In most areas this has changed over to the -īre conjugation, like consuere,
conspuere, but both -ĕre and -īre conjugations are found in OFr., OProv.
and OCat. (cossegre in R.-G.). To the -ĕre conjugation belong -ui or -edi
perfects and -ūtu p.ps. French has -sui, -seüs etc. in compounds, as
aconsurent, porseüst, and p.p. seü (later giving way to suivi), enseü; the
simple verb has the perfect sevi, later suivi, EFr. enseuest, Anglo-Norman
siwerent, SWFr. seguet, as Prov. seguei, seguest, seguet etc. There is no
record of any Prov. or Cat.*sec, *segut, but clearly these would have been
confused with the forms from sedēre, while in French there was the further
danger of confusion with the forms from sapere; we do find, however, an
OSp. p.p. segudo. It would seem as if the position in PR was confused, and
each language produced its own solution; even the -ūtu p.p. seems to have
been challenged by -ĭtu, as in the substantival It. seguito, Fr. suite.
49

One other -uere verb has survived in Iberia, and that is (at)tribuere.
Here OSp. has (a)trovo, p.p. atrevudo, and OPtg. atrevudo. Evidently
tribuere, like other verbs, lost its u, but perhaps it kept it in the perfect
because of the support of habui.
9. The -mere verbs. Here we have the group fremere, gemere, tremere,
vomere, to which we may add the -ēre verb timēre, and in part premere,
redimere; sumere may also have survived in Sp., Ptg. sumir. The first five
have classical perfects in -ui and p.ps. in -ĭtus (including late tremitus,
timitus). The only variants found in late Latin by Dardel are (e)vomit,
vomeris, vomerit. With regard to the development of premere and
redimere, the only relevant item is the occurrence of direm(p)si beside
diremi, suggesting the origin of *premsi and *redemsi, required by
Romance. In this class Rumanian has gemui, temui, vomui and scremui
from screme, which goes back ultimately to exprimere. Italian has only
-ei/-etti perfects and -uto p.ps. for all except redimere, which has redensi,
p.p. redento (cpds. in -pressi, -presso are learned). In later Old French the
-si perfect and -tu p.p. seem to be the usual, so criens, crient (with the
vowel of the present and cr- for tr-), giens (?), gient, priens, prient, raiens,
raient, subst. friente (God., s.v. frainte), or similar forms with the stem
vowels e or ei (taken from the verbs in -eindre, which affected this class in
general, producing infs. like geindre, preindre); however, cremui and
cremut are also usual (perhaps more usual) in the old language, and cremi
is also found. In Provençal there is a great mixture; premer has prems, p.p.
prems/premut/premit, cremer (rare) has p.p. crems/tremps and cremuz (Gir.
de R.), temer has tems, p.p. tems (?)/temsut/temut (Pell., Prov.), and
rezemer has rezems or rezemei, p.p. rezems/rezemt/rezemut. Gascon has
temon, p.p. temut. Catalan has premí, -mut, temí, -mut, tremí, -mut, remí,
50

-mut, with a Lat. infremuerit, and Spanish and Portuguese have similar
weak forms (including old remedir, rem(i)ir, now redimir), with -udo
found in temudo, OPtg. premudo. (Note also the substantives Cat. premsa
> Sp., Ptg. prensa, as Prov. premsa.) Friulian has old sprens (sprenz)
(Samp.) and the noun témit (Wahl.). Rhaeto-Romance has tmetten (Bec,
2/354). The interesting thing here is the loss of -ui over almost the whole
of Romance territory, the exception being Rumanian, where -ui is the rule
for verbs with p.ps. in -ut, whatever their origin, and Fr. cremui, which is
supported by other stems in liquids and nasals (does cremi come from
another resolution of -ui, as volis, valist ?). Perhaps the competition found
here between the three PR types tremui–tremitus (cf. Sard. p.p. timitu
(Harris, p. 332) and the substantives. fremida, emida, premida (H. W. S.,
pp. 94, 31), It. fremito, gemito, premito, tremito, Rum. freamăt, geamăt,
ORum. temet, Friul. témit), *premsi–*premsus and *redempsi–redemptus
had something to do with it; to judge by the contrast between French and
Provençal, including premsa/prensa, on the one hand, and Gascon,
Catalan, Spanish and Portuguese on the other, we might suppose that the
-si perfects gained the upper hand at one stage, and then yielded early to
the weak perfects, as happened in this latter territory. In Italian the natural
route would be by way of the arrhizotonic forms. Whatever the process
was, it is clear that except in Rumanian and French, which had their
special weak -ui perfect, the Latin perfects in -mui lost their distinctive
form, perhaps by absorption of the u into the m, and had to be replaced.
There seems to be no direct support for Dardel’s theory in this class of
verbs because the confusion is too great; forms like Fr. craignis, Prov.
cregneguère/cregnèri are late analogical developments, and the existence
of Prov. subj. redemes beside perf. 1 redems, as quoted by Dardel, is of no
significance as both strong and weak forms occur throughout the
paradigm.
51

10. The -cipere verbs. The next group consists of the compounds of capere,
and with them Prov. erebre < eripere. Here, as we have seen, the perfect
capui is found in late Latin for the simple verb but not for the compounds,
and praerepsi is found beside classical praeripui; the modern languages
point to *-ui perfects and *-ūtu p.ps. Rumanian has, predictably, începui,
-ut, pricepui, -ut. The only Italian form I have found that might reflect
*-cipui is OSic. rechippe (Wartburg, 40. 35), but as the same text has vippi
from vivere it may be that rechippe is also a new formation. Standard
Italian has ricevei/ricevetti (dial. recipeo, recipesse, recevé etc.) and old
ricevvi, evidently analogical (M.-L.), p.p. ricevuto (dial. receputo/ri-,
recevuo etc.); for the other compounds I have found NIt. descevé, and p.ps.
deceduto, percevu(o), apperceputo, conceputo, while in the standard
language all these verbs have changed over to the -īre conjugation. In
French the standard type is as reçui (earlier spelt receui), receüs, reçut, p.p.
receü > reçu (so also (a)per-, con-, de-), with reciut, perciurent, subj.
receuist, in the north, subj. recevest in the east (the Ezekiel). In Provençal
we have standard receup, p.p. recebut/receubut, and other similar forms for
the other verbs ((a)per-, con-, de-), together with ereup, ereubut, but there
also occur recep, recebro, recebes and decep, besides rece(i)t in Gir. de R.
Gascon has only arrhizotonic forms as receberen, recebuy, recebo,
receb(or)on, recebossen, p.p. recebut, decebut, but forms with the u
anticipated, as receubo, receuboro, receubut, are also found (Dardel, p.
144). For Catalan one strong form, 3 reb, is given by Badía Margarit (168.
II), beside weak rebí, old rebist etc., p.p. rebut, but I wonder if reb is a
reliable form, as the early stem is re(s)eb-, and the contracted reb- only
comes later; deseubutz (Ramon Llull) shows Provençal influence. Spanish
and Portuguese have weak recebí, etc., with old p.ps. recebudo,
(a)percebudo, concebudo. Rhaeto-Romance has the p.ps. antschet (from
52

antscheiver < incipere), retschet (M.-L.); such p.ps. formed from -ceptu are
also found elsewhere in substantival forms. Friulian has the p.p. ricevut.
The state of affairs in this class of verbs is similar to that in the
-mere verbs, with strong forms in French and Provençal contrasting with
weak forms elsewhere. As before, Provençal is a zone of transition; the
existence of forms with and without anticipated u (cf. also the case of
saber) may be due to a difference of treatment in combination with a labial,
or to the influence of the past participle. We cannot, of course, be sure that
Lat. recēpi was everywhere replaced by *recēpui, though the existence of
-ūtu p.ps. everywhere makes it seem likely; one possibility is that Iberia
was more conservative and resisted the encroachment of -ui forms, in
which case it would be easy to explain the weak forms as being aligned on
the old arrhizotonic forms.
11. Other stems ending in a labial. Other Latin verbs with stems ending
in a labial and perfects in -ui are bibere, fervere, plovere for pluere (found
in Petronius), rumpere and lambere. (There are also solvere and volvere,
but these show greater affinities with the -lere verbs, and I will deal with
them later in §14; vivere I will likewise hold over until I come to §13.) The
late Latin perfects are fervi/ferbui, bibi/bibuit, pluit (OLat. plūvit),
rupi/rupuit, -uerunt/rumpimus, -isti/rupsi, lambi/lambuit, -uerunt; these are
interesting in showing a distinct alternation between -i and -ui, though there
is no clear pattern of distribution. The Romance languages show a certain
amount of variety. Rumanian has băui, fiersei/ORum. fierbui, p.p. fiert,
plo(u)ă (with change of conjugation, Latin -ove- giving Rum. -ouă-),
rupsei/ORum. 3 rum(p)se, rupe. Italian has bevvi (vibbi, vippi etc.)/bevei
(-etti), fervei (with an s seen in the dial. p.ps. fers, fiersetu), piovve/piovè
(chiobbe, chioppe), ruppi (OIt. 3 roppe)/rompei, lambii (-ire verb); also to
be noted are the -ĭtu p.ps. formed in the south from the perfect stem, as
53

Neap. vippeto, chiuoppeto, which have also produced muoppeto from
movere (and ONeap. mosseto). French has bui, beüs, but etc. (NFr. biut,
subj. bewist), plut (also weak analogical bevit, plovit in the north; cf. movit),
rompi (dial. 3 rompie, 6 romperent). Cf. also Franco-Prov. biuront (Bec,
2/376), subj. beišo, bevešo (Dardel, p. 125), plut (Bec, 2/376). Provençal
has bec, ploc, rompei, and Gascon beguo, p.p. begut (mod. beboui, bebut),
subj. plagues, plaguosse (mod. plabo, plabut), arompos, p.p. corrompudes.
Catalan has similar bec, ploc, rompí. Spanish and Portuguese have only
weak perfects (note OLeon., Ast. 3 rompe(g)o), together with the old p.ps.
Sp. (cor)rompudo (also Moz. ronpito, Oríg.), Ptg. bevudo/bebesto.
Rhaeto-Romance has arumpet. Sardinian has the p.ps. bittu, and próppiu
beside próitu (Fl., §145), which may be analogical, or may reflect the stem
of PR *plovuit. It should also be noted that the p.p. ruptus left reflexes
everywhere, including Sard. ruttu.
It will be seen that bibere, pluere largely kept the -ui forms, with
the notable exception of Iberia. Once again the presence of an -udo p.p.,
bevudo, suggests that the -ui perfect also made its way to this area, but that
perhaps the strong forms were not distinctive enough to survive; equally,
bebi–bebido might go back to another Sp. type developed directly out of
bibi–bibitus. But there is also one other special factor at work in this area.
The p.p. bebesto quoted above was formed on the model of comesto, found
beside OSp., OPtg. comudo; now, this verb comer is only found in Iberia,
and has a weak perfect comí developed phonetically from Lat. comēdi. It
looks here as if bebí may have been formed on the model of comí, as
bebesto on comesto. At the same time we must not forget that just as there
may have been a habui, *habisti pocket in Spain, so there may also have
been a *bibui, bibisti one. Thus it looks as if many influences may have
been at work here. Fervere may have had a perfect *ferpsi in PR, on the
analogy of sorbui/sorpsi. Rumpere is remarkable in that all the Latin forms
54

survived, and even one more, *rumpsi, though the -si forms are confined to
Rumanian, and may be new formations. The west evidently early
developed an -edi perfect based on *rumpi (or *rumpui), rumpisti, similar
to *battedi, *battesti for batt(u)i, batt(u)isti; if *rumpui existed, the u
would ultimately have been lost after the two consonants as in the case of
battui. The same thing would have happened to lambui, ferbui, leaving the
way open for the creation of new weak perfects, wherever these verbs
survived. (In Spain, lamer would also have been affected by comer.)
12. Stems ending in two consonants. There are a few verbs, vincere,
vertere (see also §31), cernere, sternere, currere (see also §§13c, 31),
verrere, which do not naturally fall into any particular group, but are all
united in having stems ending in two consonants. (There were also other
verbs which died out, such as those in -ctere treated in the next section.)
The late Latin forms are vici/vincisti/convicuit/convincuit, verti/versisse/
convertuit, crēvi, strāvi (but cf. spernerunt), cucurri/curristi, currit/accursit,
incursit/corruerunt (?), verri/versi (this verb only survived in Sp., Ptg.,
with weak forms); many tendencies are seen, so one may expect confusion
in the daughter languages. Here Rumanian has învinsei/ORum. învencuiŭ,
with p.ps. învins/Mac. Rum. azvimtu/ORum. învencut; cernui, -ut; aşternui,
-ut; cursei, curs. Italian has vinsi/vicqui/vincei (NIt. venzí)/ONIt. venqué,
p.p. vinto/vitto (vicquo)/vinciuto (NIt. venzuo)/ONIt. vencuo; vertè/conversi,
p.p. converso/convertuto; cernei/scersi, p.p. cernuto/scerso/NIt. zerto;
sternei, sternuto (? — rare); corsi/corrette/NIt. curré/corvi (? — Dardel, p.
80), p.p. corso/corruto (currutu)/ONeap. curzeto/NIt. corresto etc. French.
has venqui (dial. 3 venquet), p.p. vencu/vaint (evidently as craint; Fou., p.
379); (con)verti (placed by Fouché among the -edi perfects, but without
examples of -(i)e- forms), p.p. convertu/-ti/convert/convers; corui/co(u)ri
(NFr. corissent)/EFr. corret/encursist (Dar., p. 115), p.p.
55

coru/coreü/encours (God.). Here we will also quote from Franco-Provençal
the p.ps. sersa (from sädre < cernere) and sotärsa (= substrata) given by
Wahlgren (pp. 68-9). Provençal has venquei and one example of a subj.
vences (Dar., p. 138), mod. venceguère, p.p. vencut; verti, vertit;
correc/cors, p.p. corregut/cors; no parts given for cerner. Gascon has
corro(ren). Catalan has vencí, vençut; convertí, convertit; correc, corregut;
cerné, cernut. Spanish has weak perfects (note Leon. venceo, OArag.
convertié), old p.ps. vençudo, cernudo. Portuguese also has weak perfects,
together with old p.ps. vençudo, (con)vertudo, corrudo, decorudo (Diez),
acorrudo. Rhaeto-Romance has OEng. 6 vandschenn (from *ving- for
vinc-; cf. Rum. învinge for earlier învence/învince, and also Velletrian
abbenge, given by Posner, Diss., p. 193), subj. curris, p.p. cuors, and
presumably tschernett from tscherner. Sardinian has 1 vinki (binki), 3
binckit, plup. vinkeran, and vinsi (17th c.), p.p. vínkitu (bínkidu) and new
modern forms bintu, binsu, bissu; for kurrere, modern currisit and p.p.
kurtu/kúrridu; note also traessu < transversu (H. W. S., p. 43).
Of these, the forms for vertere, cernere, sternere are not very
enlightening; we can suppose either the same process as with battuere, and,
in West Romance, rumpere, or, in the case of cernere, sternere, the
influence of currere, cursi and parere, parsi. Fr., Prov., Cat. (con)vertir
may be learned formations like It. convertire beside OIt. convertere.
In the case of vincere, Dardel, on the strength of Rumanian, Italian
and Sardinian, supposes a Latin *vinxi (and makes the mistake “convincuit
pour convinxit”, p. 80; vinxi was the perf. of vincīre), alternating with
vincisti (attested). It seems to me on balance that the forms attested in late
Latin — convincuit in the Form. Salic. Merk., convincerunt in St.
Augustine, vincisti in the Gl. Reich. — are the basis for the Romance
formations; Rum. învencuiŭ is more frequent than învinsei (învinsŭ) in the
56

older language, and the change of the infinitive from învence/învince to
învinge shows that the trend was towards assimilating this verb to those of
the cinge class. In Italian the standard vinsi has many rivals, not only the
“regular” weak vincei, but vicqui in the dialect of Rome, and the northern
venqué, similar to the French and Provençal forms. (Vicque is quoted by
Meyer-Lübke, Gr. Rom. Spr. and It. Gr., and by Salvioni (apud Wahlgren,
p. 91, n.) as being the perfect of vivere, but this is questioned by Wahlgren,
and in the Lib. Yst. Rom. (Monaci, No. 65) it is clearly from vincere, while
the perfect of vivere in the same piece is visse, also spelt vixe.) In Sardinian,
vinki is evidently the original form, and we may wonder whether vinsi is
not an Italianism, like the p.ps. bintu, binsu; this vinki seems to me to
represent *vincui, though Dardel supposes it to come from *vinci, and on
that basis justly regards it as an exceptional form. The p.p. vínkitu, from
late Latin vincĭtus, perhaps corresponds to Mac. Rum. azvimtu, It. vinto,
assuming they are derived from vinc(i)tus; once formed, these p.ps.
provided a basis on which to create a new -si perfect, as cinxi–cinctus. NIt.
venqué, Fr. venqui, and Prov. venquei are from *vincui with the -edi
extension, on the model of *battedi, with p.ps. to match. Catalan, as in the
case of the -mere and -cipere verbs, has eliminated all traces of the perfect
stem suffix (the same thing has happened in the case of the Prov. form
vences, quoted by Dardel), and is in line with Sp., Ptg. vencí, vençudo. In
spite of the close relation between Provençal and Catalan, it looks as if
Catalan consistently differed from Provençal in not having any distinct
perfect stem for those verbs which did not develop a -g- in the perfect, and
so was forced to add the weak ending for the sake of clarity. The same
thing may have happened in Spanish and Portuguese, in which case we
cannot tell whether or not there ever was any previous alternation of forms
with and without u within the paradigm. (In the case of Catalan, the pres.
subj. vença for earlier *venca might have helped in the formation of imp.
57

subj. vences and other vence- forms; and the same development is seen
perhaps in Prov. vensa (beside venca), vences, which led to venceguère.)
Currere shows equal variety. The *cursi type appears in Rumanian
(now attached to an inf. curge, which replaced cure < cură, where the -ă
reflects the influence of the Lat. -rr-), in Italian, partly in Provençal, and
apparently occasionally in French, unless encursist is formed on the
analogy of valsist, and encours just an adjectival form (cf. the modern
nouns concours, recours, secours). *Currui is evidently required for corui,
corvi (?), and correc, which have been discussed above (§6c) in
connection with parui, parec. Fr. co(u)ri is occasionally found early, but it
is not clear whether or not it is an analogical form based on the infinitive,
which was re-formed from co(u)rre. Fouché explains EFr.corret as being
formed in the same way as batterent, that is, the u of *curruit was lost after
the double consonant and then the -edi ending was added, whereas standard
corut came from *curuit, in which the geminate had been simplified (but cf.
§6c); on the other hand, corret could well be a new formation like many of
the other EFr. perfects, perhaps starting from arrhizotonic forms as curristi,
seeing that it may have been influenced by the Italian paradigm. The same
arguments hold good for the Gascon, Spanish and Portuguese forms; no
correg- forms are quoted for Old Gascon, unlike Provençal and Catalan,
but Mistral gives courregut as the modern participle.
13. The -scere verbs. We now come to a group consisting of cognoscere,
crescere, pascere, nasci, irasci, miscere (an -ēre verb in classical Latin),
texere (cf. also expergisci/experisci, §15), with vivere, exire partly attracted
to it, and, in some languages, some derivative -escere verbs, as parescere,
*merescere. The Latin perfect forms recorded are cognōvi/cognoscessem
(Gl. Leid.), crēvi, pāvi (I take it that pabuit, like expabui, is another form of
the perfect of pavēre, not this perfect, but even so this perfect probably
58

underwent the same development), natus sum (and fut.p. nasciturus), iratus
sum, miscui (with classical p.p. mixtus), texui/contexit (Ausonius),
conteximus (Pliny the Elder), vixi/vexivit (D. & G., p. 44; labelled “V.L.”, =
Vulgar Latin rather than Vet. Lat. ?)/bisit (visit; M. & T.)/vixcit, visscerit
(M.-P., Cid)/viverit (Greg. of Tours)/victet (Gallic inscr.; Wahl., p. 25), and
exii/exit. It will be seen that these fall into two broad classes of those with
and without -sc- (-x-) in the perfect. In PR, cognōvi, crēvi and pāvi
evidently all followed the verbs with *-ww-, like the pāvi (or *pavvi)/pabui
just mentioned (but note cognoscessem, formed on the present stem, in the
Gl. Leid.). (See the discussion of nōvi and mōvi above, §3.) The
substitution of texi for texui is the converse of what happened in the case of
the perfects of the verbs in -ctere (which became obsolete), flexi, nexi, pexi,
plexi, for which the later forms flexui, nexui, pexui, plexui are also found
(Gaf.); cf. also late messui from metere, which evidently replaced *messi,
with fut.p. metiturus, and so also pinsui for pinsi from pinsere, with p.ps.
pinsus and pinsitus for pistus (preserved in It. pesto). We may also be
justified, on the basis of Romance developments, in assuming *exui beside
exii, as the latter evidently became *exi in pronunciation (cf. exit for exiit
above). As we have seen in §4 above, the compounds of īre had only -ii
perfects, stressed on the prefix, in which the -ii is sometimes found
contracted to -ī; having also p.ps. in -ĭtus, they would naturally be drawn
into the -ui, -ĭtus class, as is actually evidenced by the forms obuit,
obuerunt cited above in §4. In addition there is an It. dial. form subbe from
sui < subire (Servigliano, Macerata) quoted by Corominas, s. v. subir,
which seems to reflect *subuit. In the light of all these forms we may
perhaps interpret the “V.L.” vexivi as an attempt at Latinising *vexui,
especially when we note the parallelism of sapivi/sapui, petivi/*petui
(OSard. (Camp.) peti(u)i and (Log.) petti), posivi/posui.
Coming to the Romance languages we have (with p.ps. often
59

formed on the pres. stem, and then affecting the perfs.):
Rum.: cunoscui, -ut, crescui, păscui, născui (p.p. născut, cf. subst.
nat), mescui, Ńesui, ieşii/Mac. Rum. esui, also ORum. încărescui
(incalescere), învescui (investire), (în)vişŭ (vivere).
It.: conobbi/conoscei, p.p. conosciuto (conoscuto); crebbi/crescei,
p.p. cresciuto (crescutu); pascei, pasciuto; irato; nacqui/nascei,
nato/nasciuto (nascutu); mescei, mesciuto/OIt. mesto; tessei, tessuto/OIt.
testo; vissi/vivei/OSic. vippi (Wart.)/vicque (? — doubtful), dial. strong subj.
vissesse, vissuto/visso/vivuto/NIt. vivesto etc.; uscii/uscette, uscito/issuto
(insuto, riusciuto, esciuto etc.).
Fr.: conui (2 coneüs)/EFr. cogneisset, subj. connissest, p.p. coneü/
EFr. cogneissu; crui (2 creüs)/NFr. 3 criut/dial. cressi, p.p. creü/dial.
cressu; poi (2 peüs/NFr. peuis)/NEFr. 3 paut/dial. apasset, paissi, p.p.
peü/dial. apassu, paissu; aparui/EFr. apareissit, p.p. aparu/apareü/EFr.
apparissu; irasqui (dial. 3 irasquet), p.p. irascu/iré; nasqui (dial. 3
nasquet)/dial. nessi, p.p. né/nascu/dial. naissu, nasqui; beneï/benesqui
(benedicere), p.p. beneeit/benit/benescu; t(e)issi/late tissus, p.p. tissu; issi
(dial. 3 isset)/yssut, issurent, p.p. issi/issu; 3 vist/vesqui (dial. 3 vesquet,
vesquié, visket)/late vescus, p.p. vescu/late vesqui.
Prov.: conuc (conoc)/mod. coune(i)guère, couneissèri, Lang.
counousquère, p.p. conogut/mod. Lang. counouscut; cric (crec)/mod.
creiguère, creisseguère, creissèri, Lang. cresquèri, p.p. cregut/mod. p.ps.
to match perfs., as Lang. crescut; pac/pasquei/condit. payssera/mod.
peisseguère, peissèri, p.p. pagut/pascut; parec/mod. pareiguère, pareissèri,
Lang. paresquèri, p.p. paregut/parut/mod. p.ps. to match perfs., as Lang.
parescut; irasc/irasquei, p.p. irascut/irat; nasc/nasquei (nasqui)/Lim. 3
naissé (Dar., p. 50)/condit. naissera/mod. nasquère, neisseguère, neissèri,
p.p. nat/nascut; mesquei, mescut, now as creisser (Mist.), noun mest;
60

tesquei/teissei, tescut/teissut/testut (?); eissi (eisserent in Gir. de R.),
eissit/eissut; visc/visquei (vesquei)/mod. visquère, viscut.
Gasc.: rechonoc (conogueren)/conogo (conego)/mod. couneshoui,
counegoui, subj. counesquessi, p.p. conogut (conegut) and mod. couneshut;
cresco, crescut; nascui, nasco/mod. ne(i)shoui, nascut/mod. ne(i)shut; mod.
p.p. pascut; comparegoren/paros/aparesco/mod. subj. parescoussi,
pareishoui, mod. p.p. pareishut, Béarn. parešcut; exit (ishit), mod. p.p. ishi;
visco, mod. biscon, subj. biscoussi, p.p. biscut, Béarn. bibut.
Cat.: conoc/conec/mod. coneguí, conesquí, coneixí (Gar.),
conogut/conegut/also mod. conescut (Gar.); crec (Gar.)/cresc(h)/creguí
(Bec)/cresquí/creixí, p.p. crescut/Rous. creixit; pasquí/peixí, p.p. pascut/
Rous. peixit; irasquí/ireixí, p.p. irascut/irat; parec(h)/OMaj. comparesc(h)/
pareguí/aparesquí, p.p. aparegut; meresc(h)/meresquí/mereixí, p.p.
merescut; nasc(h)/naix (Fou., R.)/nasquí/neixí, p.p. nat/nascut/Rous. neixit;
teixí (tisquí ? — Gar. says “as eixir”), p.p. teixit, old test; eixí/isquí, p.p.
eixit; visc/visquí, p.p. viscut. (Note that, in contrast to the -xí perfects, with
-i- throughout, the -squí perfects have 2 -squeres, 3 -squé etc.)
Sp.: conuvo, connuvieron/conocí (OLeon., OArag. -xí), old p.p.
conoçudo; crove, crovo, crovieron/crecí (-xí), old p.p. cresçudo (P. C. G.);
pasco (Alex. 718c; a reconstruction required by the rhyme)/pací (-xí);
nasque (nasqui, Ber., Mil.), nasco, nasquiestes, nasquieran/nací (-xí),
naiseran and naisceset (Gl. Sil.), nasceo (F. J.), Ast. nacego, old p.ps.
nado/nasçudo (P. C. G.); mecí, p.ps. Moz. miššita/mejido beside mecido
(cf. also Mesta); paresco/parecí (parexieron; Gass.) — (Dardel’s parist
(p.74) is from parir) — , old p.p. desparesçudo (P. C. G.); merecí; old
-e(s)cer p.ps. estavlezudo, betereiscitu (Gl. Sil.); tejí (Arag. texí), old p.ps.
texudo (Alf. Ⅹ), tiesto; 1 ixe/exi, 2 essiste/existe, 3 yxo/ixo/exo/yxió/
issió/exió(d), 4 yxiemos, 5 yxiestes, 6 yxieron/issieron/exieron, p.p. exido;
61

visque (vesqui; Diez), visquiste, visco (visquió), visquieron, visquiera,
visquiessen etc./viví, vivir (fut. subj.) and vivissen (F. J.), old p.p.
visquido (so inf. vesquir; Veláz.).
Ptg.: only weak perfects, with the old p.ps. conhoçudo, creçudo,
nado, adj. mesto, estabelesçudo, desfalesçudo, teisto, apareçudo. (Note that
Ptg. -cer cannot be the etymological form, and the Castilian form has
perhaps spread here as elsewhere; cf. tecer = Lat. texere (found also in
Leon. Alex. O) but mexer, and also nascer but OPtg. neixente, neixença
(Mich.), and a similar place name Creixente.)
Rh.: 1 arcunguschek, subj. cognuschess, Friul. p.p. cognossut,
increschett, naschett, p.p. naschü, subj. viviss, Friul. vivès; cf. also subst.
ischüda (Eng.), išuda (Dolom.), insude (Friul.), ensüda (Tyrol.).
Sard.: perfs. vissi/mod. vibisi, mod. conoscisit, mod. (b)essisit;
p.ps. náskidu, (b)essiu, albéskidu, pudešiu (H. W. S., pp. 94, 67).
As can be seen, the general tendency here is for the old -vi forms
like cognōvi, though found over a wide area (Italy, France and Spain), to
be replaced by new ones like *cognoscui, *cognoscu-edi, *cognosc-edi.
The only -scui perfect in Latin is miscui, with texui to support it, both
liable to lose the u after the two consonants, though in the case of miscui
the u was evidently preserved, at least in some areas, as is shown by the
hard c/q of certain languages; on the other hand one might also see here the
influence of the subj. stem, as crescat, *miscat. In view of the general lack
of uniformity it is hard to say whether any of these forms go back to PR;
one must beware of being influenced by accidental similarities, as in the
case of Rum. and Gasc. născui (nascui)–născut (nascut), crescui–crescut,
which are the result of independent parallel development. If there is any
form which we might trace back to PR, it is, in fact, *nascui, as this
could possibly be the basis of the forms in all the major languages except
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Portuguese (if we suppose It. nacqui to have been reformed from *nasqui
on giacqui, piacqui, tacqui; there is a connection between them, as a word
like piacere is popularly pronounced with a palatalised /∫/, similar to the sc
of nascere). The forms as *-scedi seem on the whole to have come later in
the various languages, and to have been formed direct from the present
stem, but there is always the question posed by Dardel of the possibility of
weak arrhizotonic forms alongside strong rhizotonic forms. This seems to
me to have very little support from the Latin angle, as on the lines of
*bibui, bibisti one would here expect *cognovui, cognovisti, *crevui,
crevisti, *pavui, pavisti, without the intrusion of the present stem, while
nasci and irasci had no active perfect; miscere and texere may have
produced such a pattern, but we have no strong Romance forms from
which to judge, though Prov. mesquei, tesquei point to them. Dardel
himself recognises this problem (p. 70), and concludes that forms like
*cognoscisti must have developed after the PR period; the cognoscessem
he quotes is from the 9th-c. Gl. Leid. Even so, one cannot necessarily
exclude the possibility of new unrecorded PR forms based on the present
stem, like those found in the case of rumpere, vincere. What is clear is that
the -scui forms came to be in danger of colliding with the forms of the
present and had to be extended by use of the weak ending; in French,
*nascui, *viscui would probably have become *nais, *vis (see my
comments on vist below), while Prov., Cat. nasc, visc were equally
ambiguous (cf. Cat. 1 pres. nasc, visc).
The most interesting group of languages here is the central one
occupying southern France and north-eastern Spain; here there is a
flourishing -scui/-scu-edi class, which has not only tended to absorb all the
-scere verbs, including parescere, *merescere, but also to take in texere,
exire, vivere, and, as we shall see later (§23), several verbs with -si and
63

other perfects. One of the influences in bringing this about has no doubt
been the forms of the present subj., which were extended to the imperf.
subj.; in confirmation of this, converse forms are found, as Cat. pres. subj.
conegui, creegua (OCat.; R.-G.), paregui, escriscau (OCat.; Gili, p.123),
visqui, also pres. 1 conec, parec, visc. Prov. teisser was attracted because of
the similarity of its present paradigm to that of creisser, but kept its older
form teissei and thus set up a duality, which was to be joined later by pairs
like nasquet/naissé, and set a pattern for other verbs to follow, as will be
discussed later. In Catalan I can find no perfect form quoted for teixir, but
it has pres. 1 tixc, 3 tix, as ixc, ix, and García de Diego says it is like eixir,
which clearly has isquí, isquist, isqué etc., beside eixí (pres. subj. isca), so
here there is duality, and equally in nasc(h)/naix, nasquí/neixí. It seems
doubtful to me whether there is any connection with Latin texui, *exui, as
the French u-perfects and the Mac. Rum. esui (beside inšii) can be
explained as formed on the -ūtu p.ps. (*iesut for ieşit not attested in Rum.),
which were no doubt decisive in the formation of the perfect in every area.
On the question of the -ūtu p.ps., Fr. issu, It. issuto, esciuto etc. in
themselves do not necessarily point to a PR *exūtu, because French and
Italian created many new -ūtu p.ps. for -īre verbs, but in this case Prov.
eissut, Eng. ischüda/Dolom. išuda/Tyr. ensüda/Friul. insude (nominal
forms, so evidently old), and Mac. Rum. esui make it seem likely that
*exūtu was the PR form, which would be expected anyway as the natural
successor to exĭtus. Textus survived, but was probably also flanked by
*texĭtus (cf. It. tessitura, Sp. tejedura), which likewise became *texūtus.
The Spanish strong perfect forms ixe, ixo are surprising, seeming, as they
do, to go straight back to ex(i)i, ex(i)it, with certain modifications; perhaps
they owe their existence to the support of dixe, dixo.
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How vivere was attracted to this -scui group is more of a puzzle.
That vixi survived is shown by ORum. (în)vişŭ, It. vissi/OIt. vixi, and Sard.
vissi, and also the isolated Fr. vist (Rom. de Rose; Fou., §145), unless this
represents *viscuit, but victus is only found as a noun (giving Rum. vipt, It.
vitto). As vivere was an intransitive verb there was no p.p. corresponding
to the supine victum, and a participle newly formed on this stem to match
vixi would have clashed with other participles (in Sard. bittu belongs to
videre and bibere, and in OIt. vitto belongs to vincere). What is all the
more surprising is that vivere did not apparently follow the pattern of
scribere; but on the other hand a closer look reveals that they are not so
dissimilar. Wahlgren (p. 7) quotes a late Latin p.p. scripsus, and Rumanian
has scris and (în)vis, with earlier script as vipt. If scripsus goes back to
Latin times, it is equally possible that Latin had vixi–victus (noun)/*vixus,
as fixi–fictus/fixus, frixi–frictus/frixus, giving It. vissi–visso; this visso was
then changed to vissuto by a process which produced other p.ps. such as
volsuto, valsuto, dolsuto, parsuto, vensuto (venire), alongside -si perfects.
So we may assume as a working hypothesis that the original PR forms
were vixi–*vixus, and that *viscu- is just a local development. (As
mentioned above, under vincere, it seems wise to regard the attribution of
vicque to vivere as a mistake, and rid ourselves of any notion that *viscu-
may have turned up in Italy, the more so because we cannot be sure of
seeing *nascu- lurking behind nacqui.) Menéndez Pidal (§120.4) supposes
that vixi continued in its learned form (/víksi/) to produce visc- by
metathesis, but it can hardly be imagined that such a popular verb would
have had a learned form in the perfect.
*Viscui, like *nascui (disregarding Rum. născui and It. nacqui), is
limited to France and north-eastern Spain, at the heart of which area the
-scui perfects, as we shall see later (§23), show a great extension. Thus in
Spanish visque, visco, visquieron, like nasqui, nasco, nasquiestes, are
65

limited to the areas close to Gascony and Catalonia, and such forms are not
found further west or in Portugal; note that where the eastern versions of
the Fuero Juzgo have visquiere, visquiessen, the western ones have vivir,
vivissen. Menéndez Pidal (Cid) gives vixcit, uisscerit as forms found in the
Latin of Spain and Portugal, and another Latin variant is the “V.L.” vexivit
cited above, but none of these indicate the *visc- with a hard c that we are
looking for, though vexivit shows the e of *vesc-, which is often found as
an alternative to *visc. Fouché has assumed derivation from vivescere/
viviscere with haplology; Dionisotti and Grayson also mention vivesco, as
well as vescor, as forms that have been suggested to account for the vesco
of the Ritmo Laurenziano (No. XII, p. 44), and quote rivisco, reviviscere as
parallel forms. Cf. also reviscló in Berceo (Mil. 749c). The difficulty here
is that with these slight exceptions *visc-, *vesc- are not found in the
imperfectum; if we accept that v(iv)escere is the origin of *vesc-, we still
need to find another influence to account for the limitation of these forms
to the perfectum. It seems to me that the theory of attraction is the easiest
one to accept. If we imagine a context such as “he was born and lived all
his life in the same place”, we could conceive that Proto-Prov. nasc e *vis
changed to nasc e visc, while, in Proto-French *naist e vist, vist < vixit
could be interpreted as vist < *viscuit, parallel to *naist < *nascuit (as nais
< *nasco, bois < *boscu; in fact it is possible that vist goes back to *viscuit
rather than to *vixit), with the arrhizotonic forms based on -scu- in both
cases. In this same area the p.p. *vis < *vixu became both ambiguous and
isolated from the rest of the verb, and so viscut was formed on visc, as
nascut on nasc. Spanish has a p.p. visquido which is limited to OArag.,
where it was natural to form the p.p. on the perfect stem. (It is ironical that
vivere and scribere were reunited in the Prov./Gasc./Cat. area by the later
formation of escrisc as visc; see §23.) It seems hardly likely that there is
any connection between weak Sp., Ptg. viví and the Lat. viverit of Gregory
66

of Tours (6th c.), nor are there any weak viv- forms in French, though
Wahlgren (p. 221) gives Franco-Prov. perf. and p.p. vivú.
For nascere, the absence of any forms in Latin as *nascui, *nasci
makes it impossible to decide whether there was any early alternation of
forms, but at least we can say that *nascui forms proponderate in most
areas, and seem to be earlier. Moreover it is from the strong arrhizotonic
forms as *nascuisti that the weak paradigm, as nasqui, nasquei etc., was
developed. The antiquity of naisceset, naiseran in the Gl. Sil. (to be
pronounced like the forms in naix- in later OArag.), along with abierat,
sapieret, in contrast with later nasquiestes, nasquieran in the Cid, is taken
by Dardel as an indication of the parallel existence in earlier Spanish of
strong rhizotonic and weak arrhizotonic forms. But against this must be
placed the fact that there is an early displacement of strong forms by weak;
for example, in Berceo’s Milagros there is only one strong form, nasqui
(753a), and in his Santo Domingo also only one, nasco (126c), as against
numerous examples of the weak replacement nació (also substituted in Alex.
718a for the nasco required by the rhyme; cf. pasco above), and equally
naciera, nazieron, and also the fact that the arrhizotonic forms are likely to
change sooner than the rhizotonic. An example of this is in Catalan, where
you have in Tirant lo Blanc regularly 3 dix, but digués, diguesseu, diguí
(R.-G., No. 73), the weak forms being patently new formations, not from
*dicistis, *dicissetis etc. In the case of those Spanish verbs which
eventually became weak, it is difficult to prove anything from the early
appearance of weak forms, and in this particular case anyway we cannot be
sure how far the *nascu- forms penetrated. Nevertheless it is possible to
make out a case for the Aragonese weak paradigm having started with the
arrhizotonic forms, and from that to argue — without any proof — that the
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same thing happened with the other verbs that became weak. (See also
below, §23.)
14. The -lere (and some -gere) verbs. There are two more groups of -ĕre
verbs in which -ui perfects are found, those with an l in the stem — colere,
molere, tollere, solvere, volvere — and a few with a velar — frangere,
legere, eligere, trahere (*tragere), traicere and perhaps, to a minor extent,
facere. (Another verb, fallere, became an -īre verb, but traces of an old
p.p.*fallĭto are seen in the substantives OIt., Prov., Cat., Sp., Ptg., falta, Fr.
faute. In French, from OFr. fa(i)llir was created a new falloir/faudre having
the meaning ‘it is necessary’ and conjugated as valoir, so perf. fallut, EFr.
defallerent, NFr. fôve, subj. faulsist, p.p. fa(i)llu. Similarly, there was an
OIt. fallere ‘be mistaken’, p.p. falluto. The classical p.p. falsus had already
become an adjective.) The first group I will take now, but the others with a
velar I will study together with the -si perfects. Here (late) Latin has
colui/colerunt, p.p. cultus, molui, p.p. molitus/molutus (Vää.), (te)tuli/tolli/
tulli/abstoli (toll- and tull- frequent in all parts), p.p. (abs)tul(i)tus/
tollitus/tolutus (Bour.), solvi (solui)/solsi, p.p. solutus/solvitus, volvi, p.p.
volutus. As we have seen in the case of the -lere verbs, solvere provided a
-si perfect well attested (solserit, solserunt, absolsi, transolsisse) and a
participle solvitus — probably followed by *volsi, *volvitus — which set
an example for other verbs to follow.
In the daughter languages the forms are:
Rum.: desvoalse, p.p. desvolt/învolt.
It.: p.p. colto; tolsi (tulze)/tolli (tulle)/tollí (tolé, tulé), strong
arrhizotonic tolsesti, p.p. tolto/NIt. tolleg/ONeap. tólleto; (as)solsi/
(as)solvei, p.p. (as)solto/(as)soluto/NIt. solvuo; volsi (av-, in-, ri-, s-), p.p.
volto (av-, in-, ri-, s-)/convolso/involuto (cf. also svellere, svelsi, svelto,
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from *exvellere, evidently popular, as against learned avellere, avulso,
convulso).
Fr.: toil (tult, tolrent; Dar., p. 46)/toli/tolst/EFr. tolui, p.p. tolt/
tolu/toleit/tolli; (ab)sols/absolus/absolis/solvis etc., p.p. (ab)sols/assolt/
absolu/resols/resolt/résolu/solvi/persulleites; volst, p.p. volt/vols/volu
(Nyrop), noun voûte; molui, p.p. molu (Pope also gives mols).
Prov.: p.p. colt (cout); molc, p.p. mout/(es)molut; tolc, p.p. tolt
(tout)/tolgut; (as)sols (subj. (as)solses)/solc (Toul.; Graf.)/subj. (ab)solves,
condit. solvera, p.p. (ab)solt ((ab)sout); vols/volvc (volgron), p.p. volt
(vout)/volgut. Mod. perfs. mouguère, absouguère.
Gasc: p.p. mot/moulut (Mist.); torc/subj. toros, mod. p.p. tourut;
solbo/asolbeg, mod. p.p. sou(l)but.
Cat.: p.p. colt; molc, p.p. molt; tolc (tolgren; mod. tolguí)/3 tolé
(R.-G.), p.p. tolt; absolguí (absolgren; Gar.)/resolc/solvé (Fou., R.), p.p.
(ab)solt (dis-, re-); 4 volvem (R.-G.), envolt (Gili), nouns volt(a).
Sp.: weak perfects, with p.ps. (es)moludo, tuelto/tolludo, suelto
(ab-, di-, re-), vuelto (en-, re-), noun bóveda.
Ptg.: weak perfects, with p.ps. mudo, tolheito, solto (ab-,
re-)/persolvudo, volto (en-)/envolveito/revôlto, noun abôbada.
vouta (Bec).
Rh.: OSurs. volví, p.ps. miot, tot, Eng. siut, vieult (M.-L.), noun
Sard.: p.ps. assoltu (and adj. sortu)/assolviu, nouns volta,
imborbida (H. W. S., p. 94).
Here it will be seen that there is rivalry between the -si, -(ĭ)tu and
-ui, -ūtu types, with the -(ĭ)tu p.ps. dominant, though molūtus is also well
represented. Molui, solsi, *volsi seem to be the dominant perfect types; Fr.
absolus is late, and Prov. solc, Cat. resolc, absolguí are also probably
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analogical, as the -si perfects were generally replaced by g-forms here. In
the case of tollere there is great hesitation, and the widespread appearance
of a weak type; note the rare French forms given by Dardel, which are
apparently parallel to voil, volt, voldrent. Given the basic late Latin perfect
tolli, beside which there most probably also existed *tollui, these early
French forms are exactly etymological, and tolli, tollisti would be subject
to the natural change to *tolledi, *tollesti that we have seen in the case of
battere, rompere, vincere, currere etc. What is more, toil, tult, tolrent
could have affected the perfect of vouloir, thus accounting for voil, volt,
voldrent without diphthongisation of the o. Prov., Cat. tolc, Gasc torc
represent *tollui, while Cat. tolé (if this is not a misreading of tolc; Gar.
also gives 1 tol, 2 tolist; forms with one l are usual), Gasc. toros reflect
tolli. Note the progression, seen before, from strong to weak type as one
goes south, through Prov. solves, Gasc. solbo, Cat. solvé, volvem to the
Spanish and Portuguese weak types. (Gasc. 3 asolbeg is a weak perfect
with added g, from a zone which did not substitute o for e.) Another point
of interest is the p.p. as *tollectus, in imitation of collectus, which has also
influenced other p.ps.
15. The -īre verbs. There is one more group of verbs with -ui (or -si)
perfects, namely, those found in the -īre conjugation, particularly those
ending in -erīre. We have already examined venire and exire, and
mentioned It. subbe and Sard. petti/peti(u)i (petere seems to have become
an -īre verb *petīre in PR, cf. Rum. peŃi, SIt. petire, Sp., Ptg. pedir, Sard.
petire/petere); also some of the Latin -io, -ĕre verbs with -ui perfects joined
the -īre conjugation in part (It. capire/capere, Prov. cabir, OSp.
reçebir/reçeber), and we have seen the same phenomenon in the case of
consuere, conspuere and sequi. One other verb, paenitēre, which appears in
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the Romance languages with two stems, pent- and penet-, has now largely
aligned itself with sentīre, which lost its strong forms. (There were also
other Latin -īre verbs with strong forms that are now only represented by
p.ps. that have survived here and there as adjectives and nouns: sanctus,
fartus, sepultus, *assaltus, salsa. See also *fallĭta above, §14.) But the
most significant group is the -erīre verbs. Of those represented in Romance,
aperīre, cooperīre and ferīre are original -īre verbs, to which we must add
perīre, a compound of īre. To these were attracted in PR ferre and its
compounds, and merēre/merēri; experg(isc)ere/expergisci (× experīri),
servīre, inserere/*inserire and quaerere (especially its compounds, among
them conquirere, which gave Rum. cuceri, amongst others) were also
affected. The result in late Latin was a multiplicity of perfects and p.ps.,
thus aperui, apertus and cooperui, coopertus; 4th-c. ferii, feriturus;
perii/peri, perĭtus; offersi, offertus/inferturus (cf. classical fertilis,
fertorium); merui, merĭtus; expergi, expergĭtus/experrectus (× expertus);
inserui, insertus. We cannot be sure of ferii, feriturus, but it will be seen
that the others are all strong forms, assuming that peri, being a contraction
of perii and not of *perīvi, keeps the same accent; it is quite likely that this
accentuation was followed by ferii, too.
The modern languages have mostly substituted the weak -īvi forms,
but these strong Latin types have all survived here and there. In Rumanian
you have Mac. Rum. k’erui, k’erut (k’ < p’; possibly on the model of
k’erdui, k’erdut = pierdui, pierdut, as Wahlgren says), to which may be
compared cerui, cerut from quaerere. Italian has apersi/aprii, aperto/Calab.
aperutu; copersi/coprii, coperto; offersi/offrii, offerto/Calab. offrutu;
soffersi/soffrii, sofferto; profersi/proferii, proferto/proferito/OIt.
arproferuto (Mon.); riferito/Istr. riferto; ferito/feruto; perito/peruto;
inserito/adj. inserto; for merire only the present mere seems to have been in
use, but cf. the old noun merto. It will be seen that in Italian -si has
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triumphed over -ui (but cf. apparsi/apparvi/apparii), and -uto has replaced
-ĭto, though -to has survived, backing up the -si perfects. However, we
cannot be sure that this -uto is not a later substitution for -īto; still such -ūtu
p.ps. are widely found, even occurring in Provençal, which does not usually
make new p.ps. in -ut in the -ir conjugation, so these Italian forms may
have been original, and have formed the basis for the later extension. In
French you have the p.ps. offert, souffert, ouvert, couvert and analogical
OFr. dessert, and the participial adj. espert; ferir, perir, merir are basically
regular verbs, but ferir had at first feriet, feru (so Fouché, but without
references), and in EFr. peret is found, as well as ferei, fere(i)t, fere(i)rent.
With the Eastern forms we cannot be sure how old they are, but central
feriet, feru would seem to be original, though the formation of such a
perfect for a stem ending in a single consonant is surprising in French; it
seems as if the weak -edi ending has been added to férii/*féri (as périi/péri),
as in the case of battere etc., perhaps in imitation of currere. If this in fact
happened, we might even suppose that other forms like offrit, ouvrit also
came via -iet. Querir (ac-, con-, en-, re-) for querre was also affected,
giving querit/queret/querut, and p.p. enqueri/queru (see also the discussion
of quaerere in §6c).
In Provençal, besides the weak forms, there are the perfects uberc,
cuberc, oferc, soferc, proferc, and p.ps. ubert, cubert, ofert, sofert, profert;
in this case the -ui forms have triumphed. Besides these there are
esp(e)reisser/esperir, esp(e)rec/esp(e)ric, p.p. espert, and merir, merc,
mergut. Perir is regular, but ferir also has p.p. ferut. Gascon similarly has
the p.ps. auffert, souffert, oubert, coubert, which Wahlgren considers, it
seems to me unreasonably, to be loans, because irregular p.ps. are so
unusual in Gascon (but they are plentiful in the velar stems). Catalan also
has similar forms, ofert, sofert, obert, cobert, adj. despert, from which the
-ert has spread to omplert, complert, suplert, rublert, establert, and OCat.
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cloert ‘closed’ (a good example of semantic association with obert). Ferir,
perir are regular, and merir has mostly been replaced by mereixer (but
imperf. meria; R.-G.). Spanish has the nouns OAst. ofierta (standard oferta
has a learned stamp about it), refierta (reyerta), profierta, old p.p. sufierto,
mod. abierto, cubierto, and adjs. or nouns (d)espierto, ingerto/injerto
(ingerir ‘graft’; OSp. enxierto, enxerir < inserere/*inserīre, cf. It. dial.
noun inserto). Portuguese also has p.ps. aberto, coberto, adj. (d)esperto,
and nouns enxêrto, oferta, old referta; sofrer has the old p.p. sofrudo.
Rhaeto-Romance has the p.ps. Eng. avert/ORh. auirtu, cuvert, ofert, and
fiers (from fierer) as piers (from pierder); to this last may be compared the
Franco-Prov. (Vaud) fiersa given by Wahlgren (pp. 68-9). Friulian has the
similar aviart, cuviart. Sardinian has apersit, coberssi, offersi, affersit,
which have affected kerfit to produce kersit; the modern forms are as
abberisit, riferisit. Past participles are as mod. abbertu, fertu ‘struck’ (Wag.,
p. 415; ferrere combines Lat. ferre and ferīre, Bec, 2/296), and kertu,
beside kersu/kerfidu. I presume also cobertu corresponding to the noun
cobertura (H. W. S., p. 101).
One more verb in this class, mori (morīri, morīre also attested),
had a strong p.p., perhaps under the influence of fut.p. moriturus; *mortus
for mortuus is found in all the languages (sometimes only as an adj., as
Rum. mort), and this led to some other perfect forms besides those from
*morīvi, as It. morsi (and moretti, with p.p. moruto), Fr. mourus (and old
p.p. mouru), to which cf. respectively corsi, courus. Sardinian had, besides
morivit (Mon., No. 10, iii), contracted morrunt and plup. morran (Fl., pp.
29, 21). Paenitēre may also be supposed to have brought its old -ēre forms
into the -īre conjugation, so It. pentire with alternative forms pentere,
pentiedi, pen(e)tuto, Fr. repentei (EFr., but Fouché alleges the same
development for central French, without giving examples), repentu, Prov.
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penedut, Sp. penitieret (Gl. Sil.), arrepentudo and repiso/repeso, Ptg.
repender/repentir, rependeu (OGal.; O.B.P.V., Nos. 58, 60), repentudo
and arrepiso. Vestir also seems to have adopted a p.p. *vestūtus, perhaps
formed from the noun vestis, and parallel to cornūtus, barbūtus etc.; this is
seen in It. vestuto, Fr. vestu, Prov. vestut, its presence in Provençal being
probably a token of its antiquity (cf. also Rum. învescut beside înveştit
from înveşti; u-forms have also penetrated şti < scire, giving ştiui, ştiut).
Gaudēre seems to have influenced audire, cf. It. dial. odetti, olduto as
godetti, goduto. With all these irregular forms appearing amongst the -īre
verbs (though most of the Latin irregular verbs had been regularised), it
was a short step to extending the -ēre perfect and p.p. forms to the -īre
verbs in general, especially in the south, thus, for example, It.
sentetti/sentiedi, sentuto (with the converse substitution of -i for -ei in
many dialects), Salent. 6 salera, Neap. sagliuto, or OFr. sentei, oiet (EFr.),
sailleront (Lyon), sentu, oü (Franco-Prov. oiu; Bec, 2/390), salu/saillu.
Similarly we have Gal. senteu, o(i)eu, mod. Prov. mourèri beside
mouriguère, sufrèri beside soufriguère, seguèri beside seguiguère (here
two infs., segre and seguir), and the complete amalgamation of -īvi and
-edi in French and Spanish (seen early in OArag. morie(t), murié (Oríg.,
Hans., G. & H.)); subsequently there were large-scale changes of
conjugation in different areas, as Spain, Sardinia, S. Italy, Corsica, and
some changes from -er to -ir in other parts as well, with the reverse
process observable in French dial. -re for -ir. Wahlgren suggests that the
resemblance between vendere and sentīre was enough to start off
analogical extensions, in spite of the difference of conjugation, but my
own feeling is that in the early stages of the Romance languages the
difference between -ere and -īre was still clearly felt (for instance, it is
only amongst the old -īre verbs that we find the -esc- interfix alternating
with the plain stem as a result of coalescence with corresponding -escere
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verbs), and the confusion began with the above handful of verbs and then
spread, particularly to the -īre verbs without interfix, and so became
generalised.
16. Conclusions regarding the -ui perfects. Having now looked at all the
verbs with -ui perfects, barring a small handful to be discussed later, for
which -si was the dominant type (see §14), we need to sum up our findings.
What emerges most clearly is that it is mostly the verbs in -ēre with
classical Latin perfects in -ui — largely remaining unaffected in the late
Latin period, and surviving into Romance — which show some signs of a
dual conjugation in Romance, as in Fr. poïs/poüs, Sp. oviesse/auiesses,
while those verbs which at first did not have u, and then added it, like
bibi/*bibui, recēpi/*recēpui, ru(m)pi/*ru(m)pui, or conversely later lost an
original u, as battui/*batti, have generally settled for one type or the other
in the different languages. (We also need to allow for the fact that there
may not have been any extension of the u in some areas, e.g. in Iberia,
where there is no trace of *vēnui, and perhaps none of *stetui (see §25),
and the newly created -ui perfects are largely limited to the PR -ēre
conjugation, as sope, cope, sove; in the -ĕre conjugation the only
non-classical -ui perfects to appear are credui (Sp. crovo, Ptg. creve), and
*nascui, *viscui. Credui goes back to Plautus, so quite possibly belongs to
the earliest Latin of Spain, while *nascui, *viscui, as we have seen, are
regional developments. For the other perfects, conuvo, crovo (crecer), there
is also a strong possibility that the Latin pronunciations *cognowwi,
*crewwi are old, though it can also be argued that the Spanish forms go
back to cognōvi, crēvi; Dardel (p. 70) quotes Meyer(-Lübke) as saying that
the addition of u to perfects like mōvi, pāvi is not found in Sardinian, and is
only in its early stages in Iberia.) Leaving Italian aside for the moment, it
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looks as if the Romance languages abhorred a mixed type, and generalised
one or the other, with the *batti, *rumpi, and in some areas the bibi, recēpi,
types tending to add the weak -edi ending to the strong forms, producing a
uniform arrhizotonic paradigm. In the case of the -ēre verbs, there seems to
be strong reason to believe that forms like *potisti, *habisti, sapisti, *volisti
survived locally, and in some cases became the basis for new weak
paradigms, as mod. Arag. habié, tenié, though in other cases it is clear that
the weak paradigms were created afresh from the present stem, or certain
parts of it, as appears in Fr. doillest, raemplissest. (But often, unfortunately,
the weak forms are so widespread that we cannot tell how they began.) On
the strength of the evidence I would say that the habui/*habisti type is
represented in three ways in Romance. Firstly, it is the regular type in
Italian, and seems to have spread from there to contiguous areas in
Switzerland and France, so that we have It. ebbi (abbi), avesti, subjs. avessi,
volessi, Rh. ob (Friul.), havest, mod. subjs. avess, vuless, EFr. avesse,
volest, Franco-Prov. aest, volissant. Secondly, in Spanish (but not in Portu-
guese) there are early forms like abieret, sapieret in the Gl. Sil., and
interesting alternations, like xopo/xabieron, in the Yúçuf, all these in verbs
for which the standard language has strong perfects even today. Thirdly,
there are certain isolated verbs, such as tenēre, *volēre, *potēre, for which
forms of both types appear, as Fr. tin(g), tenis/tinve, voil, volis/vove,
pois/poüs, Gasc. volgoren/voloren, pogo/podo, though it is not clear here
whether the loss of u is to be traced back to PR. In the case of the first type
there may have been two influences at work. One would be the submerged
tendency, seen in the pre-classical moneris, monerit, and nōvi/nōsti,
-āvi/-āsti, -īvi/-īsti, to prefer forms without u everywhere except in forms 1
and 3 of the perfect (with 4 and 6 also later following the pattern of 1 and 3,
as they did in the -si verbs); this would continue to take effect on its home
ground, with the difference from the moneris type that the forms without u
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were limited to the arrhizotonic ones, but be countered in the territories
outside Italy to which Latin was introduced later, because the educated
people would insist that the u-forms were the correct ones. One exception
to this would seem to be found in the second area listed above; as Latin was
introduced early into Spain, perhaps sometimes by Oscan colonists, it is
possible that this early speech habit was found here too, though it was
countered, and largely overcome, by the ruling classes with their “correct”
Latin. This first tendency would then be reinforced by the other one
envisaged by Dardel; a form like bibuit was necessary to avoid confusion
with the pres. bibit, but there would not be the same need for *bibuisti, so
that bibisti would be quite likely to survive (supported by the grammarians),
with perhaps *bibuisti as an alternative form, as in the areas which kept a
uniform paradigm. In the same way you would probably get pavisti beside
pabuit, or crēvisti beside *crēvuit, reinforcing, and in turn being reinforced
by, *habisti beside habuit, which provided the initial impetus for the
creation of bibuit beside bibit; at the same time, to produce the situation
found in the other areas, you would have habui, habuisti as the “correct”
type, so *bibui, *bibuisti, *crēvui, *crēvuisti would follow. So, while I
agree with Dardel in his conception of the existence of an alternating type
of perfect, I disagree with him over his insistence that it was the only PR
type, that is, I consider that you must have had habuisti/*habisti and
bibisti/*bibuisti all existing concurrently to account for the varied
development in Romance, whereas he eliminates habuisti and *bibuisti,
insisting that the Italian type is the only original one.
*****
This paper is a slightly edited version of a paper that appeared in
Aoyama Gakuin University’s Ronshu, Vol.14, 1973.
A Bibliography will be found at the end of Part III.
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