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

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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