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

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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