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

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,
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