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

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
6