Romance verbs refers to the

verb A verb () is a word ( part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descr ...

s of the

Romance languages The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European language ...

. The verbs in Romance languages are the most inflected part of the language family. In the transition from

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

to the Romance languages, verbs went through many

phonological Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...

, syntactic, and semantic changes. Most of the distinctions present in classical Latin continued to be made, but synthetic forms were often replaced with more analytic ones. Other verb forms changed meaning, and new forms also appeared.

Overview

The following tables present a comparison of the conjugation of the regular verb ''amare'' "to love" in Classical Latin, and

Vulgar Latin Vulgar Latin, also known as Popular or Colloquial Latin, is the range of non-formal registers of Latin spoken from the Late Roman Republic onward. Through time, Vulgar Latin would evolve into numerous Romance languages. Its literary counterpa ...

(reconstructed as Proto-Italo-Western Romance, with stress marked), and nine modern Romance languages. The conjugations below were given from their respective

Wiktionary Wiktionary ( , , rhyming with "dictionary") is a multilingual, web-based project to create a free content dictionary of terms (including words, phrases, proverbs, linguistic reconstructions, etc.) in all natural languages and in a numbe ...

pages. Because the verb "to love" in Romanian is , of which goes back to

Proto-Slavic Proto-Slavic (abbreviated PSl., PS.; also called Common Slavic or Common Slavonic) is the unattested, reconstructed proto-language of all Slavic languages. It represents Slavic speech approximately from the 2nd millennium B.C. through the 6th ...

origin and it is in 4th conjugation; while in Romansh is ''avair gugent'' which composed from the irregular verb , the conjugations in Romanian and Romansh only give the endings. Note that the Vulgar Latin reconstructions are believed to have regularized word stress within each tense (except the present and imperative tenses). Word-final probably converged on . Many verb forms undergoes elisions, like the indicative pluperfect ''amāveram'' > ''*amára'' and the subjunctive imperfect ''amāvissem'' > ''*amásse''. The verb "to love" in Old French , the early form of modern French is rather irregular but still follows its regular sound changes, with having ''aim-'' in stressed forms (namely the singular and third person plural of indicative and subjunctive present tenses, and the second person singular imperative), and the stem changes again to ''ain-'' before ''-s'' and ''-t'' in subjunctive present. In Catalan, the verb ''amar'' has replaced by synonymous , the former usually used only in poetic contexts.

Vulgar Latin

In this section, "

" is actually reconstructed as reconstructed Proto- Italo-Western Romance, most notably the shift from Classical Latin ''-i-'' and ''-u-'' to ''-e-'' /e/ and ''-o-'' /o/, as opposed to inherited /ɛ/ and /ɔ/ respectively. The developments include: * The -v- of the perfect tenses were dropped or elided, but sometimes become /u/ after vowels. * The past participle were sometimes sporadically rounded to ''*-ū-'', this situation is preserved in French. * The "unstressed" indicative imperfect is very likely from shortened ''*-bămus'', ''*-bătis'', yielding to the stress on the third-from-last syllable (''amābāmus''), as opposed to Classical Latin stress on the second-from-last syllable (''amābāmus''). Languages which retains this irregular stress were the languages of

Iberia The Iberian Peninsula (), ** * Aragonese and Occitan: ''Peninsula Iberica'' ** ** * french: Péninsule Ibérique * mwl, Península Eibérica * eu, Iberiar penintsula also known as Iberia, is a peninsula in southwestern Europe, defi ...

, Sicilian, and French. * Romance metaphony. In forms containing ''-ī'' next to mid-open vowels, especially in preterite forms were heightened. In the

Proto-Romance Proto-Romance is the comparatively reconstructed ancestor of all Romance languages. It reflects a late variety of spoken Latin prior to regional fragmentation. Phonology Vowels Monophthongs Diphthong The only phonemic diphthong was ...

grammatical tradition, the second and third conjugation are known as third conjugation, similarly to French.

First conjugation

Verbs in the first conjugation are in ''-āre'' (''*-áre''), later evolved to ''-are'' in Italian, ''-ar'' in most Romance languages and ''-er'' in French.

Second conjugation

Verbs in the second conjugation are in ''-ēre'' (''*-ére''), later evolved to ''-ere'' in Italian, ''-er'' in most Romance languages and ''-oir'' in French (no "regular" ''-oir'' verbs). Another infinitive ''-ere'' has merged into this paradigm.

Third conjugation

Verbs in the second conjugation are in ''-ere'' (''*-ere'', caused stress in previous syllable), later merged with ''-ere'' (''*-ere'', causes stress in antepenultimate syllable), but ''-re'' in French and Catalan. The suffix ''-re'' in French are in the third group, also known as irregular verbs. The ''-iō'' variant (*''-io'' in Vulgar Latin) now defunct, later merged with the second conjugation; the paradigm now only exists in some descendants of the verb ''faciō''.

Fourth conjugation

Verbs in the fourth conjugation are in ''-īre'' (''*-íre''), later evolved to ''-ire'' in Italian, and ''-ir'' in most Romance languages. This conjugation type are infixed with once-inchoative ''-īsc-'' → ''*-ísc-'' in some languages, but its placement varies. In Italian, Catalan, and Romanian, the infix ''-isc-''; ''-esc-'', ''-eix-'' (Catalan), and ''-ăsc-'' (Romanian) is placed on once-stressed indicative and subjunctive present forms (the first-, second-, third-singular and third plural present tenses), and stressed imperatives. In French, the infix ''-iss-'' is placed on all indicative present forms, the indicative imperfect, the subjunctive present, and plural imperatives. While there are few non-infixed ''-īre'' verbs (also known are pure ''-īre'' verbs), in French the infixed verbs are the only regular verbs, otherwise irregular.

Modern languages

While the nominal morphology in Romance languages is primarily agglutinative, the verbal morphology is fusional. The verbs are highly inflected for numbers (singular and plural), persons (first-, second-, and third-person), moods (indicative, conditional, subjunctive, and imperative), tenses (present, past, future), and aspects ( imperfective and

perfective The perfective aspect ( abbreviated ), sometimes called the aoristic aspect, is a grammatical aspect that describes an action viewed as a simple whole; i.e., a unit without interior composition. The perfective aspect is distinguished from the i ...

). Because of the complexities in Romance conjugation, certain languages have a separate article regarding these conjugations: *

Italian conjugation Italian verbs have a high degree of inflection, the majority of which follows one of three common patterns of conjugation. Italian conjugation is affected by mood, person, tense, number, aspect and occasionally gender. The three classes of v ...

Spanish verbs Spanish verbs form one of the more complex areas of Spanish grammar. Spanish is a relatively synthetic language with a moderate to high degree of inflection, which shows up mostly in Spanish conjugation. As is typical of verbs in virtually all ...

* Portuguese verb conjugation *

Romanian verbs Romanian verbs are highly inflected in comparison to English, but markedly simple in comparison to Latin, from which Romanian has inherited its verbal conjugation system (through Vulgar Latin). Unlike its nouns, Romanian verbs behave in a similar ...

* French conjugation * Catalan verbs *

Occitan conjugation This article discusses the conjugation of verbs in a number of varieties of the Occitan language, including Old Occitan and Catalan. Each verbal form is accompanied by its phonetic transcription. The similarities with Catalan are more noticeable ...

* Sardinian conjugation While there are 4 regular infinitives in Classical Latin, namely ''-āre'', ''-ēre'', ''-ere'', and ''-īre'', some of these infinitive were merged. In many Romance languages including Spanish and Portuguese, the main infinitives are ''-ar'', ''-er'', and ''-ir'', with addition of ''-ôr'' (Portuguese only) which only exists in the verb , traditionally considered as ''-er'' verbs. While in Italian, the infinitives are ''-are'', ''-ere'', ''-ire''. The infinitives ''-er'' and ''-ere'' (Italian) resulted from the merge of Latin infinitives ''-ēre'' and ''-ere''. In French, the infinitives are ''-er'', ''-oir'', ''-re'', ''-ir'', but verbs with ''-oir'' and ''-re'' are in the third group, also known as irregular verbs. Latin deponent verbs like and (infinitive ''sequī'', ''nascī'') changed to active counterparts ''*séquo'' and ''*násco'' (infinitive ''*séquere'', ''*nascere''), as in Portuguese , Spanish , and Italian ; and Portuguese , Spanish , and French .

Irregularities

In many Romance languages, verb stems ending in ''-c'', ''-z'' shown above were regularly altered to preserve its pronunciation. However, it is not considered as irregular verbs.

True irregular verbs

Copula

While the

passive voice A passive voice construction is a grammatical voice construction that is found in many languages. In a clause with passive voice, the grammatical subject expresses the ''theme'' or ''patient'' of the main verb – that is, the person or thing t ...

became completely

periphrastic In linguistics, periphrasis () is the use of one or more function words to express meaning that otherwise may be expressed by attaching an affix or clitic to a word. The resulting phrase includes two or more collocated words instead of one in ...

in Romance, the active voice has been morphologically preserved to a greater or lesser extent. The tables below compare the conjugation of the Latin verbs and in the active voice with that of the Romance copulae, their descendants. For simplicity, only the first person singular is listed for finite forms. Note that certain forms in Romance languages come from the

suppletive In linguistics and etymology, suppletion is traditionally understood as the use of one word as the inflected form of another word when the two words are not cognate. For those learning a language, suppletive forms will be seen as "irregular" or even ...

sources ''sedeo'' (to be seated) instead of ''sum'', e.g. subjunctive present: ''sedea'' > sia, sea, seja... (medieval Galician-Portuguese, for instance, had double forms in the whole conjugation: sou/sejo, era/sia, fui/sevi, fora/severa, fosse/sevesse...)

Other irregular verbs

* "To have": The verb was regularly conjugated in Classical Latin, but later tends to be highly irregular in the Romance languages. The verb later transformed to ''*haveō'' in many Romance languages (but etymologically Spanish ), resulting in irregular indicative present forms ''*ai'', ''*as'', and ''*at'' (all first-, second- and third-person singular), but ''ho'', ''hai'', ''ha'' in Italian and ''-pp-'' (''appo'') in Logudorese Sardinian in present tenses. :In Logudorese Sardinian, two ''-b-''es lost in imperfect tenses. :In French, the past participle ''eu'' including the perfect stems (past historic and subjunctive imperfect stems) ''eu-''/''eû-'' rather evolved from earlier ''*habū-''. This is the Vulgar Latin conjugation of the verb ''*avére'': Notice that these forms sometimes also have an inconsistent form, as the table above more resembling with that of French. * "To do": The verb is also irregular in Classical Latin, with ''fēc-'' before perfect tenses (although the passive form of the verb was supplied by ''fīō'', this suppletion is not included as the passive voice became periphrastic). This verb is one of the few verbs that retains perfect ablaut in Romance languages, with some changing the perfect stem to ''fi-'' due to

metaphony In historical linguistics, metaphony is a class of sound change in which one vowel in a word is influenced by another in a process of assimilation. The sound change is normally "long-distance" in that the vowel triggering the change may be s ...

rules.

Semantic changes

In spite of the remarkable continuity of form, several Latin tenses have changed meaning, especially subjunctives. * The verbal noun became a

present participle In linguistics, a participle () (from Latin ' a "sharing, partaking") is a nonfinite verb form that has some of the characteristics and functions of both verbs and adjectives. More narrowly, ''participle'' has been defined as "a word derived from ...

in all Romance languages except in Italian and Romanian, where it became a

gerund In linguistics, a gerund ( abbreviated ) is any of various nonfinite verb forms in various languages; most often, but not exclusively, one that functions as a noun. In English, it has the properties of both verb and noun, such as being modifiab ...

, and Sardinian, where it does not exist. However, the French and Catalan suffixes ''-ant'' conflate with the accusative of present active participle suffix ''-āntem''. * The supine became a

past participle In linguistics, a participle () (from Latin ' a "sharing, partaking") is a nonfinite verb form that has some of the characteristics and functions of both verbs and adjectives. More narrowly, ''participle'' has been defined as "a word derived from ...

in all Romance languages. * The pluperfect indicative became a conditional in Sicilian, and an imperfect subjunctive in Spanish. * The pluperfect subjunctive developed into an imperfect subjunctive in all languages except Romansh, where it became a conditional, and Romanian, where it became a pluperfect indicative. * The future perfect indicative became a future subjunctive in Old Spanish, Portuguese, and Galician. The Latin imperfect subjunctive underwent a change in syntactic status, becoming a personal

infinitive Infinitive (abbreviated ) is a linguistics term for certain verb forms existing in many languages, most often used as non-finite verbs. As with many linguistic concepts, there is not a single definition applicable to all languages. The word is deri ...

in Portuguese and Galician.Williams (1962); Wireback (1994) An alternative hypothesis traces the personal infinitive back to the Latin infinitive, not to a conjugated verb form.Maurer (1968); Osborne (1982)

Periphrases

In many cases, the empty cells in the tables above exist as distinct compound verbs in the modern languages. Thus, the main tense and mood distinctions in classical Latin are still made in most modern Romance languages, though some are now expressed through compound rather than simple verbs. Some examples, from Romanian: * Perfect indicative: ''am fost, ai fost, a fost, am fost, ați fost, au fost''; * Future indicative: ''voi fi, vei fi, va fi, vom fi, veți fi, vor fi''; * Future perfect indicative: ''voi fi fost, vei fi fost, va fi fost, vom fi fost, veți fi fost, vor fi fost''. New forms also developed, such as the conditional, which in most Romance languages started out as a periphrasis, but later became a simple tense. In Romanian, the conditional is still periphrastic: ''aș fi, ai fi, ar fi, am fi, ați fi, ar fi''.

Notes

References

* * Paola Monachesi, ''The Verbal Complex in Romance: A Case Study in Grammatical Interfaces''. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. * * * {{Romance languages Romance languages Indo-European verbs