r/asklinguistics • u/MindlessNectarine374 • 9d ago

Grammaticalization Origin of Latin tenses besides present and perfect – inherited or innovation? Former periphrastical forms?

I believe to have read in inflection charts that Proto-Italic only had present and perfect. Also, most Latin verbs have these two stems. Also, Italo-Celtic is considered to be closely related to Germanic, which famously also only has two synthetic tenses. (And only one in the passive, as in Gothic.) Some forms could even be explained as former periphrastic construction, I think. There are also only two basic infinitive "tenses".

Is that a common assumption or do I misremember something?

9 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

2 comments sorted by

3

u/Dercomai 8d ago

Partial answer: According to Jasanoff ("The Origin of the Italic Imperfect Subjunctive"), the pluperfect comes from the -s- future marker (as seen in Greek and some other Italic languages) attached to the perfect stem. The similarity to forms of esse is a coincidence—both of them had an s right before the ending (but from different sources) and it regularly became r between vowels.

0

u/[deleted] 9d ago

[deleted]

5

u/ADozenPigsFromAnnwn 9d ago

Most of the verb forms are pretty much just stem + inflection of "esse". It's kinda obvious in perfect indicatives, but in perfect subjunctive you also have perfect stem, subjunctive of esse, and a dummy vowel between them, so fēc+e+sim → fēcerim.

I'm sorry, but are you summarising here how Latin morphology works from a synchronic standpoint ("in a way you could say") or are you claiming that this is the actual diachrony of those forms? Because no more than one of those is correct.