Vulgar Latin, also known asColloquial,Popular,Spoken orVernacular Latin, is the range of non-formalregisters ofLatin spoken from theLate Roman Republic onward.[1]Vulgar Latin as a term is both controversial and imprecise. Spoken Latin existed for a long time and in many places. Scholars have differed in opinion as to the extent of the differences, and whether Vulgar Latin was in some sense a different language. This was developed as a theory in the nineteenth century byRaynouard. At its extreme, the theory suggested that the written register formed an elite language distinct from common speech, but this is now rejected.[2]
The current consensus is that the written and spoken languages formed a continuity much as they do in modern languages, with speech tending to evolve faster than the written language, and the written, formalised language exerting pressure back on speech.[3]Vulgar Latin is used in different ways by different scholars, applying it to indicate spoken Latin of differing types, or from different social classes and time periods.[4] Nevertheless, interest in the shifts in the spoken forms remains very important to understand the transition from Latin or Late Latin through toProto-Romance and Romance languages. To make matters more complicated, evidence for spoken forms can be found only through examination of writtenClassical Latin,Late Latin, or earlyRomance, depending on the time period.
During theClassical period, Roman authors referred to the informal, everyday variety of their own language assermo plebeius orsermo vulgaris, meaning "common speech".[5] This could simply refer to unadorned speech without the use of rhetoric, or even plain speech. The modern usage of the term Vulgar Latin dates to theRenaissance, whenItalian thinkers began to theorize thattheir own language originated in a sort of "corrupted" Latin that they assumed formed an entity distinct from the literaryClassical variety, though opinions differed greatly on the nature of this "vulgar" dialect.[6]
The early 19th-century French linguistFrançois-Just-Marie Raynouard is often regarded as the father of modernRomance philology. Observing that the Romance languages have many features in common that are not found in Latin, at least not in "proper" or Classical Latin, he concluded that the former must have all had some common ancestor (which he believed most closely resembledOld Occitan) that replaced Latin some time before the year 1000. This he dubbedla langue romane or "the Romance language".[7]
The first truly modern treatise on Romance linguistics and the first to apply thecomparative method wasFriedrich Christian Diez's seminalGrammar of the Romance Languages.[8] Researchers such asWilhelm Meyer-Lübke characterised Vulgar Latin as, to a great extent, a separate language that was more or less distinct from the written form. To Meyer-Lübke, the spoken Vulgar form was the genuine and continuous form, while Classical Latin was a kind of artificial idealised language imposed upon it; thus Romance languages were derived from the "real" Vulgar form, which had to be reconstructed from remaining evidence.[9] Others that followed this approach divided Vulgar from Classical Latin by education or class. Other views of "Vulgar Latin" include defining it as uneducated speech, slang, or in effect,Proto-Romance.[10]
The result is that the term "Vulgar Latin" is regarded by some modern philologists as essentially meaningless, but unfortunately very persistent:
the continued use of "Vulgar Latin" is not only no aid to thought, but is, on the contrary, a positive barrier to a clear understanding of Latin and Romance.[4]...
I wish it were possible to hope the term might fall out of use. Many scholars have stated that "Vulgar Latin" is a useless and dangerously misleading term ... To abandon it once and for all can only benefit scholarship.[11]
Lloyd called to replace the use of "Vulgar Latin" with a series of more precise definitions, such as the spoken Latin of a particular time and place.
Research in the twentieth century has in any case shifted the view to consider the differences between written and spoken Latin in more moderate terms. Just as in modern languages, speech patterns are different from written forms, and vary with education, the same can be said of Latin. For instance, philologist József Herman agrees that the term is problematic, and therefore limits it in his work to mean the innovations and changes that turn up in spoken or written Latin that were relatively uninfluenced by educated forms of Latin. Herman states:
it is completely clear from the texts during the time that Latin was a living language, there was never an unbridgeable gap between the written and spoken, nor between the language of the social elites and that of the middle, lower, or disadvantaged groups of the same society.[9]
Herman also makes it clear that Vulgar Latin, in this view, is a varied and unstable phenomenon, crossing many centuries of usage where any generalisations are bound to cover up variations and differences.
The insertion, whether intentional or not, of colloquial terms or constructions into contemporary texts. Special interest is given to:
Private letters and documents from an ordinary context such as business records, lists and school exercises; these are rare butpapyri from Egypt and tablets fromHadrian's Wall have been found.[14]
Technical works on medicine, agriculture and similar, where the demand for grammatical accuracy was lower, such as theMulomedicina Chironis, a veterinary treatise.[15]
Christian texts, as many originated from marginalised communities; including early Bible translations and funeral inscriptions.[16]
Late Latin texts from the sixth century onwards, which show changes, or the absence thereof, in local Latin under the influence of new educational practices and social structures.[16]
An oft-posed question is why (or when, or how) Latin “fragmented” into several different languages. Current hypotheses contrast the centralizing and homogenizing socio-economic, cultural, and political forces that characterized the Roman Empire with the centrifugal forces that prevailed afterwards.
By the end of the first century CE the Romans had seized the entireMediterranean Basin and established hundreds ofcolonies in the conquered provinces. Over time this—along with other factors that encouragedlinguistic and culturalassimilation, such as political unity, frequent travel and commerce, military service, etc.—led to Latin becoming the predominant language throughout the western Mediterranean.[18] Latin itself was subject to the same assimilatory tendencies, such that its varieties had probably become more uniform by the time the Empire fell than they had been before it. That is not to say that the language had been static for all those years, but rather that ongoing changes tended to spread to all regions.[19]
The rise of thefirst Arab caliphate in the seventh century marked the definitive end of Roman dominance over the Mediterranean.[20] It is from approximately that century onward that regional differences proliferate in Latin documents, revealing the fragmentation of Latin into the incipient Romance languages.[21] Until then Latin appears to have been remarkably homogeneous, as far as can be judged from its written records,[22] although careful statistical analysis reveals regional differences in the treatment of the vowel /ĭ/, and in the frequency of the merger of (original) intervocalic /b/ and /w/, by about the fifth century CE.[23]
The system ofphonemic vowel length collapsed by the fifth century AD (see alsoLong I § History), leavingquality differences as thedistinguishing factor between vowels; the paradigm thus changed from /ī ĭ ē ĕ ā ă ŏ ō ŭ ū/ to /i ɪ e ɛ a ɔ o ʊ u/ with no distinction between original /a/ and /aː/. Concurrently, stressed vowels in open syllableslengthened.[33]
It is difficult to place the point in which thedefinite article, absent in Latin but present in all Romance languages, arose, largely because the highly colloquial speech in which it arose was seldom written down until the daughter languages had strongly diverged; most surviving texts in early Romance show the articles fully developed.
Definite articles evolved from demonstrativepronouns oradjectives (an analogous development is found in many Indo-European languages, includingGreek,Celtic andGermanic); compare the fate of the Latindemonstrative adjectiveille,illa,illud "that", in theRomance languages, becoming Frenchle andla (Old Frenchli,lo,la), Catalan and Spanishel,la andlo, Occitanlo andla, Portuguese and Galiciano anda (elision of -l- is a common feature of Galician-Portuguese) and Italianil,lo andla.Sardinian went its own way here also, forming its article fromipse,ipsa an intensive adjective (su, sa); some Catalan and Occitan dialects have articles from the same source. While most of the Romance languages put the article before the noun, Romanian has its own way, by putting the article after the noun, e.g.lupul ("the wolf" – from *lupum illum) andomul ("the man" –*homo illum),[36] possibly a result of being within theBalkan sprachbund.
The termille may have evolved from its initial demonstrative function, broadening to conveysemantic prominence by directing the attention of the audience towards particular referents which the speaker intended to highlight. This usage of the term is found in theItinerarium Egeriae, which recounts the travels of theChristian pilgrim—and the author—Egeria: the author utilizes the demonstrative to mark words that are crucial to the meaning of the text. For instance, when noting the location of a cave by a church, Egeria clarifies that she is referring to "ipsa ecclesia" ("that church"). The usage ofille typically occurs alongside nouns that have previously been identified with the text: Egeria, when describing a church nearMount Olivet, initially describes it merely as an "ecclesia," but later refers to it as "ipsa ecclesia." The usage of the demonstratives to denote prominent parts of discourse may have predicated the eventual transformation of the term into a definite article. Once speakers began prefacing sentences with the term, they began utilizing it in a manner similar to an article; therefore, the article-like features of the word eventually become normalized and then incorporated into the standard grammar of the language.[37]
In Late Latin writings,ille was often used by writers inrelative clauses to establish the identity of subjects not previously mentioned in the text.[38] The 7th-centuryChronicle of Fredegar clarifies that it is discussing "homines illos" ("those men") before introducing a relative clause in which they are the subject.[38] During this time period, the term also developedanaphoric functions as an extension of the original demonstrative usage: Late Latin authors would substitute more basic mentions of a referent withille and added more descriptive information.[39] For instance, theChronicle of Fredegar refers to a "regina" ("queen") as "illam parentem Francorum," meaning "that relative of theFranks. From this usage of theille, in which it functioned help identify a specific referent, the term may have generalized to adopt more features associated with definite articles. One example of such a development appears in the writings of the 6th-centuryGallo-Roman historianGregory of Tours, who wrote "Ductus itaque sanctus Eugenius ad regem, cum illo Arrianorum episcopo pro fide catholica decertavit," meaning "The holyEugenius was led to the king, and debated with that Arrianbishop in defense of theCatholic faith."[40] Within this passage, theablative form of the pronoun,illo, is utilized to denote the Arrian bishop, however it appears to function for more like the English article "the" rather than the original Classical Latinille: the sentence could be understood equally as well if rendered as "The holy Eugenius was led to the king, and debated with the Arrianbishop in defense of theCatholic faith."[41] Another indication of the weakening of the demonstratives can be inferred from the fact that at this time, legal and similar texts begin to swarm withpraedictus,supradictus, and so forth (all meaning, essentially, "aforesaid"), which seem to mean little more than "this" or "that". Gregory of Tours writes,Erat autem... beatissimus Anianus in supradicta civitate episcopus ("Blessed Anianus was bishop in that city.") The original Latin demonstrative adjectives were no longer felt to be strong or specific enough.[42]
The Latin pronounipse, which was initially used to emphasize specific referents, also developed functions similar to a definite article. However, it retained some of its original emphatic properties: it was also used anaphorically to highlight prominent referents. In one 9th-10th century text from theDiocese of Urgell they utilize the phraseipsa ecclesia to identify the church the entire paragraph referred to while identifying a unique river, not mentioned previously in the text, as "illo ribo" ("that river").[43] Alongside its emphatic usage, the original Classical Latinipse was also used to clarify referents if the text risked introducing ambiguity regarding the subjects and objects involved.[44] However, in Late Latin literatureipse appears in scenarios in which its presence was not necessary: In theChronicle of Fredegar, a character is introduced as "Waiofarium" ("Waiofar) before—in the next sentence—being described as "ipsum Waiofarium" ("the very same Waiofar").[45] Other documents suggest thatipse andille may have eventually assumed practically identical meanings: the 11th-12th century text, theCartulario de Sant Cugat del Vallés utilizes both terms like definite articles, mentioning "ipsum mansum" and "illum mansum," both meaning "the authority."[43]
In the less formal speech, reconstructed forms suggest that the inherited Latin demonstratives were made more forceful by being compounded withecce (originally aninterjection: "behold!"), which also spawned Italianecco througheccum, a contracted form ofecce eum. This is the origin of Old Frenchcil (*ecce ille),cist (*ecce iste) andici (*ecce hic); Italianquesto (*eccum istum),quello (*eccum illum) and (now mainly Tuscan)codesto (*eccum tibi istum), as well asqui (*eccu hic),qua (*eccum hac); Spanish and Occitanaquel and Portugueseaquele (*eccum ille); Spanishacá and Portuguesecá (*eccum hac); Spanishaquí and Portugueseaqui (*eccum hic); Portugueseacolá (*eccum illac) andaquém (*eccum inde); Romanianacest (*ecce iste) andacela (*ecce ille), and many other forms.
On the other hand, even in theOaths of Strasbourg, dictated in Old French in AD 842, no demonstrative appears even in places where one would clearly be called for in all the later languages (pro christian poblo – "for the Christian people"). Using the demonstratives as articles may have still been considered overly informal for a royal oath in the 9th century. Considerable variation exists in all of the Romance vernaculars as to their actual use:[citation needed] in Romanian, the articles are suffixed to the noun (or an adjective preceding it), as in other languages of theBalkan sprachbund and theNorth Germanic languages.
The numeralunus,una (one) supplies theindefinite article in all cases (again, this is a common semantic development across Europe). This is anticipated in Classical Latin;Cicero writescum uno gladiatore nequissimo[46] ("with a most immoral gladiator"). This suggests thatunus was beginning to supplantquidam in the meaning of "a certain" or "some" by the 1st century BC.[dubious –discuss]
The threegrammatical genders of Classical Latin were replaced by a two-gender system in most Romance languages.
The neuter gender of classical Latin was in most cases identical with the masculine both syntactically and morphologically. The confusion had already started inPompeian graffiti, e.g.cadaver mortuus forcadaver mortuum ("dead body"), andhoc locum forhunc locum ("this place"). The morphological confusion shows primarily in the adoption of the nominative ending-us (-Ø after-r) in theo-declension.
InPetronius's work, one can findbalneus forbalneum ("bath"),fatus forfatum ("fate"),caelus forcaelum ("heaven"),amphitheater foramphitheatrum ("amphitheatre"),vinus forvinum ("wine"), and conversely,thesaurum forthesaurus ("treasure"). Most of these forms occur in the speech of one man: Trimalchion, an uneducated Greek (i.e. foreign)freedman.
In modern Romance languages, the nominatives-ending has been largely abandoned, and all substantives of theo-declension have an ending derived from-um:-u,-o, or-Ø. E.g., masculinemurus ("wall"), and neutercaelum ("sky") have evolved to: Italianmuro,cielo; Portuguesemuro,céu; Spanishmuro,cielo, Catalanmur,cel; Romanianmur,cieru>cer; Frenchmur,ciel. However, Old French still had-s in the nominative and-Ø in the accusative in both words:murs,ciels [nominative] –mur,ciel [oblique].[a]
For some neuter nouns of the third declension, the oblique stem was productive; for others, the nominative/accusative form, (the two were identical in Classical Latin). Evidence suggests that the neuter gender was under pressure well back into the imperial period. French(le)lait, Catalan(la)llet, Occitan(lo)lach, Spanish(la)leche, Portuguese(o)leite, Italian language(il)latte,Leonese(el) lleche and Romanianlapte(le) ("milk"), all derive from the non-standard but attested Latin nominative/accusative neuterlacte or accusative masculinelactem. In Spanish the word became feminine, while in French, Portuguese and Italian it became masculine (in Romanian it remained neuter,lapte/lăpturi). Other neuter forms, however, were preserved in Romance; Catalan and Frenchnom, Leonese, Portuguese and Italiannome, Romaniannume ("name") all preserve the Latin nominative/accusativenomen, rather than the oblique stem form *nomin- (which nevertheless produced Spanishnombre).[36]
Most neuter nouns had plural forms ending in-A or-IA; some of these were reanalysed as feminine singulars, such asgaudium ("joy"), pluralgaudia; the plural form lies at the root of the French feminine singular(la)joie, as well as of Catalan and Occitan(la)joia (Italianlagioia is a borrowing from French); the same forlignum ("wood stick"), pluralligna, that originated the Catalan feminine singular noun(la)llenya, Portuguese(a)lenha, Spanish(la)leña and Italian(la)legna. Some Romance languages still have a special form derived from the ancient neuter plural which is treated grammatically as feminine: e.g.,BRACCHIUM : BRACCHIA "arm(s)" → Italian(il)braccio :(le) braccia, Romanianbraț(ul) :brațe(le). Cf. alsoMerovingian Latinipsa animalia aliquas mortas fuerant.
Alternations in Italianheteroclitic nouns such asl'uovo fresco ("the fresh egg") /le uova fresche ("the fresh eggs") are usually analysed as masculine in the singular and feminine in the plural, with an irregular plural in-a. However, it is also consistent with their historical development to say thatuovo is simply a regular neuter noun (ovum, pluralova) and that the characteristic ending for words agreeing with these nouns is-o in the singular and-e in the plural. The same alternation in gender exists in certain Romanian nouns, but is considered regular as it is more common than in Italian. Thus, a relict neuter gender can arguably be said to persist in Italian and Romanian.
In Portuguese, traces of the neuter plural can be found in collective formations and words meant to inform a bigger size or sturdiness. Thus, one can useovo(s) ("egg(s)") andova(s) ("roe", "collection(s) of eggs"),bordo(s) ("section(s) of an edge") andborda(s) ("edge(s)"),saco(s) ("bag(s)") andsaca(s) ("sack(s)"),manto(s) ("cloak(s)") andmanta(s) ("blanket(s)"). Other times, it resulted in words whose gender may be changed more or less arbitrarily, likefruto /fruta ("fruit"),caldo /calda ("broth"), etc.
These formations were especially common when they could be used to avoid irregular forms. In Latin, the names of trees were usually feminine, but many were declined in the second declension paradigm, which was dominated by masculine or neuter nouns. Latinpirus ("pear tree"), a feminine noun with a masculine-looking ending, became masculine in Italian(il)pero and Romanianpăr(ul); in French and Spanish it was replaced by the masculine derivations(le)poirier,(el)peral; and in Portuguese and Catalan by the feminine derivations(a)pereira,(la)perera.
As usual, irregularities persisted longest in frequently used forms. From the fourth declension nounmanus ("hand"), another feminine noun with the ending-us, Italian and Spanish derived(la)mano, Romanianmânu>mână, pl.mâini / (reg.)mâni, Catalan(la)mà, and Portuguese(a)mão, which preserve the feminine gender along with the masculine appearance.
Except for the Italian and Romanian heteroclitic nouns, other major Romance languages have no trace of neuter nouns, but still have neuter pronouns. Frenchcelui-ci /celle-ci /ceci ("this"), Spanishéste /ésta /esto ("this"), Italian:gli /le /ci ("to him" /"to her" / "to it"), Catalan:ho,açò,això,allò ("it" /this /this-that /that over there); Portuguese:todo /toda /tudo ("all of him" / "all of her" / "all of it").
In Spanish, a three-way contrast is also made with the definite articlesel,la, andlo. The last is used with nouns denoting abstract categories:lo bueno, literally "that which is good", frombueno: good.
^In a few isolated masculine nouns, thes has been either preserved or reinstated in the modern languages, for example FILIUS ("son") > Frenchfils,DEUS ("god") > Spanishdios and Portuguesedeus, and particularly in proper names: SpanishCarlos,Marcos, in the conservative orthography of FrenchJacques,Charles,Jules, etc.[47]
The Vulgar Latin vowel shifts caused the merger of several case endings in the nominal and adjectival declensions.[48] Some of the causes include: the loss of finalm, the merger ofă withā, and the merger ofŭ withō (see tables).[48] Thus, by the 5th century, the number of case contrasts had been drastically reduced.[48]
Evolution of a 1st declension noun: caepa/cēpa ("onion") (feminine singular)
There also seems to be a marked tendency to confuse different forms even when they had not become homophonous (like the generally more distinct plurals), which indicates that nominal declension was shaped not only by phonetic mergers, but also by structural factors.[48] As a result of the untenability of the noun case system after these phonetic changes, Vulgar Latin shifted from a markedlysynthetic language to a moreanalytic one.
Thegenitive case died out around the 3rd century AD, according toMeyer-Lübke[obsolete source], and began to be replaced by "de" + noun (which originally meant "about/concerning", weakened to "of") as early as the 2nd century BC.[citation needed] Exceptions of remaining genitive forms are some pronouns, certain fossilized expressions and some proper names. For example, Frenchjeudi ("Thursday") < Old Frenchjuesdi < Vulgar Latin "jovis diēs"; Spanishesmenester ("it is necessary") < "estministeri"; and Italianterremoto ("earthquake") < "terrae motu" as well as names likePaoli,Pieri.[49]
Thedative case lasted longer than the genitive, even thoughPlautus, in the 2nd century BC, already shows some instances of substitution by the construction "ad" + accusative. For example, "ad carnuficem dabo".[50][51]
Theaccusative case developed as a prepositional case, displacing many instances of theablative.[52] Towards the end of the imperial period, the accusative came to be used more and more as a general oblique case.[53]
Despite increasing case mergers, nominative and accusative forms seem to have remained distinct for much longer, since they are rarely confused in inscriptions.[53] Even though Gaulish texts from the 7th century rarely confuse both forms, it is believed that both cases began to merge in Africa by the end of the empire, and a bit later in parts of Italy and Iberia.[53] Nowadays,Romanian maintains a two-case system, whileOld French andOld Occitan had a two-case subject-oblique system.
This Old French system was based largely on whether or not the Latin case ending contained an "s" or not, with the "s" being retained but all vowels in the ending being lost (as withveisin below). But since this meant that it was easy to confuse the singular nominative with the plural oblique, and the plural nominative with the singular oblique, this case system ultimately collapsed as well, and Middle French adopted one case (usually the oblique) for all purposes.
Today, Romanian is generally considered the only Romance language with a surviving case system. However, some dialects ofRomansh retain a special predicative form of the masculine singular identical to the plural:il bien vin ("the good wine") vs.il vin ei buns ("the wine is good"). This "predicative case" (as it is sometimes called) is a remnant of the Latin nominative in-us.
Evolution of a masculine noun in Old French:veisin ("neighbor"). (definite article in parentheses).
The loss of a productive noun case system meant that thesyntactic purposes it formerly served now had to be performed byprepositions and other paraphrases. These particles increased in number, and many new ones were formed by compounding old ones. The descendant Romance languages are full of grammatical particles such as Spanishdonde, "where", from Latinde +unde (which in Romanian literally means "from where"/"where from"), or Frenchdès, "since", fromde +ex, while the equivalent Spanish and Portuguesedesde isde +ex +de. Spanishdespués and Portuguesedepois, "after", representde +ex +post.
Some of these new compounds appear in literary texts during the late empire; Frenchdehors, Spanishdefuera and Portuguesedefora ("outside") all representde +foris (Romanianafară –ad +foris), and we findJerome writingstulti, nonne qui fecit, quod de foris est, etiam id, quod de intus est fecit? (Luke 11.40: "ye fools, did not he, that made which is without, make that which is within also?"). In some cases, compounds were created by combining a large number of particles, such as the Romanianadineauri ("just recently") fromad +de +in +illa +hora.[54]
Classical Latin:
Marcus patrī librum dat. "Marcus is giving [his] father [a/the] book."
Vulgar Latin:
*Marcos da libru a patre. "Marcus is giving [a/the] book to [his] father."[citation needed]
Just as in the disappearing dative case, colloquial Latin sometimes replaced the disappearing genitive case with the prepositionde followed by the ablative, then eventually the accusative (oblique).
Classical Latin:
Marcus mihi librum patris dat. "Marcus is giving me [his] father's book.
Vulgar Latin:
*Marcos mi da libru de patre. "Marcus is giving me [the] book of [his] father."[citation needed]
Unlike in the nominal and adjectival inflections, pronouns kept a great part of the case distinctions. However, many changes happened. For example, the/ɡ/ ofego was lost by the end of the empire, andeo appears in manuscripts from the 6th century.[which?][55]
Reconstructed pronominal system of Vulgar Latin[56]
Classical Latin had a number of different suffixes that madeadverbs fromadjectives:cārus, "dear", formedcārē, "dearly";ācriter, "fiercely", fromācer;crēbrō, "often", fromcrēber. All of these derivational suffixes were lost in Vulgar Latin.
An alternative formation with a feminineablative form modifyingmente (originally the ablative ofmēns, and so meaning "with a ... mind") gave rise to a widespread rule for forming adverbs in many Romance languages: adding the suffix -ment(e) to the feminine form of the adjective. Sovēlōx ("quick") instead ofvēlōciter ("quickly") gaveveloci mente (originally "with a quick mind", "quick-mindedly"), and-mente became a productive suffix for forming adverbs in Romance such as Italianchiaramente, Spanishclaramente 'clearly'. The development of an originally autonomous form (the nounmente, meaning 'mind') into a suffix (although remaining in free lexical use in other contexts e.g. Italianvenire in mente 'come to mind') is a textbook case ofgrammaticalization.
In general, the verbal system in the Romance languages changed less from Classical Latin than did the nominal system.
The four conjugational classes generally survived. The second and third conjugations already had identical imperfect tense forms in Latin, and also shared a common present participle. Because of the merging of shorti with longē in most of Vulgar Latin, these two conjugations grew even closer together. Several of the most frequently-used forms became indistinguishable, while others became distinguished only by stress placement:
Infinitive
1st
2nd
3rd
1st
2nd
3rd
Imperative singular
singular
plural
Second conjugation (Classical)
-ēre
-eō
-ēs
-et
-ēmus
-ētis
-ent
-ē
Second conjugation (Vulgar)
*-ẹ́re
*-(j)o
*-es
*-e(t)
*-ẹ́mos
*-ẹ́tes
*-en(t)
*-e
Third conjugation (Classical)
-ere
-ō
-is
-it
-imus
-itis
-unt
-e
Third conjugation (Vulgar)
*-ere
*-o
*-es
*-e(t)
*-emos
*-etes
*-on(t)
*-e
These two conjugations came to be conflated in many of the Romance languages, often by merging them into a single class while taking endings from each of the original two conjugations. Which endings survived was different for each language, although most tended to favour second conjugation endings over the third conjugation. Spanish, for example, mostly eliminated the third conjugation forms in favour of the second conjugation forms.
French and Catalan did the same, but tended to generalise the third conjugation infinitive instead. Catalan in particular almost eliminated the second conjugation ending over time, reducing it to a small relic class. In Italian, the two infinitive endings remained separate (but spelled identically), while the conjugations merged in most other respects much as in the other languages. However, the third-conjugation third-person plural present ending survived in favour of the second conjugation version, and was even extended to the fourth conjugation. Romanian also maintained the distinction between the second and third conjugation endings.
In theperfect, many languages generalized the-aui ending most frequently found in the first conjugation. This led to an unusual development; phonetically, the ending was treated as the diphthong/au/ rather than containing a semivowel/awi/, and in other cases the/w/ sound was simply dropped. We know this because it did not participate in the sound shift from/w/ to/β̞/. Thus Latinamaui,amauit ("I loved; he/she loved") in many areas became proto-Romance *amai and *amaut, yielding for example Portugueseamei,amou. This suggests that in the spoken language, these changes in conjugation preceded the loss of/w/.[36]
Another major systemic change was to thefuture tense, remodelled in Vulgar Latin withauxiliary verbs. A new future was originally formed with the auxiliary verbhabere, *amare habeo, literally "to love I have" (cf. English "I have to love", which has shades of a future meaning). This was contracted into a new future suffix in Western Romance forms, which can be seen in the following modern examples of "I will love":
An innovativeconditional (distinct from thesubjunctive) also developed in the same way (infinitive + conjugated form ofhabere). The fact that the future and conditional endings were originally independent words is still evident in literary Portuguese, which in these tenses allowsclitic object pronouns to be incorporated between the root of the verb and its ending: "I will love" (eu)amarei, but "I will love you"amar-te-ei, fromamar +te ["you"] + (eu)hei =amar +te + [h]ei =amar-te-ei.
In Spanish, Italian, Romanian and Portuguese, personal pronouns can still be omitted from verb phrases as in Latin, as the endings are still distinct enough to convey that information:venio > Spvengo ("I come"). In French, however, all the endings are typically homophonous except the first and second person (and occasionally also third person) plural, so the pronouns are always used (je viens) except in theimperative.
Contrary to the millennia-long continuity of much of the active verb system, which has now survived 6000 years of known evolution,[citation needed] the syntheticpassive voice was utterly lost in Romance, being replaced withperiphrastic verb forms—composed of the verb "to be" plus a passive participle—or impersonalreflexive forms—composed of a verb and a passivizing pronoun.
Apart from the grammatical and phonetic developments there were many cases of verbs merging as complex subtleties[clarification needed] in Latin were reduced to simplified verbs in Romance. A classic example of this are the verbs expressing the concept "to go". Consider three particular verbs in Classical Latin expressing concepts of "going":ire,vadere, and *ambitare.[citation needed] In Spanish and Portugueseire andvadere merged into the verbir, which derives some conjugated forms fromire and some fromvadere.andar was maintained as a separate verb derived fromambitare.
Italian instead mergedvadere andambitare into the verbandare. At the extreme French merged three Latin verbs with, for example, the present tense deriving fromvadere and another verbambulare (or something like it) and the future tense deriving fromire. Similarly the Romance distinction between the Romance verbs for "to be",essere andstare, was lost in French as these merged into the verbêtre. In Italian, the verbessere inherited both Romance meanings of "being essentially" and "being temporarily of the quality of", whilestare specialized into a verb denoting location or dwelling, or state of health.
Thecopula (that is, the verb signifying "to be") of Classical Latin wasesse. This evolved to *essere in Vulgar Latin by attaching the common infinitive suffix-re to the classical infinitive; this produced Italianessere and Frenchêtre through Proto-Gallo-Romance *essre and Old Frenchestre as well as Spanish and Portugueseser (Romanianafi derives fromfieri, which means "to become").
In Vulgar Latin a second copula developed utilizing the verbstare, which originally meant (and is cognate with) "to stand", to denote a more temporary meaning. That is, *essere signified theessence, whilestare signified thestate.Stare evolved to Spanish and Portugueseestar and Old Frenchester (both through *estare), Romanian "a sta" ("to stand"), using the original form for the noun ("stare"="state"/"starea"="the state"), while Italian retained the original form.
The semantic shift that underlies this evolution is more or less as follows: A speaker of Classical Latin might have said:vir est in foro, meaning "the man is in/at the marketplace". The same sentence in Vulgar Latin could have been *(h)omo stat in foro,[citation needed] "the man stands in/at the marketplace", replacing theest (fromesse) withstat (fromstare), because "standing" was what was perceived as what the man was actually doing.
The use ofstare in this case was still semantically transparent assuming that it meant "to stand", but soon the shift fromesse tostare became more widespread. In the Iberian peninsulaesse ended up only denoting natural qualities that would not change, whilestare was applied to transient qualities and location. In Italian,stare is used mainly for location, transitory state of health (sta male 's/he is ill' butè gracile 's/he is puny') and, as in Spanish, for the eminently transient quality implied in a verb's progressive form, such assto scrivendo to express 'I am writing'.
The historical development of thestare + ablative gerund progressive tense in those Romance languages that have it seems to have been a passage from a usage such assto pensando 'I stand/stay (here) in thinking',[citation needed] in which thestare form carries the full semantic load of 'stand, stay' togrammaticalization of the construction as expression of progressiveaspect (Similar in concept to the Early Modern English construction of "I am a-thinking"). The process of reanalysis that took place over timebleached the semantics ofstare so that when used in combination with the gerund the form became solely a grammatical marker of subject and tense (e.g.sto = subject first person singular, present;stavo = subject first person singular, past), no longer alexical verb with the semantics of 'stand' (not unlike the auxiliary in compound tenses that once meant 'have, possess', but is now semantically empty:j'ai écrit,ho scritto,he escrito, etc.). Whereassto scappando would once have been semantically strange at best (?'I stay escaping'), once grammaticalization was achieved, collocation with a verb of inherent mobility was no longer contradictory, andsto scappando could and did become the normal way to express 'I am escaping'. (Although it might be objected that in sentences like Spanishla catedral está en la ciudad, "the cathedral is in the city" this is also unlikely to change, but all locations are expressed throughestar in Spanish, as this usage originally conveyed the sense of "the cathedralstands in the city").
Classical Latin in most cases adopted anSOV word order in ordinary prose, although other word orders were employed, such as in poetry, euphony, focus, or emphasis, enabled byinflectional marking of the grammatical function of words. However, word order in most of the modern Romance languages generally adopted a standard SVO word order. Relics of SOV word order still survive in the placement ofclitic object pronouns (e.g. Spanishyo te amo 'I love you').
Over the centuries, spoken Latin lost certain words in favour ofcoinages; in favour of borrowings from neighbouring languages such asGaulish,Germanic, orGreek; or in favour of other Latin words that had undergonesemantic shift. The “lost” words often continued to enjoy some currency inliterary Latin, however.
A commonly-cited example is the replacement of the highly irregular (suppletive) verbferre, meaning 'to carry', with the entirely regularportare.[58] Similarly, the verbloqui, meaning 'to speak', was replaced by a variety of alternatives such as the nativefabulari andnarrare or the Greek borrowingparabolare.[59]
^Herman 2000, p. 5 "Comparative scholars, especially in the nineteenth century … tended to see Vulgar Latin and literary Latin as two very different kinds of language, or even two different languages altogether … but [this] is now out of date"
^Posner 1996, p. 3 He [Raynouard] discerned in the Romance languages common features that could not all be ascribed to Latin heritage, and therefore postulated a common ancestor,la langue romane, that he believed replaced Latin before AD 1000, and which most nearly resembled the language of the troubadors (now called Old Occitan, or Old Provençal).
^Carlton 1973: 237. According to Pei & Gaeng (1976: 76–81), the decisive moment came with the Islamic conquest of North Africa and Iberia, which was followed by numerous raids on land and by sea. All this had the effect of disrupting connections between the western Romance-speaking regions.
Boyd-Bowman, Peter (1980).From Latin to Romance in Sound Charts. Washington DC: Georgetown University Press.
Carlton, Charles Merritt. 1973.A linguistic analysis of a collection of Late Latin documents composed in Ravenna between A.D. 445–700. The Hague: Mouton.
Gouvert, Xavier. 2016. Du protoitalique au protoroman: Deux problèmes de reconstruction phonologique. In:Buchi, Éva & Schweickard, Wolfgang (eds.),Dictionnaire étymologique roman 2, 27–51. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Hall, Robert A. Jr. (1950). "The Reconstruction of Proto-Romance".Language.26 (1):6–27.doi:10.2307/410406.JSTOR410406.
Hall, Robert Anderson (1976).Proto-Romance Phonology. New York: Elsevier.
Leppänen, V., & Alho, T. 2018. On the mergers of Latin close-mid vowels. Transactions of the Philological Society 116. 460–483.
Lloyd, Paul M. (1979). "On the Definition of 'Vulgar Latin': The Eternal Return".Neuphilologische Mitteilungen.80 (2):110–122.JSTOR43343254.
Meyer, Paul (1906). "Beginnings and Progress of Romance Philology". In Rogers, Howard J. (ed.).Congress of Arts and Sciences: Universal Exposition, St. Louis, 1904. Vol. III. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company. pp. 237–255.
Nandris, Grigore. 1951. The development and structure of Rumanian.The Slavonic and East European Review, 30. 7–39.
Palmer, L. R. (1988) [1954].The Latin Language. University of Oklahoma.ISBN0-8061-2136-X.
Pei, Mario. 1941.The Italian language. New York: Columbia University Press.
Pei, Mario & Gaeng, Paul A. 1976.The story of Latin and the Romance languages. New York: Harker & Row.
Treadgold, Warren. 1997.A history of the Byzantine state and society. Stanford University Press.
Tucker, T. G. (1985) [1931].Etymological Dictionary of Latin. Ares Publishers.ISBN0-89005-172-0.
Väänänen, Veikko (1981).Introduction au latin vulgaire (3rd ed.). Paris: Klincksieck.ISBN2-252-02360-0.
Vincent, Nigel (1990). "Latin". In Harris, M.; Vincent, N. (eds.).The Romance Languages. Oxford University Press.ISBN0-19-520829-3.
von Wartburg, Walther; Chambon, Jean-Pierre (1922–1967).Französisches etymologisches Wörterbuch: eine Darstellung des galloromanischen Sprachschatzes (in German and French). Bonn: F. Klopp.
Wright, Roger (1982).Late Latin and Early Romance in Spain and Carolingian France. Liverpool: Francis Cairns.
Wright, Roger (2002).A Sociophilological Study of Late Latin. Utrecht: Brepols.
Bonfante, Giuliano (1999).The origin of the Romance languages: Stages in the development of Latin. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.
Ledgeway, Adam (2012).From Latin to Romance: Morphosyntactic Typology and Change. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ledgeway, Adam; Maiden, Martin, eds. (2016).The Oxford Guide to the Romance Languages. Part 1: The Making of the Romance Languages. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Maiden, Martin; Smith, John Charles; Ledgeway, Adam, eds. (2013).The Cambridge History of the Romance Languages. Volume II: Contexts. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. (esp. parts 1 & 2,Latin and the Making of the Romance Languages;The Transition from Latin to the Romance Languages)
Wright, Roger (1982).Late Latin and Early Romance in Spain and Carolingian France. Liverpool: Francis Cairns.
Wright, Roger, ed. (1991).Latin and the Romance Languages in the Early Middle ages. London/New York: Routledge.
To French
Ayres-Bennett, Wendy (1995).A History of the French Language through Texts. London/New York: Routledge.
Kibler, William W. (1984).An Introduction to Old French. New York: Modern Language Association of America.
Lodge, R. Anthony (1993).French: From Dialect to Standard. London/New York: Routledge.
Pope, Mildred K. (1934).From Latin to Modern French with Especial Consideration of Anglo-Norman Phonology and Morphology. Manchester:Manchester University Press.
Price, Glanville (1998).The French language: present and past (Revised ed.). London, England: Grant and Cutler.
To Italian
Maiden, Martin (1996).A Linguistic History of Italian. New York: Longman.
Vincent, Nigel (2006). "Languages in contact in Medieval Italy". In Lepschy, Anna Laura (ed.).Rethinking Languages in Contact: The Case of Italian. Oxford and New York:LEGENDA (Routledge). pp. 12–27.
To Spanish
Lloyd, Paul M. (1987).From Latin to Spanish. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society.
Penny, Ralph (2002).A History of the Spanish Language. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Pharies, David A. (2007).A Brief History of the Spanish Language. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Pountain, Christopher J. (2000).A History of the Spanish Language Through Texts. London, England: Routledge.
To Portuguese
Castro, Ivo (2004).Introdução à História do Português. Lisbon: Edições Colibri.
Emiliano, António (2003).Latim e Romance na segunda metade do século XI. Lisbon: Fundação Gulbenkian.
Williams, Edwin B. (1968).From Latin to Portuguese: Historical Phonology and Morphology of the Portuguese Language. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
To Occitan
Paden, William D. (1998).An Introduction to Old Occitan. New York: Modern Language Association of America.
To Sardinian
Blasco Ferrer, Eduardo (1984).Storia linguistica della Sardegna. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag.
Adams, James Noel. 1976.The Text and Language of a Vulgar Latin Chronicle (Anonymus Valesianus II). London: University of London, Institute of Classical Studies.
Adams, James Noel. 1977.The Vulgar Latin of the letters of Claudius Terentianus. Manchester, UK: Manchester Univ. Press.
Adams, James Noel. 2013.Social Variation and the Latin Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Burghini, Julia, and Javier Uría. 2015. "Some neglected evidence on Vulgar Latin 'glide suppression': Consentius, 27.17.20 N."Glotta; Zeitschrift Für Griechische Und Lateinische Sprache 91: 15–26.JSTOR24368205.
