9. Verbs

     (UNDER CONSTRUCTION)

Notes:

1. I have departed from IPA in the representation of mid vowels, and follow the long established academic practice when describing Vulgar Latin and the development of Romance languages, namely:

   [e]and [o] denote any front unrounded or back rounded mid vowel respectively, when the degree of height is either unknown, indeterminate or irrelevant;

   [ẹ] and [ọ] denote specifically high versions (IPA [e] and [o]);

   [ę] and [ǫ] denote specifically low versions (IPA [ɛ] and [ɔ]).

2. Also [ə] denotes:

   - generally any reduced non-defined centralized vowel without reference to height;

   - in Late Britainese, a unstressed non-phonemic low-mid to near-low ([ɜ] to [ɐ]) central vowel, depending upon regional pronunciation.

9.1 Conjugations in Vulgar Latin

Verbs are usually the most complicated part of speech, especially so in the Romance languages. Those who know Latin, will recall there were four conjugations in Classical Latin, thus:

• 1st amō, amāre "to love"
• 2nd videō, vidēre "to see"
• 3rd bibō, bibere "to drink"
• 4th dormiō, dormīre "sleep"

and the 3rd conjugation having a subset of facio, facere "to make, to do."

The latter small subset in fact have a mix of 3rd and 4th conjugation endings. They hint at something that was going on spoken Latin, namely some confusion of conjugations. This shows up also in the Classical language in verbs which some authors assign to the 2nd conjugation and others to the 3rd, e.g. ferveō, fervēre or fervō, fervere "to boil, ferment, glow"; tergeō, tergēre or tergō, tergere "to wipe, clean.".

In fact it is clear there was considerable fluctuation and confusion in the spoken language between the 2nd, 3rd and 4th conjugations, probably helped by /e/ and /i/ often being pronounced similarly in unstressed post-tonic syllables. The first conjugation, however, generally held its own.

Of the anomalous verbs:

• volō, velle "to wish, want" joined the 2nd conjugation: *voleō, volēre;
  (its two Calssical derivatives, mālo, mālle and nōlō, nōlle did not survive in Vulgar Latin.)
• possum, posse "to be able" was partially assimilated to the 2nd conjugation, but retained some anomalous forms thus: possō, potēre;
• ferō, ferre did not survive, giving way to portō, portāre "to carry";
• fīō, fierī "to become, happen" was regularized to 4th conjugation but survived only in Balkan Romance where it is suppletive with descendants of Latin esse;
• Some forms of eō, īre "to go" survived in Vulgar Latin but with extensive suppletion with other verbs, especially vādō, vādere "to go";
• sum, esse "to be" acquired a 3rd conjugation infinitive ending essere [ˈɛs.sɛ.ɾɛ] but otherwise remained anomalous.

The entire passive inflexions were dropped in Vulgar Latin, being replace partly by reflexive constructions and partly by esse(re) with the perfect passive participle. Deponent verbs simply became normal active verbs, e.g. mentīrī → mentīre, whence French, Occitan, Catalan, Spanish, Portuguese and Britainese mentir "to lie, say something untrue."

9.2 Forms surviving in the Proto-Romance of Gaul and Britain

9.2.1 Finite Verbs

Finite verbs function as the head of verbal clauses and show time (tense), aspect and mood; in Latin, the Romance languages and many others they are also marked by person and number. In Latin, the Romance languages and many others time and aspect are not clearly distinguished, e.g. the Latin "Perfect Tense" may show either past time and perfective aspect or present time and perfect aspect according to context. In strict linguistic terminology tense denotes time difference; but below and in the rest of this page I use Tense (with upper-case T) in the sense used in traditional grammar to denote time, aspect and mood paradignms found in Latin and the Romance languages.

9.2.1.1 Indicative Tenses

The Present, Imperfect, Perfect and Pluperfect survived. The Perfect, however, lost its present perfect meaning, this being expressed by a compound of habēre and the perfect participle if the verb was transitive or esse and the perfect participle if intransitive, e.g. fēcī → factum habeō "I have done (it)"; vēnī → *venūtus sum "I have come." The Latin Perfect tense retained only its past perfective use, i.e. it became the Preterite tense. The Latin Pluperfect was retained as a Preterite or as a Conditional in various regions but dropped out of use at an early date.

Only esse retained its future erō, eris ..; with other verbs futurity was expressed by suffixing contracted forms of habēre to the infinitive, e.g. cantāre + *a(b)jō. Eventually even esse(re) developed similar forms. Parallel with this a new "Future in the Past" or "Conditional" was developed by suffixing contracted forms of the Imperfect of habēre to the infinitive.

The old Future Perfect was confused with the Perfect Subjective and did not survive in Gaul or Britain

9.2.1.2 Subjunctive Tenses

Of the four Latin subjunctive tenses, only the Present and Pluperfect survived in Gaul, the latter simply becoming simply the Past Subjunctive; there is no reason to suppose that this would not have also been the case in Britain.

9.2.1.3 Imperatives

The Latin "Future Imperatives" with their 2nd and 3rd person forms did not survive in Vulgar Latin. Only the 2nd persons of the Present Imperative survived, and the plural was often expressed by the 2nd person plural of the Present Indicative tense. The 1st person hortative and 3rd person jussive meanings were expressed by the Present Subjective.

9.2.2 Nonfinite Verbs

Nonfinite verbs cannot function as the head of an independent clause; they combine verbal functions with that of nouns, adjectives or adverbs.

9.2.2.1 Supine

The Latin supine was the accusative, e.g. spectatum veniunt "they are coming to watch", and ablative (or possibly dative), e.g. difficile dictū est "it is difficult to say", of an old 4th declension verbal noun. It did not survive in Vulgar Latin.
(The supine of modern Romanian has a superficial resemblance to the Latin supine, but it not attested before he 16th century, and then only rarely until the 17th century. It is a relatively modern development and originated from nominalized past participle forms of intransitive verbs as Professor Virginia Hill explains in her paper "The emergence of the Romanian supine".)

9.2.2.2 Gerundive

The gerundive was a passive verbal adjective showing necessity or obligation, e.g. epistola scrībenda est "the letter is to be written (i.e. the letter must be written)". It did not survive in Vulgar Latin.

9.2.2.3 Infinitive

The infinitives in Latin were verbal nouns that could function as the subject or direct object of a sentence or as a complement after "to be", e.g. labōrāre nōn amat "he doesn't like to work/ he doesn't like working", labōrāre est ōrāre "to work is to pray/ working is praying." It could not be used after a preposition, nor in any case other than the nominative and accusative. If one wished to have a verbal noun in any other case or to use it after a preposition, one had to use the Latin gerund (see below).

In Classical Latin verbs could have three synthetic infinitives:

• present active, e.g. amāre "to love";
• present passive, e.g. amārī "to be loved";
• perfect active, e.g. amāvisse/ amāsse "to have loved".

Text books give other infinitives formed from compounds; these do not concern us here.

Of the three synthetic infinitives, only the present active survived in Vulgar Latin; it survives also in the modern Romance languages where its use has greatly expanded as it is commonly used after prepositions, cf. French le plaisir de voyager "the pleasure of travelling"; facile à dire "easy to say."

9.2.2.4 Gerund

The Latin gerund was an active verbal noun that, so to speak, filled the spaces the present infinitive could not, i.e. it was used in the accusative and ablative cases after prepositions, and in the genitive, dative and plain ablative. In theory, with the collapse of the case system and the use of prepositions before the present infinitive, one would have expected the gerund to have become defunct and not to have survived into Proto-Romance.

The ablative of the gerund came in the writers of the Empire to function as a present participle, e.g. novī cōnsulēs populandō usque ad moenia pervēnērunt (Livy 8.17.1) "the new consuls, laying waste [the land], came right up to the city walls"; exturbābant agrīs, captīvōs servōs appellando (Tac. _Ann._ 14.31.2) "they ejected [people] from their farms, calling them captives [and] slaves." This usage gained ground in Vulgar Latin, cf. in Egeria's (or Etheria's) 4th centuray account of her pilgramage to the Holy Land we find redīre ... dīcendō psalmōs "to return ... saying psalms" and remains so to the present day in Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.

In Catalan and the Romance languages of Gaul, the ablative lost its final vowel and the final /d/ become unvoiced in word final position, giving gerunds ending in -ant and -ent.

9.2.2.5 Participles

Participles are verbal adjectives. In Classical Latin a verb may have three such participles:

1. Future active participle perhaps best known in the greeting of gladiators to the Emperor Claudius according to the writer Suetonius: Havē Imperātor, moritūrī tē salūtant "Hail Emperor, those about to die salute you." It is rare in Vulgar Latin and did not survive in Proto-Romance.
2. Present active participle was inherited from Proto-Indo-European but in Old Latin had already lost most of its verbal functions and was mainly used as an adjective, e.g. vigilāns "awake, alert", maerēns "sorrowful", sedēns "seated", sapiēns "wise, discerning." This remained true of colloquial Latin and those Latin present participles which survive in the Romance languages survive as adjectives, not as participles.
   (In the written language of the Classical period of the late Republic, the participle did become used as a true verbal adjective; this was undoubtedly due to Greek influence as ancient Greek but this did not become part of the colloquial language where, as we have seen above, the ablative of the gerund filled the function of the present active participle.)
3. Perfect participle which, in Classical Latin, was normally passive, the main exceptions being the perfect participles of deponent verbs, e.g. secūtus "having followed" (← sequī "to follow") and a few other verbs, e.g. cēnātus "having dined" (← cēnāre "to dine"). Classical Latin intransitive verbs did not normally have a perfect participle except in impersonal passive constructions, e.g. postquam perventum est "after they/people arrived".
   The perfect participle was retained in Vulgar Latin and greatly increased in that intransitive verbs acquired participles with active meaning so, e.g. the old impersonal ventum did not survive as a perfect participle of venīre "to come", but was replaced by *venūtus "having come" in Gaul and Italy or •venītus "having come" in the Iberian peninsula and Dacia.

The only participle that survived in Vulgar Latin and Proto-Romance was the perfect participle (active in the case intransitive verbs and passive if the verb was transitive). Indeed, it not only survived but extended its use in two three ways:

• In Classical Latin the perfect passive participle was used with the verb "to be" to form the Perfect, Pluperfect and Future Perfect Passive (e.g. amāta est "she was loved, has been loved", amāta erat "she had been loved", amāta erit "she will have been loved"); but in the spoken language these shifted their meaning with the participle simply being a passive participle, i.e. amāta est "she is loved", amāta erat "she was loved", amāta erit "she will be loved."
• In Classical Latin the Perfect, Pluperfect and Future Perfect of deponent verbs had been formed by using the perfect active participle with "to be"; deponents, as we have seen, disappeared from the spoken language but this method of forming the perfect active tenses was extended to all intransitive verbs, e.g. *venūta/venīta est "she has come", *venūta/venīta erat "she had come", *venūta/venīta erit "she will have come."
• The latter was not possible with transitive verbs as the perfect participle was passive. However we find as early as Plautus (c. 254 – 184 BC) multa bona bene parta habēmus "we have many well procured goods" which could be understood as "we have procured many goods well"; this construction. habēre and perfect passive participle agreeing with the direct object, developed in spoken Latin a periphrastic way of expressing the Perfect, Pluperfect and Future Perfect tenses of transitive verbs. Thus we find, for example, in Greogory of Tours episcopum invītātum habēs "you have invited the bishop."

9.2.3 Summary

Proto-Britainese will have inherited these forms:

• Vulgar Latin Present, Imperfect and Perfect Active Indicative tenses;
• Future and Conditional (Future in the Past) Active Indicative tenses formed from suffixing contracted forms of habēre to the Present Active Infinitive:
• Present and Past Active Subjunctive tenses derived from the Latin Present and Pluperfect Subjunctives respectively;
• 2nd Person Singular Active Imperative;
• Present Active Infinitive;
• An invariable Gerund ending in -ndo;
• Perfect Participle, Active in the case of intransitive verbs, and Passive if verb is transitive.

9.3 The Present Indicative Tense

Those familiar with Romance languages will know that if verbs are irregular that it is more often than not the Present Indicative that is irregular; thus we begin with this tense. I must stress, however, that not all irregular verbs are given; subsections 9.3.3 and 9.3.4 just show examples of the sort of irregularities that may occur. Subsection 9.3.5 gives auxiliary verbs which can be guaranteed to be irregular.

Also it must be remembered that while, e.g. French il chant can mean either "he sings" or "he is singing", in Britainese il cant can mean only "he sings" and the meaning "he is singing" will be expressed by a periphrastic construction similar to English.

9.3.1 Regular verbs

In Vulgar Latin the 1st person endings of the 1st and most 3rd conjugation verbs was -ō; the 2nd conjugation -eō and 4th conjugation -iō (and a few 3rd conjugation verbs) would be expected to become [jo] in Vulgar Latin but generally simply became [o] in line with the 1st and 3rd conjugation verbs.

The 4th conjugation 3rd person plural -iunt (found also with a few 3rd conjugation verbs) simply became [ont] in Vulgar Latin.

All the singular endings and the 3rd person plural ending were unstressed in Latin and this remained so in Vulgar Latin and all the Romance languages. The 1st and second persons plural, however, were stressed in in the 1st, 2nd and 4th conjugations. It seems that in Proto-Romance there was a shift to stressing those endings in the 3rd conjugation also. Therefore we may expect the following in Proto-Britainese:

	1st conj.	2nd conj.	3rd conj.	4th conj.
1st sg.	-
2nd sg.	-es	-s
3rd sg.	-ed	-d
1st pl..	-ams	-eims		-ims
2nd pl..	-ads	-eids		-ids
3rd pl.	-ent	-nt

9.3.1.1 First person singular

For all regular verbs, this is just the verb stem. We shall find an ending -i with some irregular verbs; this appears to have originated with *ajo ← *aβjo ← hábeo "I have" and is discussed below in subsection 9.3.4.1.

9.3.1.2 Second person singular

Final -s was normally pronounced [z], but was [s] after voiceless consonants, e.g. mets ← metre "to put, place." If the verb stem already ended in -s another -s was not added, e.g. eu conoiss ← *connokso ← cognōscō "I know (of)", tu conoiss ← *connoksis ← cognōscis "you [s] know (of)." Also the ending -s is not separately pronounced when suffixed to verbs ending -sce [ʃ], -ce [t͡ʃ], -ge [d͡ʒ]. -sie [ʒ], -x [ks] and -z [z]. This applies also to 1st conjugation verbs when [ə] in final unstressed syllables fell silent in the middle Britainese period, i.e. eu basie [əu̯'baʒ] ~ tu basies [ti'baʒ] "I kiss ~ you [s.] kiss".

9.3.1.3 Third person singular

We saw in 3.1.2.7 that the final -t of Latin was likely to be preserved as it was in north Gaul; the Brittonic 3rd person ending -d would have reinforced the trend towards lenition of the final sound. However, if you look at the Wikipedia reconstructions of the Brittonic (or proto-Brythonic) forms, it will be seen that while the absolute (i.e. independent) forms ended in -d, the conjunct (used after particles) was just the verb stem. The latter only survive in Welsh, Cornish and Breton. Also, although final -t is still written on some French verbs, the ending has become silent in spoken French. Two of the 'control languages' in our timeline have no 3rd person singular ending in their spoken forms; we have to ask, therefore, whether in BART Britainese would have been the only Romance language besides Sardinian to have preserved this ending.

Even in the earliest Britain, final [d] would have been devoiced after voiceless consonants and written as -t, e.g. el conoist [əlku'nwist] "she knows." After dental/alveolar plosives, the final -d would have been fully assimilated e.g. vend+d → vend "sells", part+d → part "departs, leaves." What happened after [ð] would have been unclear in old texts due to the various ways [ð] was spelled (or not spelled); although we have the combination [ðd] in words like "smoothed" and "breathed", it is made easier in English in that while [ð] is a dental fricative [d] is an alveolar plosive, but we cannot be sure of the precise value of [d] in Britainese. Also it should be borne in mind that while the suffix ed has grammatical significance in English, i.e. marking the preterite tense and the perfect participle, it had no such function in Britainese which was a non-pro-drop language; it is probable that the final -d was dropped after voiced fricatives generally and after "difficult" combinations, e.g. veidhd → veidh "sees", beivd → beiv "drinks", dormd → dorm "sleeps."

When the 1st conjugation unstressed -ed became -d in Middle Britainese, these assimilations occurred with these verbs, e.g. amed → amd "loves", passed → past "goes past, passes", laved → lavd → lav "washes", canted → cant "sings." It increased the number of verbs where 1st and 3rd persons were the same and we find final -d disappearing more and more frequently, even after vowels, e.g. (h)ad → (h)á "has." Final /t/ was more resistant but during the Middle Britainese period it clearly become more and more felt that the 3rd person is unmarked like the 1st person; by the end of Middle Britainese period all 3rd person singular endings have gone.

9.3.1.4 First person plural

According to F.G. Mohl, La première personne du pluriel en gallo-roman (1900), forms like *mittomus, due to Celtic influence, were used in northern Gaul instead of míttimus, then the accent was shifted to the penultimate *mittómus, whence the Old French endings -omes, -oms, -ons (metomes, metoms, metons) → modern French -ons (mettons). This theory has not found general acceptance. Indeed, I find no support for a Celtic influence generalizing a 1st person plural ending in -omos.

The common view is that the French endings developed from a generalization of the 1st. pers. pl. of "to be" somes, soms, sons ← sumus [ˈsọmọs]. But why that should be so and why it became the 1st pers. pl. ending for all verbs at a very early date is not at all clear and I see no reason to suppose that Britainese would have behaved the same way.

It will, however, be seen from French and that in this area there was a strong move towards having common forms for the stressed endings of the 1st and 2nd persons plural. For reasons explained in the next subsection, it is likely by the end of the Old Britainese period or in the early Middle Britainese period, -ams had becomes the common 1st person plural ending.

9.3.1.5 Second person plural

Although the early use of -oms, -ons is obscure, the derivation French 2pl suffix -ez is clear; in Old French it was pronounced [etz] and is derived from Latin first conjugation suffix -ātis. In the earliest Old French texts it competed with -eiz [ei̯ts] or -oiz [oi̯ts] of the 2nd & 3rd conjugations, and -iz [its] of the 4th conjugation. Before the end of the Old French period -ez had ousted its rivals. This was probably because verbs of 1st conjugations were more numerous than others and it was also reinforced by the common 2pl ending of the Imperfect which in Classical Latin always ended in -bātis (except "to be" which had erātis). It is reasonable to suppose that something similar happened in Old to Middle Britainese and that the stressed endings -ams, -ads became common to all verbs.

It is possible that in Old Britainese spellings of the 2nd person plural such as -az, -eiz, -iz occurred where z = [dz] as well as -ads, -eids, -ids; certainly contact with French is likely to have encouraged such spellings. In Middle Britainese we can expect -az or -adz besides -ads; it is likely that -adz would have prevailed to distinguish 2nd person plural from the plural of the perfect participle of 1st conjugation verbs. None of these considerations apply to the 1st person plural ending and there is no reason to suppose that it did not remain -ams.

9.3.1.6 Third person plural

We saw in subsection 3.1.2.7 that the Latin 3rd personal plural -nt would have survived in early Britainese and, in our timeline, survives till the present day in Breton and literary Welsh (the situation where -nt hwy [nthuːɨ̯] → -n nhw [nhuː] in colloquial Welsh would not have occurred in Britainese). There is no reason to suppose it would not have survived in Britainese, the 1st conjugation -ent becoming -nt in Middle Britainese.

9.3.1.7 Examples of regular present tenses in late Britainese

cantar "to sing"	conoistr "to know (of), be acquainted with"	vendr "to sell"	dormir "to sleep"
eu cant tu cants el/il cant nos cantams vos cantadz els/ils cantnt	eu conoiss tu conoiss el/il conoiss nos conoissams vos conoissadz els/ils conoissnt	eu vend tu vends el/il vend nos vendams vos vendadz els/ils vendnt	eu dorm tu dorms el/il dorm nos dormams vos dormadz els/ils dormnt

9.3.2 -ir verbs with inchoative suffix

Inchoative verbs, sometimes called an "inceptive" verbs, show a process of beginning or becoming; in Latin they were shown with the suffix -sc- which lengthened the vowel before it. We came across one such verb above, i.e. co(g)nōscō "to get to know, to become acquainted [with]" → [eu] conoiss.

But what we are concerned with here is a phenomenon we find in French, Catalan and Italian where some Latin 4th conjugation verbs behave like verbs derived from the 2nd and 3rd conjugation, but the majority are derived from Vulgar Latin forms with the inchoative suffix -īsc- or -ēsc- in the present tense, it should be noted that he suffix lost its strict inchoative or inceptive meaning. Nevertheless, such verbs are still generally referred to as 'inchoative verbs' in Romance studies and that is how it is to be understood here. Cf. the table below.

FRENCH			CATALAN			ITALIAN
dormir	fleurir		dormir	florir		dormire	fiorire
je dors tu dors il/elle dort nous dormons vous dormez ils/elles dorment	je fleuris tu fleuris il/elle fleurit nous fleurissons vous fleurissez ils/elles fleurissent		dormo dorms dorm dormim dormiu dormen	floreixo floreixes floreix florim floriu floreixen		dormo dormi dorme dormiamo dormite dormono	fiorisco fiorisci fiorisce fioriamo fiorite fioriscono

Such inchoative verbs are found in Occitan also; but there the inchoative suffix has spread to verbs which did not originally have it. Thus in Occitan the present tense of dormir is:
dormissi, dormisses, dormís, dormissèm, dormissètz, dormisson.

This type of conjugation seems to have begun in Vulgar Latin with verbs such as florére "to blossom, flower; to flourish, prosper" which by using the inchoative form florésco besides the normal flóreo made it possible to have a present tense with stress on the ending throughout, i.e.
florésco, floréscẹs, floréscẹt, florémọs, florétẹs, floréscọnt.

It seems these verbs tended to be assimilated to the -íre group (i.e. Latin 4th conjugation); it will be seen, indeed, that Romance language descendants of Latin flōrēre have almost all joined the -ir(e) group. We see above Italian keeping close to the Vulgar Latin original and Catalan also preserving the original pattern of keeping stress on the endings throughout. In French we see that at an early date the endings -om(es)s/-ons, -ez came to be used for all verbs; when these endings were extended to 4th conjugation inchoative verbs, these verbs were treated just like other inchoatives such as [eu] conoiss, i.e. the suffix -iss- was retained throughout as we see in the table above; Occitan behaved in a similar way.

There can be little doubt that Britainese would have also had such inchoative formations in the -ir group and, as the endings -ams, -ads/-adz where extended to all verbs, that they would have behaved much as in French, and that we could add to the table above:

BRITAINESE
dormir	flourir
eu dorm tu dorms el/il dorm nos dormams vos dormadz els/ils dormnt	eu flouriss tu flouriss el/il flouriss nos flourissams vos flourissadz els/ils flourissnt

9.3.3 Change of stem vowel in 1st & 2nd persons plural

In accordance with phonetic laws in Old French, the vowel of the verb stem often developed differently according to whether the stress fell on the stem (1st, 2nd and 3rd persons singular, and 3rd person plural) or on the ending (1st and 2nd persons plural). this was certainly true of Old French, e.g.

• amās → aimes ['ɛ.məs] "thou lovest, you (sg.) speak"
• amātis → amez [a'mets] "you (pl.) love"

where [ɛ] of the 2nd singular contrasts with [a] of the 2nd plural.

This oscillation between two forms of the stem is known as apophony and was common in Old French. Other examples of change of vowel are: leves ~ lavez, trueves ~ trouvez, espeires ~ esperez, lieves ~ levez, pries ~ preiez, pleures ~ plourez, suefres ~ soufrez. In the majority of cases, the stem of the 1st and 2nd persons plural has been generalized (tu laves ~ vous lavez, tu trouves ~ vous trouvez, tu espères ~ vous espérez, tu lèves ~ vous levez, tu souffres ~ vous souffrez), but sometimes the reverse has happened (tu aimes ~ vous aimez, tu pries ~ vous priez, tu pleures ~ vous pleurez). But quite a few modern French verbs have preserved the earlier apophony (tu bois ~ vous bouvez, tu veux ~ vous voulez, tu dois ~ vous devez, tu peux ~ vous pouvez).

To some extent this is lessened in Britainese in that, as we have seen, vowels are often pronounced differently if stressed or unstressed; cf. eu dorm [əu̯'dorm] ~ nos dormams nuz.dur'manz]. Nevertheless, there is likely to have been some examples of apophony in Old Britainese, such as:

vedhair "to see"	baivr "to drink"
eu vaidh tu vaidhs el/il vaidh nos vedhams vos vedhadz els/ils vaidhnt	eu baiv tu baivs el/il baiv nos bevams vos bevadz els/ils baivnt

9.3.4 Auxiliary verbs

In proto-Romance there were three auxiliary verbs:

• éssere "to be" which was used with Perfect Participle of transitive verbs to form passive tenses (in fact an extension of Classical Latin usage) and with the Perfect Participle of intransitive verbs to form the perfect active tenses (a usage found in Classical Latin with deponent verbs);
• stáre "to be [in a certain place. in a certain condition]" which could be used with the ablative of the gerund to express a continuous or progressive meaning, e.g. stat cantando "s/he is singing", stabant currendo "they were running"; but such forms were used far less used than the corresponding English forms.
• habére "to have" which was used with the Perfect Participle in agreement with the direct object to form perfect active tenses of transitive verbs.

Many of the Romance languages have retained the two distinct forms of "to be", derived from éssere and stáre respectively; this is especially so the Iberian Romance languages with the notable exception of Arogonese which has only one verb "to be", being a mix of forms derived from éssere and stare. More importantly for us we find a similar thing in French and other langues d'oïl where "to be" is a fusion of forms derived éssere (Old French estre and stáre. (Old French ester). The evidence of French, English and Welsh in our timeline strongly suggests the two verbs will have fused as they have in French and other langues d'oïl and Aragonese.

Some Romance languages have used other verbs as auxiliaries, e.g. Catalan uses a variant of the present tense of anar "to go" with the infinitive to express the simple past. Britainese, as we have seen, developed continuous tenses similar English, e.g. "I am singing, you were singing" etc. This is common both to English and to Insular Celtic in our timeline; it would seem to be an areal feature. Both English and the Brittonic languages also use the verb "to do" as an auxiliary as part of this system. There can be little doubt that Britainese would like wise have used "to do" (Latin facere) in a similar way to that of English and the Brittonic languages in our timeline. Britainese, therefore, has three auxiliary verbs:

• star ← stáre [being fusion of éssere and stáre - see above]
• avair ← habére
• fair ← */fakʲrə/ ← fácere

9.3.4.1 TO BE

This verb is anomalous in all the Romance languages, in English and in Welsh in our timeline and, indeed, in most European languages. It was anomalous in Latin where its present tense was: sum, es, est, sumus, estis, sunt.

FRENCH	OCCITAN	CATALAN	ITALIAN	BRITAINESE
être	èssere	ser	esser	star
je suis tu es il/elle est nous sommes vous êtes ils/elles sont	soi ès es sèm sètz son	sóc ets és som sou són	sono sei è siamo siete sono	eu soi tu ess el/il ess nos soums vos ests els/ils sount

Almost everywhere the Romance languages have derived their 1st person singular and 3rd person plural from Latin sum and sunt. The former would be expected to give *sọn in Vulgar Latin, cf. Italian sono; but in Gaul and the Iberian peninsula it become *sọjo by analogy with *ajo (← *aβjo, see 9.3.4.2 below). We can expect that this to have happened in British Vulgar Latin, hence Britainese soi [swi].

Almost everywhere the Romance languages have derived their 2nd and 3rd persons singular from Latin es [ęss] and est [ęst] (the Italian è, found also in Romansh, is probably due to a development es, *e by analogy with *as, *a, see 9.3.4.2 below; this did not affect Gaul and is unlikely, therefore, to have affected the Vulgar Latin of Britain). There is no reason to suppose that Old Britainese would not have ess and est; during Middle Britainese the latter would have lost the final /t/, giving way to ess.

With the 1st and 2nd persons plural we see a great variation in the Romance languages, a variety that dates back at least to the time of the Emperor Augustus who, were are told by Suetonius, pronounced the 1st plural as simus ['simʊs], a form that endured in the Vulgar Latin of southern Gaul and Italy. There was also remodelling as one form influenced the other. So we find Vulgar Latin sumus ['sọmọs], *sutis ['sọtẹs] in the Iberian peninsula, and simus ['sẹmọs], *sitis ['sẹtẹs] in Italian, central Romance areas and southern Gaul (see Occitan above). These did not reach northern Gaul where standard sumus, estis remained; but the whole of Gaul knew also *esmus and we find esmes in Old French and Old Occitan besides forms derived from sumus or simus respectively.

We can be certain Britain knew sumus, estis; it is possible that *esmus also occurred (perhaps reinforced by Brittonic *ésmesi), but we cannot be certain of this; in any case, French and Occitan suggest it is unlikely to have supplanted ['sọmọs]. The Britainese will, therefore, be soums, ests.

9.3.4.2 TO HAVE

FRENCH	OCCITAN	CATALAN	ITALIAN	BRITAINESE
avoir	aver	haber	avere	avair
j'ai tu as il/elle a nous avons vous avez ils/elles ont	ai as a avèm avètz an	he, haig has ha hem heu han	ho hai ha abbiamo avete hanno	eu ai tu as el/il á nos avams vos avadz els/ils ant

In Vulgar Latin the present tense of habēre developed contracted forms in the singular being:

• *ajo ← *aβjo ← hábeo;
• *as ← *aβs ← hábes
• *a(t) ← *aβt ← hábet

The 3rd person plural hábent contracted to *aβnt which simply became *an(t), except in Old French where it became French ont, possibly from *áunt or simply due to the influence of sont ("they are").

Although silent initial h is clearly favoured in the Iberian peninsula, a look at Wiktionary will show that the Romance forms of this verb are more often written without initial silent h; there is reason to suppose that Britainese would behaved differently from the Romance languages of Gaul in this respect. The acute accent on á "has" is to distinguish it from the unstressed preposition a, adh "at, to."

Except in Catalan, the 1st and 2nd persons plural are derived from uncontracted (h)abēmus and (h)abētis, it is likely that the verb developed in Britainese in a similar way to that of north and south Gaul (and, indeed, in Italy), as we show in the table above.

9.3.4.3 TO DO

FRENCH	OCCITAN	CATALAN	ITALIAN	BRITAINESE
faire	faire	fer	fare	fair
je fais1 tu fais il/elle fait nous faisons3 vous faites ils/elles font	fau fas fa fasèm fasètz fan	faig [fat͡ʃ] fas fa fem feu fan	faccio, fo2 fai fa facciamo fate fanno	eu fai tu fais el/il fai nos fageams vos fageadz els/ils faint

¹ In Old French faz [fat͡s] (← facio), fac [fak] (← *faco) or fai [faj] (← ?)
² faccio is standard; fo is a regional variant
³ In Old French faimes

Besides the Classical imperative fac, the form fa is attested (Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie, Halle, XXV, 735), which is likely to have led to plural *fáte besides the Classical facite. From this and under the influence of stāre and dare, *fāre as a doublet of facere existed, with present tense:
*fo, *fas, *fat, *fámus, *fátis, *fant.

From these forms are clearly derived the 2nd and 3rd pers. singular and the 3rd pers. plural of Occitan, Catalan and Italian; the latter, indeed, also has 2nd person plural derived from this and, in some regional variants, the first person singular and, before the subjunctive facciamo replaced the 1st person plural, we find the archaic form famo.

Grandgent (1907, An Introduction to Vulgar Latin, Boston MA, D.C. Heath & Co.) gives also *fao, *fais, *fait, *fáimus, *fáitis, *faunt. But are not *fais, *fait, *fáimus, *fáitis merely another way of saying that Vulgar Latin [kʲ] before a consonant became [j]? I know of no evidence for fao which, in any case, would surely have contracted to fo. Old French font could be derived from *faunt or formed under the influence of sont and ont. But even if *faunt did occur, could it not be derived from */'faɣọnt/ ← */'fagọnt/ ← */'fakunt/?

It is tempting to adopt the 1st conjugation forms given in the 1st paragraph above, but this seems to have developed specifically in Italian Vulgar Latin and to have spread from there. While it made its way into the Vulgar Latin of southern Gaul, it did not reach northern Gaul and thus is not likely to have reached Britain.

What Grandgent does not give are 1st person singular *faco and 3rd person plural *facunt. Yet these must surely have occurred as we find in Romanian fac /fak/ "I do" and fac /fak/ "they do" while the rest of the present tense has the stem fac- /fat͡ʃ]/; also in Spanish we have hago (← Old Spanish fago) "I do" and fac also occurs in Old French (besides fatz and fai). Whether Old French font is evidence of survival of *facunt in north Gaul is less certain; in the Iberian peninsula the Latin ending -unt gave way to -ent at an early date. But early Old Britainese had fage (← facio) and fag (← *faco); a form fai does appear later in the Old Britainese, but this is more likely to be under the influence of the 2nd and 3rd person singulars fais(s) and fai(t). Similarly in early Britainese we find both fagnt and fagent, with faint appearing towards the end of the early period, becoming the norm during Middle Britainese.

The 2nd and 3rd persons singular would have been derived from */fakʲs/, */fakʲt/, giving faiss, fait in early Britainese. During the Old Britainese period we find instances of the 2nd singular being written fais under the influnce of the majority of verbs, and this becomes the norm in Middle Britainese when 3rd singular loses its final [t].

Although 1st and 2nd persons plural faims ← */fakʲmọs/ and faits ← */fakʲtẹs/ were occasionally found in early Britainese, the more common forms are fageims ← *facémus, fageidz ← *facétis; before the end of Old Britainese these will have given way to forms with the common -ams, -adz (see subsections 9.3.1.4/5 above) becoming fageams, fageadz.

9.3.5 Some other anomalous present tenses

This is not intended to be a complete list of irregular present tenses, but indicative of the sort of irregularities, other than those with change of stem vowel in 1st & 2nd persons plural (see 9.3.3 above) that may occur. Indeed. there will be fewer irregular present tenses than there are in French as the latter language:

1. had a secondary lenition whereby, e.g. both intervocalic /b/ and /p/ become /v/, whereas Britainese had only primary intervocalic lenition, e.g. /b/ → /v/, and /p/ → /b/.
2. both [ð] and [ɣ] fall silent, whereas only [ɣ] fell silent in Britainese which retained [ð].

This has meant that Vulgar Latin intervocalic /d/, /g/, /t/, /k/ have all fell silent in Old French, leading to awkward hiatus which was resolves in various ways. In Britainese only Vulgar Latin /g/ became silent in Old Britainese.

This means, e.g. that the verb "to be able" has a regular present tense in Britainese. The highly irregular Classical Latin possum, posse, potuī was replaced in Vulgar Latin by poteo, potére, potui; notice that the Vulgar Latin forms are not preceded by asterisks as they are actually attested in written Latin during the 1st millennium AD. The Old 1st person singular did survive for a time as posso (and Old French puis suggests a form *possio also), but the 1st person singular pot(e)o seems to have prevailed in most places. The present tense of Britainese podair is formed regularly with stem pod.

At present, indeed, we give only two verbs below but it is likely that there will be additions.

9.3.5.1 ALAR "to go"

The Classical Latin for "to go" is īre which my headmaster of seventy years ago used to call a "Cheshire Cat" verb because "the stem had disappeared, leaving only the endings." This is not strictly true, but it certainly looks like it and, although, parts of this verb do survive in some of the Romance languages, in Italy and Gaul it was replaced by verbs whose origins are still disputed:

• andare in Italy;
• an(n)ar in southern Gaul and Catalonia;
• al(l)er in northern Gaul.

with suppletion from forms derived from Latin vādere "to go, to walk."

FRENCH	OCCITAN	CATALAN	ITALIAN	BRITAINESE
aller	anar	anar	andare	alar
je vais tu vas el/ille va nous allons vous allez ils/elles vont	vau vas va anam anatz van	vaig vas va anem aneu van	vado, vo* vai va andiamo andate vanno	eu vai tu vas el/il vad nos alams vos aladz els/ils vant

* vado is standard; vo is archaic and poetic.

At one time the verbs andare, an(n)are and al(l)er were all held to be derived in some peculiar way (distortion of military commands was often suggested) from Latin ambulāre "to walk." But I have never been convinced by this; it is more likely that:

• andáre, attested in Medieval Latin (in a text from southern Italy around 800 AD) is from *ambitāre "to go around", being formed from ambitus "circuit, orbit." From it also are derived the Spanish and Portuguese andar "to walk" (quite distinct from their verbs ir "to go");
• Old Occitan annar and modern Occitan and Catalan anar are possibly derived from *amnáre ← *amláre ← *ambláre (Classical ambulāre);
• The origin of French all- (old French al-) is obscure. A Medieval Latin aláre is attested in the Reichenau Glossary, a collection of Latin glosses compiled around the eighth century at the Abbey of Corbie in Picardy. It has been suggested that it derives it from Gaulish *aliu, from Proto-Celtic *ɸal- or *ɸel- "to approach, drive" ← Proto-Indo-European *pelh₂- (compare Welsh elwyf "I may go", Cornish ellev "I may go").

It will be seen from the above that andare is attested on Medieval Latin but seems confined to Italy and the Iberian peninsula; an(n)ar is found in southern Gaul and Catalonia; alar is attested in Medieval Latin in a glossary written in Picardy and was clearly known in northern Gaul. If the Celtic origin al- is correct then this verb must surely have been known in Britain also.

Of vādere it would seem that the singular persons and 3rd person plurals developed contracted forms in Vulgar Latin similar to those of habēre and almost certainly under the influence of that verb, thus: *vajo, vas, va[t] and vant.

In the Iberian peninsula the 1st and 2nd plurals were provided by Latin īmus, ītis (modern Portuguese has replaced the former with vamos but retains 2nd plural ides; modern Spanish now has vamos, vais) but, as we have seen, in Italy and Gaul they have forms discussed above.

9.3.5.2 DIR "to say, to tell"

FRENCH	OCCITAN	CATALAN	ITALIAN	BRITAINESE
dire	dire, díder, díser	dir, dire, diure	dire	dir
je dis tu dis el/ille dit nous disons vous dites ils/elles disent	disi dises ditz disèm disètz dison	dic dius diu diem dieu diuen	dico dici dice diciamo dite dicono	eu dig tu dis el/il di nos digeams vos digeadz els/ils dignt

• The 1st person singular and 3rd person plural are from Latin dīcō and dīcunt, as are the Italian forms and the Catalan 1st person singular (the latter has 3rd person plural from a proto_iberian Romance *dicent).
• The 2nd and 3rd persons singular are from */dikʲs/ and */dikʲt/ respectively (c.f. subsection 4.3.4.2 above).
• The 1st and 2nd persons plural are from *dīcēmus, *dīcētis (c.f. subsection 4.3.4.2 above).

Latin verb dūcere "to lead, guide" gave Old Britainese eu dug, tu du(i)s, el/il du(i)t, nos dugeims/dugeams, vos dugeits/dugeadz, els/ils dugnt which was all very well when u was pronounced [y]; but when the vowel became unrounded the verb became homophonous with dir "to say"! The verb dropped out of use, just as it did in French and, indeed, most western Romance languages, surviving only as the second element of compound verbs, cf. French conduire, produire, induire, Spanish conducir, producir, inducir (but no verb *ducir), Portuguese conduzir, produzir induzir (but no verb *duzir). In Catalan there is a simple verb dur "to carry, bring", but when it occurs as the second part of conduir, produir, induir it has not only a different infinitive, but also becomes an inchoative -ir verb. Similarly in Britainese the verb was remodelled as the second part of condugir, produgir, indugir, being reformed on the 1st and 2nd persons plural with a stem -dug(e)- [did͡ʒ] and the infinitive ending -ir, probably suggested by the older duir; also like Catalan, it became an 'inchoative' verb and thus no longer anomalous.

9.4 The Imperfect Indicative Tense

The Imperfect is the 'past of the present', i.e. just as the simple present tense in Britainese denotes an habitual action or state in present time, so the Imperfect Indicative denotes habitual action or state in past time, i.e. el cantai = " she sang [habitially], she used to sing.". The meaning "she was singing" is expressed by a periphrastic construction similar to English or Welsh in our timeline. In this respect, cf. the table below:

Language	Past Continuous	Past Habitual	Preterite
Welsh	roedd hi'n canu	fe ganai hi	fe ganodd hi
English	she was singing	she sang	she sang
French	elle chantai	elle chantai	elle chanta

For more on the Preterite (i.e.Past Perfective), see section 9.5 below and, indeed, compare the table above with a similar one of the Preterite and the Present Perfect given in that section.

From the table above it will be seen that while in Welsh* we have three separate tenses, in English the Simple Past may be used both for habitual past actions and for the past perfective; but past continuous is shown by by was/were and the imperfective participle. Whereas in French the Imperfect does duty both for past continuous and the past habitual, the Passé Simple denotes the past perfective (though much restricted in modern French, where the Passé Composé normally does duty as both a present perfect and a past perfective). Britainese has a Preterite, as we shall see below, and the past continuous is shown by "to be" and the gerund. The imperfect, therefore, with dynamic (or fientive) verbs has a past habitual meaning (we shall discuss stative verbs when we look more fully a verbal syntax).

* This will not happen in Britainese as, in common with all other western Romance languages, it has distinct synthetic future and conditional tenses; see Section 6 below).

9.4.1 Personal endings

Latin had the same personal endings for all verbs; these were, except for the 1st person singular, identical with the personal endings of the present 1st conjugation. The Britainese forms are, therefore, as the present 1st conjugation forms above, namely:

	1SG	2SG	3SG	1PL	2PL	3PL
Latin	-a(m)	-ās	-at	-āmus	-ātis	-ant
Early Britainese	-e	-es	-et	-ams	-adz	-ent
Later Britainese	-	-s	-	-ams	-adz	-nt

9.4.2 Temporal suffix

Between the verb stem and the personal endings, Classical Latin had the following temporal suffixes:

• 1st conjugation -āb-
• 2nd and 3rd conjugations (except "faciō" verbs) -ēb-
• 3rd conjugation "faciō" verbs and 4th conjugation -iēb-

In the 4th conjugation in early Latin the suffix was -īb-, and this reappears in Late Latin. It seems to have been the norm in spoken Latin. In Vulgar Latin also, the suffix -iēb- became just -ēb-. Therefore early Vulgar Latin had the temporal suffixes:

• -aβ- verbs with infinitives in -áre
• -ẹβ- verbs with infinitives in -ére or -ere
• -iβ- verbs with infinitives in -íre

In western Romance, while -aβ- remained, -ẹβ- became -ẹ- and -iβ- became -i-. It is not clear why [β] disappeared after [ẹ] and [i]. Grandgent suggests that it began with habēbam [a'βẹ.βa] (imperfect of "to have") becoming *[a'βẹ.a] through dissimilation and that affected all except -aβ-. Furthermore, both -ẹ- and -i- fell together, with -i- being normal in southern Gaul and the Iberian peninsula, and -ẹ- prevailing in northern Gaul.

In Old French we find that:

• the first conjugation -aβ-, when stressed became -év- in some eastern regions, in others became -ou- or -o- (← -aw- ← -aβ-); and that when unstressed before 1st and 2nd plural endings it became -i- everywhere.
• the -ẹ- of other verbs became -ei- → -oi- when stressed, and -i- when unstressed.

In French -i- before the 1st and 2nd person plural endings has remained till the present day; at an early date -oi- replaced the 1st conjugation -ou-, -o- and developed [oi̯] → [wę] → [ę], the spelling oi starting to change to ai in the 17th century but not recognized by the French Academy till 1835.

There can be little doubt that Britainese would also have had two temporal infixes:

• Verbs with infinitives in -ar would have had -av- (or -au-);
• all other verbs (except "to be", see below) would have had -ei- → -ai-;
• the verb "to be" in early Britainese would have er- besides the regularly formed imperfect of star.

Would both the -av-/-au- and the -ei- → -ai- imperfects fallen together as they did in France? According to Meyer-Lübke it was in southern Wallonia, Picardy, the Ile-de-France, Franche-Compté, Lorraine and Burgundy where the -oi- imperfects early ousted the -ev-, -ou- imperfects. Part of this area is too far to the south-east for us worry about, but southern Wallonia and Picardy are close to the Britainese area. Also if we look at our 'control languages' we find that both Welsh and French in our timeline have only one set of endings for the imperfect (English does not have a synthetic imperfect and its Simple Past tense is more comparable to Britainese Preterite which we shall consider later).

Therefore, if we follow the principles on which we have evolved Britainese, we must accept that in Britainese the -ai- imperfect endings will have ousted the -av-, -au- endings - probably at first in the south east and then gradually spreading to all areas during the Old and Middle Britainese periods. I do not, however, think the temporal suffix would have weakened to -i before the 1st and second person plural endings; that would, among other things, have involved palatilization of dental/alveolar and velar consonants. I am sure it would just have been a weakened, unstressed -ai- [əj], e.g. nos cantaiams [nus'kən'tə'jamz] "we used to sing."

As regards the '-ir inchoative verbs', it will be found that those Romance languages in which the inchoative suffix is kept between the verb stem and personal endings throughout the present tense also retain the inchoative suffix in the imperfect tense. It would be odd if Britainese were to be an exception. Therefore the imperfect indicative of, e.g. flourir is eu flourissai.

9.4.3 Verb "to be"

The Vulgar Latin verb essere (like Clasical Latin esse) "to be"; used the same imperfect indicative personal endings as all other verbs, but it had no temporal suffix; in both Vulgar Latin and the Classical language, these endings were suffixed directly to the stem er- thus: era(m), eras, erat, erámus, erátis, erant. Forms derived from these were found in all Romance languages, including Old French and related langues d'oïl; but in French and related languages they have yielded ground to forms which, which, according to Meyer-Lübke, were derived by abstracting est- from the infinitive estre (← essere) and adding the imperfect endings -oie, -oies, -oi(t) &c. imperfect endings. Others take it as the imperfect of ester( ← stáre), but the expected imperfects *estoe, *estoie, estou(t) &c. are not found; maybe it was a confusion of the two verbs that gave rise to estei-, estoi- which were actually found, from which are derived the the modern étai-.

We find similar developments in Bourguignon (étoos, étoos, étoot ..., Franc-comtois (étavo, étaves, étave ...), Gallo (estei, esteis, esteit ...), Lorraine (estoi, estois, estoit ... and other variants), Norman (éteis, éteis, éteit ...), Picard (étoé, étoés, étoét ...) and Walloon (esteu, esteus, esteut ... ); though Franc-Comptois and Lorrain also have alternative imperfects derived from Latin era(m), eras, erat ... and Walloon also has alternative forms derived from Latin era(m), eras, erat ... in the singular only.

Clearly this was a development going on the the northern part of the Romance speaking area. Although forms from the Latin survived in as alternatives in Franc-Comptois and Lorrain and, to a more limited extent, in Walloon, it is noteworthy that forms begining e(s)t- are found in all these languages and that in Norman and Picard they are the only forms found. This would surely suggest that although forms such as ere ['erə], eres ['erəz], ered ['erəd] &c. survived in Old Britainese, they gave to stai, stais, stai &, i.e. st- abstracted from the infinitive with the imperfect endings of all other verbs.

9.4.4 Britainese examples

star "to be"	cantar "to sing"	vendr "to sell"	dormir "to sleep"	finir "to finish"
eu stai tu stais el/il stai nos staiams vos staiadz ils/els staint	eu cantai tu cantais el/il cantai nos cantaiams vos cantaiadz ils/els cantaint	eu vendai tu vendais el/il vendai nos vendaiams vos vendaiadz els/ils vendaint	eu dormai tu dormais el/il dormai nos dormaiams vos dormaiadz els/ils dormaint	eu finissai tu finissais el/il finissai nos finissaiams vos finissaiadz els/ils finissaint

vedhair "to see"	baivr "to drink"	alar "to go"	avair "to have"	fair "to do"
eu vedhai tu vedhais el/il vedhai nos vedhaiams vos vedhaiadz ils/els vedhaint	eu bevai tu bevais el/il bevai nos bevaiams vos bevaiadz ils/els bevaint	eu alai tu alais el/il alai nos alaiams vos alaiadz els/ils alaint	eu avai tu avais el/il avai nos avaiams vos avaiadz els/ils avaint	eu fageai tu fageais el/il fageai nos fageaiams vos fageaiadz els/ils fageaint

9.5 The Preterite Indicative Tense

The Preterite Tense of the Romance languages is derived from the Latin Perfect Tense; that tense in Latin functioned both as a present perfect, i.e. to express a past event that has present consequences as in "I have arrived", and as a past perfective tense, i.e. a past event viewed as a single whole* as "I went there yesterday."

*It is important not to confuse perfective aspect, event/action viewed as a single whole, with the similarly named perfect, a state resulting from a previous event/action.

We saw above from subsections 9.2.1.1, 9.2.2.5(iii) and 9.3.4 that the Latin present perfect was expressed in Vulgar Latin by

• "to be" with perfect participle agreeing with the subject if the verb was intransitive, or
• "to have" with perfect participle agreeing with the direct object if the verb was transitive;

and that the Classical Latin Perfect had become the past perfective, or Preterite Tense.

At least that is so in theory, just as it is with the English 'Simple Past' (in theory, past perfective) "I went" and 'Present Perfect' "I have gone." But in practice there is overlap between the uses of these two tenses; and usage differs within the English speaking word. I recall several years ago my daughter, who has lived in the USA for several decades, married an American and has US citizen, asked me: "Did you go to the shops yet?" which took me surprised because I would have said "Have you been to the shops yet?". We find quite an overlap between the two tenses in the Romance languages as the names given to the tenses in all, except Spanish, clearly suggest:

Language	Simple Past (Preterite)	(Present) Perfect
French	passé simple	passé composé
Portuguese	pretérito perfeito	pretérito perfeito composto
Spanish	pretérito indefinido	pretérito perfecto
Italian	passato remoto	passato prossimo
Romanian	perfectul simplu	perfectul compus

It is worth reading the Wikipedia article "Preterite", especially the section on Romance languages. It will be seen that the preterite (passé simple) has disapearead from spoken French and in the written language is retain retained only in narrative. In Romanian and Italian use varies from region to region. It is tempting to say the tense died out in Britainese but Britainese would have had this tense in its earlier history and the evidence of our 'controlling languages' in our timeline suggests that it is likely to have survived in Britainese, cf.

Language	Preterite	(Present) Perfect
Welsh	fe fytodd e	mae e wedi bwyta
English	he ate	he has eaten
French	il mangea	il a mangé

Of those three languages, only French will exist in BART where Britainese will have il mangai and il á mangad respectively.

9.5.1 Preterites in Vulgar Latin

Those who have learnt Classical Latin will know that the Perfect tense had the personal endings: -ī, -istī, -it, -imus, -istis, -ērunt and that these were added to the perfect stem of all verbs without exception. They may also remember that in the 2nd persons and the 3rd person plural contractions occurred, particularly in verse, e.g. amāstī ← amāvistī, amāstis ← amāvistis, amārunt ← amāvērunt; fīnīstī ← fīnī(v)istī, fīnīstis ← fīnī(v)istis, fīnīrunt ← fīnī(v)ērunt.. These contractions reflect what was happening in the spoken language. The Vulgar Latin Preterites are usually divided into Weak, of which there were three variants, and Strong, of which there were also three variants.

9.5.1.1 Vulgar Latin Weak Preterites

The common feature of weak preterites is that they keep the stress uniformly on the first vowel of the endings. They are the 1st conjugation amái (Classical amāvī), 4th conjugation finíi (Classical fīnīvī) and a formation peculiar to Vulgar Latin, e.g. *vendę́di ← véndere "to sell" (Classical Latin vēndidī /ˈu̯eːn.di.diː/ ). Note that the Vulgar Latin form has the stress shifted to the ending and has a low-mid [ę] and not the expected high-mid [ẹ] from Latin [ɪ]; these arose from a transformation of -didī under the influence of dedī, the reduplicated preterite of dare "to give." Such forms as credę́di, perdę́di are attested in Latin Latin texts (without, of course, the diacritics) and, indeed, extended to other verbs whose preterites did not end in -didī in Classical Latin, e.g. respondę́di ← respondére "to reply", defendę́di ← deféndere "to defend", cadę́di ← cádere "to fall".

Also we should add that a very few Classical preterites of the form dēlēvī ← dēlēre "to destroy" did not survive in Vulgar Latin, giving way to preterites ending in -íi.

The weak preterites of Vulgar Latin were:

1SG	cantái	finíi	vendę́di
2SG	cantásti	finísti	vendísti
3SG	cantát, cantáit, cantáut (← amávit)	finít, finíit finíut	vendę́dit
1PL	cantámus, cantáimus	finímus, finíimus	vendę́dimus, vendímus
2PL	cantástis	finístis	vendístis
3PL	cantárunt	finírunt	vendę́derunt, vendę́runt

9.5.1.2 Vulgar Latin Strong Preterites

These retained the old Latin 3rd person plural ending -erunt (not the Classical -ḗrunt); this form is still encountered in verse in the Classical period and clearly remained the spoken form; it was retained in Vulgar Latin (unless contracted after after -a- or -i-), and differ from the Weak forms in that the stress is on the verb stem in the 1st and 3rd persons singular and plural, but on the suffix in the 2nd persons singular and plural; but the stress shifted to the suffix in the 1st person plural in some areas, under the influence of finímus &c.

Classical Latin had five Strong variants:

1. reduplicated, e.g. momórdī ← mordḗre "to bite";
2. those that add personal endings directly to stem (sometimes with modification of stem vowel), e.g. vḗnī ← venī́re "to come";
3. those adding -s- to the stem, e.g. scrī́psī ← scrī́bere, "to write";
4. those adding -u- to the stem, e.g. sápuī ← sápere/sapḗre "to know [a fact], know [how to]";
5. the verb "to be" which had fúī [ˈfʊ.iː] or fū́ī [ˈfuːiː].

Of these, (i) did not survive in Vulgar Latin. Many originally in group (ii) and some in group (i) gave way to (iv), e.g. bíbi "I drank", crédidi "I believed", cécidi "I fell", cúcurri "I ran",féfelli "I deceived", recépi "I received", légi "I read" gave way to *bíbui. *crédui, *cádui, *cúrrui, *fállui, *recépui, *légui respectively. According to Meyer-Lübke, Grammatik der romanischen Sprachen II p.357, preterites in -v- not made from the present stem, e.g. cognōvī ← cognōscere, crēvī ← crēscere, mōvī ← moveō, pāvī ← pāscere were also part of group (iv), the written v being [wu], i.e. mōvī ['mo:wu.i:].

Some other preterites of groups (i) and (ii) joined group (iii), either under the influence of the present indicative, e.g. áttigi "I touched", frégi "I broke", púpugi "I pricked" gave way to *attánxi, *franxi, *púnxi, or under the influence of their perfect participle, e.g. elégi "I chose", momórdi "I bit", occídi "I slew", prehéndi "I seized", redémi "I redeemed", sédi "I sat" gave way to *eléxi, *morsi, *occísi. pré(n)si, *redémpsi, *séssi.

Of group (iv), when the ending is stressed, the u fuses with the ending as in the Weak forms above, e.g. sapuisti → *sapústi; but when the stress falls on the verb stem, then:

• after a group of consonants or a geminated consonant, or unstressed u became [w] and fell silent or was lost by dissimilation after initial v [w], e.g. válui → váli, and joined (ii);
• after a single consonant other than a liquid or nasal, it was attracted to the preceding stressed vowel, e.g. sapui → *saupi;
• after a liquid or nasal it remained stressed and thus the verb behaved like a Weak Preterite, e.g. parúi (← parére "to appear, be apparent"), see below.

The preterite of "to be" had stress on the first syllable in Classical and Vulgar Latin. In Classical Latin the stem was fŭ- with a short vowel; but in early Latin the stem was fū- with a long vowel; such forms are found in Ennius and Plautus. Possibly the practice in Vulgar Latin was regional (or even individual) but, according to Grandgent (1907) " the prevailing inflrction, with some variations, was probably something like" the table below.

Examples of Vulgar Latin Strong Preterites (and one more Weak Preterite):

	Group (ii)	Group (iii)	Group (iv) (Strong)	Group (iv) (Weak)
1SG	véni	scrípsi	sáupi	parúi
2SG	venísti	scripsísti	sapústi	parústi
3SG	vénit	scrípsit	sáupit	parú(i)t
1PL	vénimus, venímus	scrípsimus, scripsímus	sáupimus, sapú(i)mus	parú(i)mus
2PL	venístis	scripsístis	sapústis	parústis
3PL	vénerunt	scrípserunt	sáuperunt	parúrunt

9.5.2 Preterites in Britainese

9.5.2.1 Weak Preterites in Britainese

In early Britainese, although vendedd is found in some early texts, because of Vulgar Latin vendísti, vendímus, vendístis the verb and other similar verbs were attracted into the finíi group. It meant that in early Britainese there were three weak preterites (stressed throughout on the the suffix);

1. amai, amast, amad, amams, amasts, amarnt
2. fini, finist, finid, finims, finists, finirnt
3. paru, parust, parud, parums, parusts, parurnt

When [y] became unrounded to [i], it meant that the endings of (ii) and (iii) above became identical in pronunciation and we find confusion of the two in writing; by the early Late Britainese period the spelling with -i- became standard for both. So in Late Britainese we find only two types, thus:

eu cantai	eu finí	eu vendí	eu parí
tu cantast	tu finist	tu vendist	tu parist
el/il cantá	el/il finí	el/il vendí	el/il parí
nos cantams	nos finims	nos vendims	nos parims
vos cantasts	vos finists	vos vendists	vos parists
els/ils cantarnt	els/ils finirnt	els/ils vendirnt	els/ils parirnt

9.5.2.2 Strong Preterites in Britainese

The strong preterites kept Vulgar Latin 1st person plural with stressed forms. They are characterised, therefore, by

• having a preterite verb stem different from that of the present tense and most other tenses, either by change of stem vowel or by modification with -s-); those like Vulgar Latin *saupi, sapusti ... retained the modified verb stem throughout.
• having the stress on the verb stem in the 1st and 3rd persons singular, and in the third person plural; but stress on the suffix in the 2nd person singular and 1st and 2nd person plural.

The addition of unstressed -rnt [rn̩t] may cause there to be an epenthetic vowel between the stem and the ending. Stems ending in a plosive, labiodental or dental fricatives, or in [r] have no epenthesis; otherwise:
-l+r- → -ldr-     -m+r- → -mbr-     -n+r- → -ndr-
-ss+r- → -str--      -s+r- → -sdr-

With strong preterites the i in the endings -isti, -istis and, when unstressed, -imus was short and would be expected to give [ẹsti], [ẹstẹs] and [ẹmọs] in Vulgar Latin; indeed, forms like veinest, veinests were sometimes found in early Britainese; but the influence of the very many Preterites with -i- ensured that these endings appeared as -ist, -ims, -ists; also, of course, just as parums → parims so also saubums → saubims &c., thus:

eu vain	eu scriss	eu saub
tu vainist	tu scrissist	tu saubist
el/il vain	el/il scriss	el/il saub
nos vainims	nos scrissims	nos saubims
vos vainists	vos scrissists	vos saubists
els/ils vaindrnt	els/ils scristrnt	els/ils saubrnt

9.5.2.3 Preterite of Auxiliary Verbs

Of the three auxiliary verbs, two have strong preterites similar to the above, namely auv ← *(h)aubi ← habui "I had" and faige ← fēci "I did."

The only Romance languages to have, like Britainese, conflated forms derived from essere and stāre into a single verb are French and related langues d'oïl, and Aragonese; the latter has forms derived from Latin stetī (Preterite of stāre) but French follows the rest of the Romance languages in having forms derived from Latin fuī as do related langues d'oïl except Walloon, which has retained both forms derived from stāre and forms from fuī. There can be little doubt that Britainese would also have had forms derived from fuī.

The u in fuī was short in Classical Latin. But we find fūī in the earlier Latin of Ennius and Plautus and it is clear that both forms existed in Vulgar Latin where they became ['fọ.i] and ['fu.i] respectively. In an effort to keep stress on the first syllable throughout we find, e.g. Classical fuistī becomes ['fọs.ti] (cf. Italian fosti) or ['fus.ti] (cf. Old French fus). All the langues d'oïl have forms derived from the Vulgar Latin [fu] forms, and clearly this was the form known in north Gaul and, we may assume, in Britain. This would have become a weak preterite of type (iii) in 9.6.2.1 above. But when in -u- [i] became written as -i in later Britainese, it is likely the irregular verb "to be" would have retained the earlier spelling.

eu auv	eu faige	eu fu
tu auvist	tu faigist	tu fust
el/il auv	el/il faige	el/il fu
nos auvims	nos faigims	nos fums
vos auvists	vos faigists	vos fusts
els/ils auvrnt	els/ils faigedrnt ['fəi̯d͡ʒ.drn̩t]	els/ils furnt

9.6 The Future and Conditional Tenses

The Classical Latin futures did not survive in Vulgar Latin except in northern Gaul for the verb "to be." Instead it gave way to a variety of periphrases; but the only one that concerns us here is the infinitive with the verb "to have" which became the norm in western Romance, e.g. cantāre habeō "I have to sing" → "I shall/will sing." In all the western Romance languages the two parts fused, e.g.

• French: je chanterai (je + chanter + ai) ← chanter "to sing" + ai "I have"
• Occitan: cantarai (cantar + ai) ← cantar "to sing" + ai "I have"
• Portuguese and Galician: cantarei (cantar + [h]ei) ← cantar "to sing" + hei "I have"
• Spanish and Catalan: cantaré (cantar + [h]e) ← cantar "to sing" + he "I have"
• Italian: canterò (cantar + [h]o) ← cantare "to sing" + ho "I have"

and thus:

• Britainese: eu cantarai (eu + cantar + ai) [əu̯.kən.tə'rəi̯] ← cantar "to sing" + ai "I have"

This future form also has a past tense equivalent formed from infinitive and the imperfect indicative of habeō, i.e. cantāre habēbam "I had to sing" → "I would sing." It was used like the 'Future in the Past' in English to show a shifted future in reported speech after a past main verb, cf:

• "I will go" (Direct Speech)
• She said she would go. (Reported Speech)

As with the English 'Future in the Past', this is also used in some types of conditional sentences (though not in every sort of conditional sentence), e.g. "If he went there, he would see it for himself." Because of of this, it has traditionally become known as the Conditional Tense in Romance languages.

You may notice that I did not write "The Future and Conditional Indicative Tenses" above. Some, with good reason in my opinion, consider the Conditional to be a different Mood, i.e. neither Indicative nor Subjunctive. In some analyses of Romance verb, the Future and Conditional are listed as Tenses of the Potential Mood; click here for an example.

9.6.1 Future Tense

As we saw above, the future indicative is formed from a fusion of "to have" and the infinitive; however, in common with other related Romance languages, the 1st and 2nd persons plural will have shortened forms, namely just -ams and -adz in Britainese, thus:

cantar "to sing"	alar "to go"	vendr "to sell"	dormir "to sleep"	finir "to finish"
eu cantarai tu cantaras el/il cantará nos cantarams vos cantaradz ils/els cantarant	eu alarai tu alaras el/il alará nos alarams vos alaradz ils/els alarant	eu vendrai tu vendras el/il vendrá nos vendrams vos vendradz ils/els vendrant	eu dormirai tu dormiras el/il dormirá nos dormirams vos dormiradz els/ils dormirant	eu finirai tu finiras el/il finirá nos finirams vos finiradz els/ils finirant

In verbs whose present tense shows apophany, the unstressed stem of the 1st and 2nd persons plural is used; thus the future of boivr "to drink" has the stem bevr-. Also verbs whose infinitives end in -air form futures as though the infinitive ended in -r; this will sometimes mean that an epenthetic consonant appears between the verb stem and -r-, e.g. the future of volair "to wish, want" has the stem voldr-; fair [fəi̯r] was weakened to [fər] rather than [fr̩]; this was spelled as fer- or far-, but far- became standard in later Britainese.

baivr "to drink"	vedhair "to see"	avair "to have"	volair "to wish, want"	fair "to do"
eu bevrai tu bevras el/il bevrá nos bevrams vos bevradz ils/els bevrant	eu vedhrai tu vedhras el/il vedhrá nos vedhrams vos vedhradz ils/els vedhrant	eu avrai tu avras el/il avrá nos avrams vos avradz ils/els avrant	eu voldrai tu voldras el/il voldrá nos voldrams vos voldradz els/ils voldrant	eu farai tu faras el/il fará nos farams vos faradz els/ils farant

There remains to consider the verb "to be." In Old French we find three different formations for the future:

• (i)er, (i)ers, (i)ert &c ← Latin erō, eris, erit &c.
• serai, seras, sera &c ← Latin *(es)sere habeō, *(es)sere habēs, *(es)sere habet &c.
• estrai, estras, estra &c ← Latin *ess're habeō, *ess're habēs, *ess're habet &c.

Also, as we saw in 9.3.4 above, Old French had a verb ester ← stāre "to be (in a place)" with its future esterai, esteras, estra &c.

Futures from Latin erō, eris, erit &c. were found only in Old French are not attested elsewhere. If they ever occurred in Proto-Britainese they would have soon disappeared as they would have been two similar to the imperfect indicative. But there is no reason to suppose that futures similar to the other found in Old Future would also have occurred on Old Britainese. As we also observed in 9.3.4 the two verbs estr(e) and (e)star would have merged in Britainese to give a single verb "to be" as they did also in French and in Aragonese. The modern Britainese future of "to be" will be seen to be a conflation of estrai and (e)starai.

OLD BRITAINESE VARIANTS			MODERN BRITAINESE
(e)star	estr(e)	estr(e)	star
(e)starai (e)staras (e)stara(d) (e)starams (e)staradz (e)starant	serai seras sera(d) serams seradz serant	estrai estras estra(d) estrams estradz estrant	eu strai tu stras el/il strá nos strams vos stradz els/ils strant

Cf.

• Rouen and Brayon Norman: srai, sras, sra, sroms, srez, sront
• Picard: srai/sro, sros, sro, srons, srez, sront

9.6.2 Conditional Tense

As we saw above, this tense evolved from fusing the infinitive with the imperfect of habére. In practice it came to be formed by using the same stem as the future and suffixing the imperfect tense endings used by habére e.g. French je chanterais ← je chanter+(av)ais.. The tense is formed, without exception, by using the same stem as the future and suffixing the endings of the Imperfect Tense of regular verbs; see the examples below:

cantar "to sing"	baivr "to drink"	finir "to finish"	volair "to wish, want"	star "to be"
eu cantarai tu cantarais el/il cantarai nos cantaraiams vos cantaraiadz ils/els cantaraint	eu bevrai tu bevrais el/il bevrai nos bevraiams vos bevraiadz ils/els bevraint	eu finirai tu finirais el/il finirai nos finiraiams vos finiraiadz ils/els finiraint	eu voldrai tu voldrais el/il voldrai nos voldraiams vos voldraiadz els/ils voldraint	eu strai tu strais el/il strai nos straiams vos straiadz els/ils straint

It will be noticed that the 1st person singular is identical with the Future Tense. Such things happen in natural languages. That the French je chanterai and je chanterais are homophones does not cause any problem when people are speaking.