Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 The evolution of stressed vowels
- 2 Early changes in syllable structure and consonants
- 3 Consonant weakening and strengthening
- 4 New palatal consonants
- 5 More about vowels: raising, yod effects, and nasalization
- 6 Verb morphology: the present indicative
- 7 Verb morphology: systemic reorganization
- 8 Noun and adjective morphology
- 9 History and structure of Portuguese: an overview
- 10 History and structure of Romanian: an overview
- 11 Formation of the Romance lexicon
- 12 Emergence of the Romance vernaculars
- Notes
- Glossary of linguistic terms
- Suggestions for further reading
- Works cited
- Index
7 - Verb morphology: systemic reorganization
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 The evolution of stressed vowels
- 2 Early changes in syllable structure and consonants
- 3 Consonant weakening and strengthening
- 4 New palatal consonants
- 5 More about vowels: raising, yod effects, and nasalization
- 6 Verb morphology: the present indicative
- 7 Verb morphology: systemic reorganization
- 8 Noun and adjective morphology
- 9 History and structure of Portuguese: an overview
- 10 History and structure of Romanian: an overview
- 11 Formation of the Romance lexicon
- 12 Emergence of the Romance vernaculars
- Notes
- Glossary of linguistic terms
- Suggestions for further reading
- Works cited
- Index
Summary
The categories that figure in Latin finite verb morphology are all displayed below, but this book is not meant to teach Latin. What we do mean to show is how the Romance languages reorganize the Latin system, retaining some categories with their original morphology, retaining others with new or recycled morphology, and creating new categories unprecedented in Latin.
Map of the Latin verb system
The Latin verb system, itself the product of drastic innovation on the way from Indo-European, took on a squarish architecture characterized by three binary contrasts: voice (active and passive), mood (indicative and subjunctive), and aspect (infectum and perfectum), in addition to the familiar category of tense (present, past, and future).Chart 7.1 shows the complete conjugation of cantāre ‘sing’ in the active voice. Its passive conjugation would occupy another chart of the same size (§ 7.9.4). This verb represents one of four conjugation classes. All four share identical endings in the perfectum.
From this display, what can we say about infectum forms and perfectum forms?
Question: What do all perfectum forms in the chart have in common?
Answer: They all begin with cantāv- [kantaw].
Every verb in Latin has one stem throughout the infectum and another throughout the perfectum. For cantāre ‘sing’, the perfectum stem is cantāv- [kantaw].
About perfectum stems
The infectum stem appears in the present infinitive. Given the infinitive, you may be able to predict the perfectum stem.
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- Romance LanguagesA Historical Introduction, pp. 127 - 184Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010
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