¹ No reference is made in this article to the perfects in -uī, e.g. monuī, for the reason that these are universally admitted to have been derived from the vī-Perfect, e.g. monuī < *moni-vai. Cf. e.g. Brugmann, Gr. 2.3². 473, Stolz-Leumann, loc. cit.

² This analogy presupposes, it is true, that the dropping of the v and the subsequent contraction in vōtus are earlier than the first vī-perfect. This is, however, by no means an improbable assumption, since vōtus was firmly established in the earliest Latin known to us, and since the relative chronology of the various processes that made the language cannot be determined by external evidence. Only if the origin of the vī-Perfect is sought in Italic or Indo-European times, would the assumption of these early changes meet with difficulty.

³ R. v. Planta, Gram. d. oskisch-umbrischen Dial. 2. 354 ff., believed there were traces of the v-Perfect in the Italic dialects. His conclusions have been generally rejected. Cf. e.g. Buck, Gram. of Osc. and Umbr. 170.

⁴ There are also other objections against the various modifications of this theory. The most decisive is that of Windisch, Biogr. Jahrb. d. Altertumsw. 10. 126, who points out that the Skt. participle in -vāṅs -vas is formed only from old root-perfects, whereas the Latin vī-Perfect is predominantly a perfect of derivative verbs, while most of the old verbs of the second and third conjugations do not have it.

⁵ Brugmann does not mention this hypothesis in his revised Grundriss, apparently having himself rejected it at a later date.

⁶ See Sapir in Language 1.37 ff.

⁷ It is hard to find anything in favor of this assumption, and it is due merely to a wish to bring as much as possible under the category of the vī-Perfect. If in fū(u)ī the u was a phonetic development (Übergangslaut), then it would appear reasonable that it was the same in voluī = *voluuī, but strangely enough the former appears in Sommer as the pattern for the vī-Perfect, whereas the latter is supposed to be an example of the fully developed category which lost its u and became a simple perfect secondarily. Equally difficult it is to see why the change from soluī to solvī should be any different from that of soluō to solvō. The burden of proof clearly rests upon any one who assumes that the glide u of solu(u)ō, solu-(u)ī and fu(u)ī were not all alike, and until the supposed differences in treatment are convincingly explained, it is decidedly more probable that solv-ī, volv-ī and calv-ī never were anything else than simple perfects.

⁸ That it is hard to determine to which IE category many a Latin simple perfect goes back, whether they are derived from IE perfects or aorists, is no reason for trying to squeeze as many as possible into the category of vī-perfects. Since the syncretism between perfect and aorist was completed in the Italic period (Brugmann, Gr. 2. 3². 467 ff.), many an old Latin perfect was formed or remodelled after that time, so that the question could not even be asked with propriety. It is not necessary e.g. to know what IE category vōv-ī or volv-ī perpetuate, since whatever their original form, they were subjected to analogical influences of other simple perfects of diverse origin after the syncretism of the two tenses had taken place.

⁹ Since these changes were comparatively late, they could have affected only some of the latest verbs with analogical long vowel in the perfect, but not the older ones which were the patterns for the earliest vī-perfects.

¹⁰ With the recognition of this origin of these perfects disappears the necessity of explaining why we scarcely find them in contracted form, a question which occurred to Sommer, 608. Association of e.g. vōv-ī with vove-o would prevent *vōsti as a parallel form to nōsti:nō-vī.

¹¹ In all such instances it is not meant that perfects of these verbs were formed for the first time under the influence of associated words. Usually no doubt older perfects were thus merely remodelled and fitted out with a v. We may well believe that *quiē-m once upon a time existed, and that this became *quiē-ai after syncretism of aorist and perfect. It was the latter form that was, under the influence of mōv-ī and ī-vī, to become quiē-vī (*quiē-vai).

¹² It is the intransitive use of lāv-ī, as early as Plautus (e.g. Truc. 322), which made possible the association with nāre.