Romance Languages - Linguistic Features - Verbal Morphology

Verbal Morphology

Verbs have many conjugations, including in most languages:

• A present tense, a preterite, an imperfect, a pluperfect, a future tense and a future perfect in the indicative mood, for statements of fact.
• Present and preterite subjunctive tenses, for hypothetical or uncertain conditions. Several languages (for example, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish) have also imperfect and pluperfect subjunctives, although it is not unusual to have just one subjunctive equivalent for preterit and imperfect (e.g. no unique subjunctive equivalent in Italian of the so-called passato remoto). Portuguese, and until recently Spanish, also have future and future perfect subjunctives, which have no equivalent in Latin.
• An imperative mood, for direct commands.
• Three non-finite forms: infinitive, gerund, and past participle.
• Distinct active and passive voices, as well as an impersonal passive voice.
• Note that, although these categories are largely inherited from Classical Latin, many of the forms are either newly constructed or inherited from different categories (e.g. the Romance imperfect subjunctive most commonly is derived from the Latin pluperfect subjunctive, while the Romance pluperfect subjunctive is derived from from a new present perfect tense with the auxiliary verb placed in the imperfect subjunctive).

Several tenses and aspects, especially of the indicative mood, have been preserved with little change in most languages, as shown in the following table for the Latin verb dīcere (to say), and its descendants.

	Infinitive	Indicative			Subjunctive	Imperative
		Present	Preterite	Imperfect	Present	Present
Latin	dīcere	dīcit	dīxit	dicēbat	dīcat/dīcet	dīc
Aragonese	dicir	diz	dició	deciba/diciba	diga	diz
Asturian	dicir	diz	dixo	dicía	diga	di
Catalan	dir	diu/dit	digué/va dir/dit	deia	digui/diga	digues
Corsican	dì	dice/dici	disse/dissi	dicia	dica/dichi	dì
Emilian	dîr	dîs	l'à détt / dgé	dgeva	dégga	dì
Franco-Provençal	dire	di	dè	djéve	dijisse/dzéze	dète
French	dire	dit	dit	disait	dise	dis
Galician	dicir	di	dixo	dicía	diga	di
Italian	dicere/dire	dice	disse	diceva	dica	dì
Judaeo-Spanish (Ladino)	dezir	dize	disho	dezía	diga	dezí
Leonese	dicire	diz	dixu	dicía	diga	di
Milanese	dì	dis	ha dit	diseva	diga	dì
Mirandolese	dir	diś	à dit	dgiva	diga	dì
Neapolitan	dicere	dice	dicette	diceva	diche	dije
Occitan	díser/dire	ditz	diguèt	disiá	diga	diga
Picard	dire	dit	–	disoait	diche	–
Piedmontese	dì	dis	dìsser1, l'ha dit	disìa	disa	dis
Portuguese	dizer	diz	disse	dizia	diga	diz2
Romanian	a zice, zicere3	zice	zise	zicea	zică	zi
Romansh	dir	di	ha ditg	discheva4	dia	di
Sardinian	narrer5	narat	at naradu	naraiat	narat	nara
Sicilian	dìciri	dici	dissi	dicìa	dica6	dici
Spanish	decir	dice	dijo	decía	diga	di
Venetian	dir	dise	–	disea	diga	dì/disi
Walloon	dire	dit	a dit	dijheut	dixhe	di
Basic meaning	to say	he says	he said	he was saying	he says	say

The main tense and mood distinctions that were made in classical Latin are generally still present in the modern Romance languages, though many are now expressed through compound rather than simple verbs. The passive voice, which was mostly synthetic in classical Latin, has been completely replaced with compound forms.

• Owing to sound changes which made it homophonous with the preterite, the Latin future indicative tense was dropped, and replaced with a periphrasis of the form infinitive + present tense of habēre (to have). Eventually, this structure was reanalysed as a new future tense.
• In a similar process, an entirely new conditional form was created.
• While the synthetic passive voice of classical Latin was abandoned in favour of periphrastic constructions, most of the active voice remained in use. However, several tenses have changed meaning, especially subjunctives. For example:
  • The Latin pluperfect indicative became a conditional in Sicilian, and an imperfect subjunctive in Spanish.
  • The Latin pluperfect subjunctive developed into an imperfect subjunctive in all languages except Romansh, where it became a conditional, and Romanian, where it became a pluperfect indicative.
  • The Latin preterite subjunctive, together with the future perfect indicative, became a future subjunctive in Old Spanish, Portuguese, and Galician.
  • The Latin imperfect subjunctive became a personal infinitive in Portuguese and Galician.
• Many Romance languages have two verbs "to be". One is derived from Vulgar Latin *essere < Latin esse "to be" with an admixture of forms derived from sedēre "to sit", and is used mostly for essential attributes; the other is derived from stāre "to stand", and mostly used for temporary states. This development is most notable in Spanish, Portuguese and Catalan. In French, Italian and Romanian, the derivative of stāre largely preserved an earlier meaning of "to stand/to stay", although in modern Italian, stare is used in a few constructions where English would use "to be", as in sto bene "I am well". In Old French, the derivatives of *essere and stāre were estre and ester, respectively. In modern French, estre persists as être "to be" while ester has been lost as a separate verb; but the former imperfect of ester is used as the modern imperfect of être (e.g. il était "he was"), replacing the irregular forms derived from Latin (e.g. ere(t), iere(t) < erat). In Italian, the two verbs share the same past participle, stato. sedēre persists most notably in the future of *essere (e.g. Spanish/Portuguese/French/etc. ser-, Italian sar-), although in Old French the future is a direct derivation from Latin, e.g. (i)ert "he will be" < erit. See Romance copula for further information.

For a more detailed illustration of how the verbs have changed with respect to classical Latin, see Romance verbs.

• During the Renaissance, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and a few other Romance languages developed a progressive aspect which did not exist in Latin. In French, progressive constructions remain very limited, the imperfect generally being preferred, as in Latin.
• Many Romance languages now have a verbal construction analogous to the present perfect of English. In some, it has taken the place of the old preterite (at least in the vernacular); in others, the two coexist with somewhat different meanings (cf. English I did vs. I have done). A few examples:
  • preterite only: Galician, Asturian, Sicilian, Leonese, Portuguese, some dialects of Spanish;
  • preterite and present perfect: Catalan, Occitan, standard Spanish;
  • present perfect predominant, preterite now literary: French, Romanian, several dialects of Italian and Spanish.
  • present perfect only: Romansh

Note that in Catalan, the synthetic preterite is predominantly a literary tense, except in Valencian; but an analytic preterite (formed using an auxiliary vadō, which in other languages signals the future) persists in speech, with the same meaning. In Portuguese, a morphological present perfect does exist but has a different meaning (closer to "I have been doing"), and is rare in practice.

The following are common features of the Romance languages (inherited from Vulgar Latin) that are different from Classical Latin:

• Adjectives generally follow the noun they modify.
• The normal clause structure is SVO, rather than SOV, and is much less flexible than in Latin.
• Many Latin constructions involving nominalized verbal forms (e.g. the use of accusative plus infinitive in indirect discourse and the use of the ablative absolute) were dropped in favor of constructions with subordinate clause. Exceptions can be found in Italian, for example, Latin tempore permittente > Italian tempo permettendo; L. hoc facto > I. ciò fatto.