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Is there any Romance variety in which the descendant of the Latin Perfect is still used in the colloquial language?
And in a somewhat related question, where did the Latin -v- in the perfect come from? Was it epenthetic?

Spanish looks quite similar (apart from the 3ps), but I assume from the fact that you're asking this question you'll've looked into that and it isn't.

merijn wrote:Is there any Romance variety in which the descendant of the Latin Perfect is still used in the colloquial language?

The replacement of the Preterit by the Perfective is an areal phenomenum which concerns French, German, and northen Italian. in Spanish and Portuguese, the Preterit is still frequently used (or even prefered to the Perfective, notably in South America).

merijn wrote:And in a somewhat related question, where did the Latin -v- in the perfect come from? Was it epenthetic?

Pedantically, that's two questions, but never mind As far as I know, not even gsandi has come up with a satisfactory explanation of the origin of the Latin v-perfect, so any suggestion is going to have to rely on guesswork for the forseeable future. One possibility is that it was abstracted in some way from something like bhu-i, the prefect of "to be", which in Latin became pronounced as /fuwi/.

Portuguese and Spanish, afaik, retained the preterit forms in colloquial language. In Portuguese, eu dormi and eu tenho dormido are quite distinct (roughly equivalent, in English, to "I slept" and "I have been sleeping", respectively), whereas in Spanish dormí and he dormido are not as far apart (though, not being a native speaker, I can't quite describe the distinction accurately). In French I reckon j'ai dormi and literary je dormis are identical and using either one is a matter of style.

@Legion and Brussels Sprouts, I had looked on wikipedia, to answer my question but I don't rely on wikipedia, or most grammars, with describing the colloquial language; I am not sure if differences between the formal and colloquial language are always mentioned. So thank you!
@Nancy Blackett, Thank you too! So it is one of the mysteries of historical linguistics. Can you (or anyone else) tell me what the different theories are, apart from coming from "fui" (and did it spread from "fui" or was "fui" used as an auxiliary, according to those who say it comes from "fui"?)

Brussels Sprouts wrote:In French I reckon j'ai dormi and literary je dormis are identical and using either one is a matter of style.

I'm not a native, but I'm quite sure that the passé simple is strictly perfective, never a perfect, which you'd use the passé composé for.

I'm not native, but my courses have taught that the passé composé in Modern French is identical in meaning to the passé simple (and the plus-que-parfait is used the same way as the passé antérieur).

vampireshark wrote:I'm not native, but my courses have taught that the passé composé in Modern French is identical in meaning to the passé simple (and the plus-que-parfait is used the same way as the passé antérieur).

The passé antérieur is identical in meaning to the passé simple, and is simply used in a different context, isn't it? I've certainly seen examples with no obvious pluperfect meaning that can be analysed.

merijn wrote:Is there any Romance variety in which the descendant of the Latin Perfect is still used in the colloquial language?

I've just remembered that I was told to say digale que llame when the person I phoned wasn't there, and not digale que hay llamado. This was by a native speaker of Mexican Spanish; YMMV.

Passé composé and passé simple do not actually have the same values. This can be seen in the fact that, if you write a story and do not want to use the passé simple (the traditional narrative tense) it is often better to replace it with the présent than with the passé composé.

This is I think because the passé composé has a conclusive nature, it tends to record an event which happened before the reference point of the narration. On the other hand, the présent and passé simple both fit well into a chain of verbs, and are more fitting to describe a process which is happening at the same time than the narration.


There are also a few cases, notably with stative verbs (like "être",to be) where a passé simple is best replaced by an imparfait. "Ce fut long" > "C'était long" (it was long).

merijn wrote:Is there any Romance variety in which the descendant of the Latin Perfect is still used in the colloquial language?
And in a somewhat related question, where did the Latin -v- in the perfect come from? Was it epenthetic?

If you can get hold of this article, it's brilliant:
Harris, Martin. 1982. ‘The ‘past simple’ and the ‘present perfect’ in Romance’, in N.Vincent & M.Harris
(eds) Studies in the Romance verb, London: Croom Helm, pp.42- 70.

This describes how the bivalent CL punctual OR perfective form has evolved through to being the punctual only (or even punctual of formal written language only) in many Romance varieties and the intermediary steps, but also retains the same functions as VL(?) FECI in Calabrian and Sicilian. I think this is what you're asking about, but I get really confused with terminology for all of this, esp. since the formal and functional labels don't always overlap...

Legion wrote:Passé composé and passé simple do not actually have the same values. This can be seen in the fact that, if you write a story and do not want to use the passé simple (the traditional narrative tense) it is often better to replace it with the présent than with the passé composé.

This is I think because the passé composé has a conclusive nature, it tends to record an event which happened before the reference point of the narration. On the other hand, the présent and passé simple both fit well into a chain of verbs, and are more fitting to describe a process which is happening at the same time than the narration.

Fair enough but, roughly speaking, wouldn't this be more of a written standard vs. colloquial register thing? In written Portuguese "comia" e "estava comendo" are the same in some instances, but never in the spoken language; so, even though passé simple is generally not used in spoken language, wouldn't it be perceived as overlapping with passé composé? Though I really don't know, I'm not a native.

Brussels Sprouts wrote: Fair enough but, roughly speaking, wouldn't this be more of a written standard vs. colloquial register thing? In written Portuguese "comia" e "estava comendo" are the same in some instances, but never in the spoken language; so, even though passé simple is generally not used in spoken language, wouldn't it be perceived as overlapping with passé composé? Though I really don't know, I'm not a native.

Well, the passé simple is a deliberate archaism now, you can write even a very literary book and not use it at all. I don't think it's used anywhere but in some formal literary contexts; I'm just saying, if you're gonna use it, there *are* a few subtle differences with the passé composé, and if you're not gonna use it, I think a narration will work better with the présent than with the passé composé.

The Passé simple is still commonly used in spoken Acadian French, though it's been greatly regularized in comparison. Where standard French might make use of up to fourteen endings depending on the verb and person, Acadian French has only four that contrast the singular (i/y) and the plural (-r): /i/, /ir/, /y/ and /yr/. Even then, /y/ and /yr/ are limited to only a handful of verbs: être, avoir, voir, pouvoir, savoir, and boire.

Compare:

entendis /a~ta~di/
restai /rEsti/
travaillas /travaji/
arriva /arivi/
donnâmes /dunir/
eûtes /yr/
demandèrent /dma~dir/

Small correction: it's "entendis" in standard French.

Legion wrote:Small correction: it's "entendis" in standard French.

Oops, I had a different verb there before. Fixed it

So combining the information in this thread with Wikipedia the descendants of the latin perfect are still used colloquially in: Spanish, Portuguese, southern Italian dialects, Romanian spoken in the region of Oltenia, and Acadian French. It is only used in the literary language (or not at all) in French, Northern Italy, most of Romania. I am not sure about Sardinian, Catalan, and Raeto-Romance.

I've found out that in Afrikaans, a language that also lost a past tense, you can use the present with a past meaning if it accompanied with a temporal adverb. So you can say* "Toe sien ek haar" litt: Then I see her where "toe" can only refer to the past (I think) meaning Then I saw her. Is this also possible for Romance languages that have lost the Latin Perfect?

*my own example, I am not a native speaker.

bump

AND I found a real life example in Afrikaans; most of this opinion piece including its first sentence:"Laas Sondag roep Pous Benedictus XVI gelowiges op om tog nie stil-word te vrees en van stil-wees weg te deins nie." Translation "Last Sunday pop Benedict XVI urges believers not to fear becoming silent and not back off of being silent"