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Of French Verbs, first person singular
Posted: Fri Nov 29, 2013 6:33 am
by Particles the Greek
Does anybody know why the first person singular of the present tense of "-er" verbs has no final "s" when the other conjugations have it? As in, why "je donne" but "je finis" and "je vends"?
Re: Of French Verbs, first person singular
Posted: Fri Nov 29, 2013 8:12 am
by Legion
The first person -s came in analogy with a number of verbs where this was the result of natural sound changes, eg:
facio > *fattsjo > fajts > fais
nascor > *nascio > *nastsjo > najsts > nais
finio > *finiscio > *finistsjo > finis
This could theorically have been extented to -er verbs, but in those instead the first person was lined up on the third, so that -er verb has a more uniform behaviour with an -e throughout the singular, since the original -o was lost, leading to a consonantic ending in Old French:
amo > aim
amat > aime