Editing Vulgar Latin (section)

=== Verbs ===
[[File:Page of Lay of the Cid.jpg|right|thumb|upright=0.9|The ''[[Cantar de mio Cid|Cantar de Mio Cid]]'' (''Song of my [[El Cid|Cid]]'') is the earliest Spanish text]]
{{Main article|Romance verbs}}
{{See also|Romance languages#Verbal morphology}}

In general, the verbal system in the Romance languages changed less from Classical Latin than did the nominal system.

The four conjugational classes generally survived. The second and third conjugations already had identical imperfect tense forms in Latin, and also shared a common present participle. Because of the merging of short ''i'' with long ''ē'' in most of Vulgar Latin, these two conjugations grew even closer together. Several of the most frequently-used forms became indistinguishable, while others became distinguished only by stress placement:
{| class="wikitable"
!rowspan="2"|
! rowspan="2"|Infinitive
! 1st
! 2nd
! 3rd
! 1st
! 2nd
! 3rd
! rowspan="2"|Imperative<br>singular
|-
! colspan="3"|singular
! colspan="3"|plural
|-
! Second conjugation (Classical)
| -ēre
| -eō
| -ēs
| -et
| -ēmus
| -ētis
| -ent
| -ē
|-
! Second conjugation (Vulgar)
| *-ẹ́re
| *-(j)o
| *-es
| *-e(t)
| *-ẹ́mos
| *-ẹ́tes
| *-en(t)
| *-e
|-
! Third conjugation (Classical)
| -ere
| -ō
| -is
| -it
| -imus
| -itis
| -unt
| -e
|-
! Third conjugation (Vulgar)
| *-ere
| *-o
|*-es
|*-e(t)
| *-emos
| *-etes
| *-on(t)
|*-e
|}

These two conjugations came to be conflated in many of the Romance languages, often by merging them into a single class while taking endings from each of the original two conjugations. Which endings survived was different for each language, although most tended to favour second conjugation endings over the third conjugation. Spanish, for example, mostly eliminated the third conjugation forms in favour of the second conjugation forms.

French and Catalan did the same, but tended to generalise the third conjugation infinitive instead. Catalan in particular almost eliminated the second conjugation ending over time, reducing it to a small relic class. In Italian, the two infinitive endings remained separate (but spelled identically), while the conjugations merged in most other respects much as in the other languages. However, the third-conjugation third-person plural present ending survived in favour of the second conjugation version, and was even extended to the fourth conjugation. Romanian also maintained the distinction between the second and third conjugation endings.

In the [[perfect (grammar)|perfect]], many languages generalized the ''-aui'' ending most frequently found in the first conjugation. This led to an unusual development; phonetically, the ending was treated as the diphthong {{IPA|/au/}} rather than containing a semivowel {{IPA|/awi/}}, and in other cases the {{IPA|/w/}} sound was simply dropped. We know this because it did not participate in the sound shift from {{IPA|/w/}} to {{IPA|/β̞/}}.  Thus Latin ''amaui'', ''amauit'' ("I loved; he/she loved") in many areas became proto-Romance *''amai'' and *''amaut'', yielding for example Portuguese ''amei'', ''amou''. This suggests that in the spoken language, these changes in conjugation preceded the loss of {{IPA|/w/}}.<ref name="Vincent" />

Another major systemic change was to the [[future tense]], remodelled in Vulgar Latin with [[auxiliary verbs]]. A new future was originally formed with the auxiliary verb {{wikt-lang|la|habere}}, *''amare habeo'', literally "to love I have" (cf. English "I have to love", which has shades of a future meaning). This was contracted into a new future suffix in Western Romance forms, which can be seen in the following modern examples of "I will love":
* {{langx|fr|j'aimerai}} (''je'' + ''aimer'' + ''ai'') ← ''aimer'' ["to love"] + ''ai'' ["I have"].
* [[Portuguese language|Portuguese]] and {{langx|gl|amarei}} (''amar'' + [''h'']''ei'') ← ''amar'' ["to love"] + ''hei'' ["I have"]
* [[Spanish language|Spanish]] and {{langx|ca|amaré}} (''amar'' + [''h'']''e'') ← ''amar'' ["to love"] + ''he'' ["I have"].
* {{langx|it|amerò}} (''amar'' + [''h'']''o'') ← ''amare'' ["to love"] + ''ho'' ["I have"].

The first historical attestation of this new future can be found in a 7th-century Latin text, the ''[[Chronicle of Fredegar]]''<ref>Peter Nahon (2017).[https://www.academia.edu/36225613/Peter_Nahon_Pal%C3%A9oroman_Daras_Pseudo_Fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9gaire_VIIe_si%C3%A8cle_de_la_bonne_interpr%C3%A9tation_d_un_jalon_de_la_romanistique_Bulletin_de_la_Soci%C3%A9t%C3%A9_de_Linguistique_de_Paris_112_1_2017_p_123_130 Paléoroman ''Daras'' (Pseudo-Frédégaire, VIIe siècle) : de la bonne interprétation d’un jalon de la romanistique]. ''Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris'', 112/1, p. 123-130.</ref>

A [[periphrasis|periphrastic construction]] of the form 'to have to' (late Latin ''habere ad'') used as future is characteristic of [[Sardinian language|Sardinian]]: 
* ''Ap'a istàre'' < ''apo a istàre'' 'I will stay'
* ''Ap'a nàrrere'' < ''apo a nàrrer'' 'I will say'

An innovative [[conditional mood|conditional]] (distinct from the [[subjunctive mood|subjunctive]]) also developed in the same way (infinitive + conjugated form of ''habere''). The fact that the future and conditional endings were originally independent words is still evident in literary Portuguese, which in these tenses allows [[clitic]] object pronouns to be incorporated between the root of the verb and its ending: "I will love" (''eu'') ''amarei'', but "I will love you" ''amar-te-ei'', from ''amar'' + ''te'' ["you"] + (''eu'') ''hei'' = ''amar'' + ''te'' + [''h'']''ei'' = ''amar-te-ei''.

In Spanish, Italian, Romanian and Portuguese, personal pronouns can still be omitted from verb phrases as in Latin, as the endings are still distinct enough to convey that information: ''venio'' > Sp ''vengo'' ("I come"). In French, however, all the endings are typically homophonous except the first and second person (and occasionally also third person) plural, so the pronouns are always used (''je viens'') except in the [[imperative mood|imperative]].

Contrary to the millennia-long continuity of much of the active verb system, which has now survived 6000 years of known evolution,{{Citation needed|date=March 2024|reason=?}} the synthetic [[passive voice]] was utterly lost in Romance, being replaced with [[periphrastic]] verb forms—composed of the verb "to be" plus a passive participle—or impersonal [[reflexive verb|reflexive]] forms—composed of a verb and a passivizing pronoun.

Apart from the grammatical and phonetic developments there were many cases of verbs merging as complex subtleties{{Clarification needed|date=March 2024}} in Latin were reduced to simplified verbs in Romance. A classic example of this are the verbs expressing the concept "to go". Consider three particular verbs in Classical Latin expressing concepts of "going": {{wikt-lang|la|ire}}, {{wikt-lang|la|vadere}}, and *''ambitare''.{{Citation needed|date=March 2024|reason=A verb that isn't even attested in Classical Latin is not the most convincing evidence of the latter's supposed sublime mystique.}} In Spanish and Portuguese ''ire'' and ''vadere'' merged into the verb ''ir'', which derives some conjugated forms from ''ire'' and some from ''vadere''. ''andar'' was maintained as a separate verb derived from ''ambitare''.

Italian instead merged ''vadere'' and ''ambitare'' into the verb {{wikt-lang|it|andare}}. At the extreme French merged three Latin verbs with, for example, the present tense deriving from ''vadere'' and another verb ''ambulare'' (or something like it) and the future tense deriving from ''ire''. 
Similarly the Romance distinction between the Romance verbs for "to be", {{wikt-lang|la|essere}} and {{wikt-lang|la|stare}}, was lost in French as these merged into the verb {{wikt-lang|fr|être}}. In Italian, the verb {{wikt-lang|it|essere}} inherited both Romance meanings of "being essentially" and "being temporarily of the quality of", while {{wikt-lang|it|stare}} specialized into a verb denoting location or dwelling, or state of health.

==== Copula ====
{{Main article|Romance copula}}

The [[copula (linguistics)|copula]] (that is, the verb signifying "to be") of Classical Latin was {{wikt-lang|la|esse}}. This evolved to *''essere'' in Vulgar Latin by attaching the common infinitive suffix ''-re'' to the classical infinitive; this produced Italian {{wikt-lang|it|essere}} and French {{wikt-lang|fr|être}} through Proto-Gallo-Romance *''essre'' and Old French {{wikt-lang|fro|estre}} as well as Spanish and Portuguese {{wikt-lang|pt|ser}} (Romanian ''a'' {{wikt-lang|ro|fi}} derives from ''fieri'', which means "to become").

In Vulgar Latin a second copula developed utilizing the verb {{wikt-lang|la|stare}}, which originally meant (and is cognate with) "to stand", to denote a more temporary meaning. That is, *''essere'' signified the ''esse''nce, while ''stare'' signified the ''state.'' ''Stare'' evolved to Spanish and Portuguese {{wikt-lang|pt|estar}} and Old French {{wikt-lang|fro|ester}} (both through *''estare''), Romanian "a sta" ("to stand"), using the original form for the noun ("stare"="state"/"starea"="the state"), while Italian retained the original form.

The semantic shift that underlies this evolution is more or less as follows: A speaker of Classical Latin might have said: ''vir est in foro'', meaning "the man is in/at the marketplace". The same sentence in Vulgar Latin could have been *''(h)omo stat in foro'',{{Citation needed|date=March 2024}} "the man stands in/at the marketplace", replacing the ''est'' (from ''esse'') with ''stat'' (from ''stare''), because "standing" was what was perceived as what the man was actually doing.

The use of ''stare'' in this case was still semantically transparent assuming that it meant "to stand", but soon the shift from ''esse'' to ''stare'' became more widespread. In the Iberian peninsula ''esse'' ended up only denoting natural qualities that would not change, while ''stare'' was applied to transient qualities and location. In Italian, ''stare'' is used mainly for location, transitory state of health (''sta male'' 's/he is ill' but ''è gracile'' 's/he is puny') and, as in Spanish, for the eminently transient quality implied in a verb's progressive form, such as ''sto scrivendo'' to express 'I am writing'.

The historical development of the ''stare'' + ablative gerund progressive tense in those Romance languages that have it seems to have been a passage from a usage such as ''sto pensando'' 'I stand/stay (here) in thinking',{{Citation needed|date=March 2024}} in which the ''stare'' form carries the full semantic load of 'stand, stay' to [[grammaticalization]] of the construction as expression of progressive [[Grammatical aspect|aspect]] (Similar in concept to the Early Modern English construction of "I am a-thinking"). The process of reanalysis that took place over time [[semantic bleaching|bleached]] the semantics of ''stare'' so that when used in combination with the gerund the form became solely a grammatical marker of subject and tense (e.g. ''sto'' = subject first person singular, present; ''stavo'' = subject first person singular, past), no longer a [[lexical verb]] with the semantics of 'stand' (not unlike the auxiliary in compound tenses that once meant 'have, possess', but is now semantically empty: ''j''''ai''' écrit'', '''''ho''' scritto'', '''''he''' escrito'', etc.). Whereas ''sto scappando'' would once have been semantically strange at best (?'I stay escaping'), once grammaticalization was achieved, collocation with a verb of inherent mobility was no longer contradictory, and ''sto scappando'' could and did become the normal way to express 'I am escaping'. (Although it might be objected that in sentences like Spanish ''la catedral está en la ciudad'', "the cathedral is in the city" this is also unlikely to change, but all locations are expressed through ''estar'' in Spanish, as this usage originally conveyed the sense of "the cathedral ''stands'' in the city").