Editing Vulgar Latin (section)

==== 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").