1st and 2nd plural conjugation in Romance

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zest
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1st and 2nd plural conjugation in Romance

Post by zest »

Hi,

I'm working on a romlang which would be the standard language of a Romance-speaking world where the common literary tradition hasn't been broken and with widespread diglossia. Although I'm always opting for regular patterns, some of them being a bit artificial (like abrido, the participle of abrir "to open"), I want it to be as much natural as possible as well as coherent, like a language people from 1000 years ago spoke and spreaded thanks to their cultural power, like Tuscan in Italy but in a higher scale.

Anyway, here it is. The accent indicates stress.

1st:
Present: o, as, a, ámo, áz, an
Past: í, áste, á, ámo, ástes, áron

2nd:
Present: o, es, e, émo, éz, en
Past: í, íste, é, ímo, ístes, íron

3rd:
Present: o, es, e, ímo, íz, en
Past: í, íste, é, ímo, ístes, íron (same as 2nd)

I don't know if -mo and -z is incoherent, like final /s/ would be the result of final /ts/ simplification, so the -s in -mos shouldn't fall, specially if I keep it in words like plus "more" or mas "but". Perhaps either -mos and -z, or -mo and -de?

Another doubt, I don't want that "I sing / I sleep" and "I sang / I slept" have the same form (as in Spanish), in what ways could I distinguish them, phonetically? There aren't geminates in this language.

Thanks.
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Lambuzhao
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Re: 1st and 2nd plural conjugation in Romance

Post by Lambuzhao »

Another Romlang! Welcome ~ Bemvẽd!!! Bonvonùt!!! [:D]
Another doubt, I don't want that "I sing / I sleep" and "I sang / I slept" ... as in Spanish
:?:
PRESENTE
yo canto yo duermo

PRETÉRITO

yo canté yo durmí

Exactly how are any of these forms just like the others?

-AR verbs in the 1PL are mostly identical in the PRS and PRET

cantamos :: cantamos

But not always so with -IR verbs

dormimos :: durmimos

though many have similar PRS.1PL and PRET.1PL forms

escribimos :: escribimos

Recall that :lat: has different PERF stems, a number of which carried over into :ita:

scriviamo but scrissimo
scribimus :: scripsimus

An alt-Spanish version, steam-punking the Latin PERF stem a little more, might give

escribimos :: *escrijimo/escriximo (looking at what happened to /ps/ in words like capsa --> caja, for example)

OR

escribimos :: *escresimo (Cf. front vowel+/ps/ in gypsum --> yeso)
zest
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Re: 1st and 2nd plural conjugation in Romance

Post by zest »

Grácias per la benvenuda [:)]

You're right, I got confused, it's the 1st plural (not singular) of present and preterite that is usually the same in Spanish. Your way to form different preterite forms in alt-Spanish sounds great, but that would mean more irregularities, and I would like to avoid them. Perhaps I could leave it like this, ambiguities happen, and maybe I could distinguish them with an accent in the written language, like Portuguese.
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Rosenkohl
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Re: 1st and 2nd plural conjugation in Romance

Post by Rosenkohl »

zest wrote:maybe I could distinguish them with an accent in the written language, like Portuguese.
They actually are (used to be?) pronounced differently in [some] European varieties, /ɐ̃/ vs /a/, IIRC. This is one of those things about European Portuguese that strikes me as gratuitous silliness.
GrandPiano
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Re: 1st and 2nd plural conjugation in Romance

Post by GrandPiano »

Considering Spanish speakers seem to do just fine, I don't think the ambiguity is that problematic. If you really want to make them distinct, though, one possibility might be to do what French does and get rid of the preterite altogether*, replacing it with the present perfect (so "j'ai mangé" can mean "I have eaten" or just "I ate").

*In ordinary speech and writing, anyway.

If you don't want to do that, you can look at how other Romance languages distinguish the two:
  • Italian: mangiamo "we eat" vs. mangiammo "we ate"
  • French (using the past historic): nous mangeons "we eat" vs. nous mangeâmes "we ate" (the present tense -ons ending was likely borrowed from Frankish)
  • Catalan: mengem "we eat" vs. menjàrem "we ate"
I'm guessing the Catalan preterite form was derived from either the Latin pluperfect (mandūcāverāmus) or future perfect (mandūcāverimus); the pluperfect makes more sense semantically but the future perfect seems to make more sense diachronically in terms of stress placement (although I don't know all the details of the diachronic evolution of the Latin perfect conjugations). One of those forms IIRC is also the origin of the Spanish -ra imperfect subjunctive forms.
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Adarain
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Re: 1st and 2nd plural conjugation in Romance

Post by Adarain »

Meanwhile the Vallader dialect of Romansh straight up copied the 2p imperfect into the present (so vo mangaivat = you ate/eat)
At kveldi skal dag lęyfa,
Konu es bręnnd es,
Mæki es ręyndr es,
Męy es gefin es,
Ís es yfir kømr,
Ǫl es drukkit es.
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qwed117
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Re: 1st and 2nd plural conjugation in Romance

Post by qwed117 »

GrandPiano wrote:Considering Spanish speakers seem to do just fine, I don't think the ambiguity is that problematic. If you really want to make them distinct, though, one possibility might be to do what French does and get rid of the preterite altogether*, replacing it with the present perfect (so "j'ai mangé" can mean "I have eaten" or just "I ate").

*In ordinary speech and writing, anyway.

If you don't want to do that, you can look at how other Romance languages distinguish the two:
  • Italian: mangiamo "we eat" vs. mangiammo "we ate"
  • French (using the past historic): nous mangeons "we eat" vs. nous mangeâmes "we ate" (the present tense -ons ending was likely borrowed from Frankish)
  • Catalan: mengem "we eat" vs. menjàrem "we ate"
I'm guessing the Catalan preterite form was derived from either the Latin pluperfect (mandūcāverāmus) or future perfect (mandūcāverimus); the pluperfect makes more sense semantically but the future perfect seems to make more sense diachronically in terms of stress placement (although I don't know all the details of the diachronic evolution of the Latin perfect conjugations). One of those forms IIRC is also the origin of the Spanish -ra imperfect subjunctive forms.
I believe Latin perfect became Spanish preterite stems. Spanish imperfect subjunctive likely came from some conflation of the subjunctive imperfect and the indicative perfect. The future perfect has some problems diachronically. The -se endings came from the subjunctive pluperfect
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Re: 1st and 2nd plural conjugation in Romance

Post by Alessio »

Lambuzhao wrote:Another Romlang! Welcome ~ Bemvẽd!!! Bonvonùt!!! [:D]
Recall that :lat: has different PERF stems, a number of which carried over into :ita:

scriviamo but scrissimo
scribimus :: scripsimus
Sorry for the up, I saw this now. This is terribly wrong. PERF 2sg, 1pl and 2pl in Italian use the same stem as the present 99% of the times. The correct form is scrivemmo, not *scrissimo. The Latin PERF stem is used in the remaining persons, however (scrissi, scrisse, scrissero).
Source: native Italian speaker. I also checked some monolingual sources to confirm that "scrissimo" is not acceptable.
:ita: :eng: [:D] | :fra: :esp: :rus: [:)] | :con: Hecathver, Hajás, Hedetsūrk, Darezh...

Tin't inameint ca tót a sàm stê żōv'n e un po' cajoun, mo s't'armâgn cajoun an vōl ménga dîr t'armâgn anc żōven...
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Rheddie
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Re: 1st and 2nd plural conjugation in Romance

Post by Rheddie »

What sound changes do you have to produce these endings?

For the preterite/present thing if the stems are no longer distinct for all verbs you could maybe have some analogy so that verbs where they're the same borrow some of the morphology of those which are distinct.
ωqések zusada axbuqev́ : cuaqek cuaqzaént epbióv́
horizont
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Re: 1st and 2nd plural conjugation in Romance

Post by horizont »

I'm also interested in what sounds changes you have to produce the endings
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