🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <peeters.720153021@tasman>
peeters@tasman.cc.utas.edu.au (bert peeters) writes:
>
>bbeer@stein.u.washington.edu (Bob Beer) writes:
>
>>In Spanish and Portuguese, there are two distinct verbs which translate
>>My question is - is this a feature of all romance languages?  If not, which
>>others have this feature?  If it is a characteristic of Latin, does it
>>exist in any other IE languages?
>
>I don't know the facts in Rumanian, but for French and Italian the answer is
>simple. There is just one verb: e^tre for French, essere for Italian. I don't
>think Latin has anything to do with it. The verb there is esse. Anyone please
>correct me if I am wrong, but I am almost sure that the reason for the exist-
>ence of two verbs is purely historical. Lt esse soon became essere, but was
>apart from that competing with stare (the latter's meaning was watered down
>from 'stand' to 'be'). In French and Italian, the two amalgamated, with the
>well-known outcome of one verb having some of its tenses reminiscent of one
>of the verbs, and others of the other verb. In Spanish and Portuguese, the
>two verbs remained distinct.
>Dr Bert Peeters                         Tel: +61 02 202344
 
I was at first, like Dr Peeters, tempted to reply to this with a little more
information but couldn't have confined myself to such a brief answer, and
refrained.  So this is more of an adjunct to his reply than a full one.  First,
Italian does preserve both 'essere' and 'stare'.  The latter in such
expressions as 'Come sta`' = "How are you", as well as a sort of emphatic
progressive, somewhat like the French 'e^tre en train de faire' (Italian
'stare facendo')  A basic grammar will give more details, but the contrast
is not like Spanish 'ser' vs 'estar'.  Second comment: Catalan usage is
similar to that of Portuguese and Spanish, but one needs to be warned that
these three have minute differences of usage -- again one needs to consult
grammar books, preferably those written for one of these three Iberian
languages in another one which will therefore compare nuances.  And finally,
as Dr P knows but didn't muddy the waters with as I will, Old French had
both 'estre' and 'ester' (from Latin 'essere' and 'stare' respectively),
both of which had the past participle 'este', (without an acute accent in
texts of that time, although modern editors insist on putting one as a
crutch for students and other editors).  One could go on and discuss the
Sard dialects and Occitan, but the point is that the problem is, on the
one hand a Romance topic, but one in which there is really no handy cover
statement for all of the Romance languages.  One could spend a lot of time
in the library with grammars and histories of all nine or ten Romance
Languages attempting to compare and contrast them and their dialects on
this matter.  Probably someone has summed it all up.  More library time.