Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

  This capacity to create continuatives is one of the loveliest and as yet unremarked capacities by means of which the Latin language, by regularly diversifying its verbs and its words, adapted them to express precisely the minute differences between things and drew all possible advantage from its resources, applying this possibility with different and agreed inflections and modifications to all the needs of the language; and it employed its roots to obtain many different, wholly distinct, clear, certain, and unmuddled meanings, and with the utmost ingenuity and with very little effort it would multiply its riches and increase its potency. This capacity is wanting in the Italian language, though it has likewise formed its new frequentative and diminutive verbs from original verbs by means of modifications of desinence. Derived verbs, which sometimes have only a frequentative value, as is the case with spesseggiare [to occur frequently] and pazzeggiare [to play the fool], passeggiare [to stroll], etc., punteggiare [to punctuate] from punto [pricked; dot] or from pungere [to prick], etc., and sometimes have just a diminutive value, as is the case with tagliuzzare [to cut into pieces], sminuzzolare [to break into tiny bits], albeggiare [to grow light; to dawn] [1117] (formed, however, not from another verb but from a noun, as is the case also with some of those previously cited, as Italian also does with happy results,a arsicciare [to singe] (just as in Latin there is ustulare [to singe], so that Latin also has its purely diminutive verbs), and sometimes have both at once, after the fashion of Latin verbs in -itare, such as canticchiare [to hum], canterellare [to hum], formicolare [to swarm], etc. (see Monti, under this entry, and under frequentativo).1 And the Italian language is singularly abundant, and more so (I believe) than Latin, and Greek itself, in other such creations of verbs and other words, creations that are very bold and useful for signifying the differences between things and for multiplying the use of roots without confusing meanings. But it is wholly lacking in continuatives, even if at times it may give (or so it seems to me) this or a like meaning to some frequentative or we might say oftenizing verb.2 See p. 1155. The same capacity is also lacking, I believe, in Greek, which displays such mastery in diversifying and modifying its roots, and in multiplying meanings, but I would have to ponder this at greater length before asserting it. And in Latin itself, which had this delightful capacity at the beginning, it would seem then to have fallen into disuse and neglect, still being used perhaps sometimes, with new verbs of this kind being created, but with a confused, and imprecise notion of the significance of such formations, and with meanings that were not clearly distinct from those of other verbs; as they also did with continuatives which had already been created and introduced. [1118] Since I can find no information on, or positive sighting of, this feature of their language in the early Latin grammarians or in the philologists of the best period.1 See p. 1160.

  I would go still further and say that, in my view, almost all the Latin verbs whose infinitives end in tare or tari (and I do mean tare, not itare) are simply continuatives of an original verb which is either known or unknown nowadays and which had often fallen in earlier times into disuse, with its derivatives alone remaining, or else its continuative, which would therefore very often be employed in its stead. And I believe that the infinitive of these verbs in tare or tari indicates the participle of the original verb, or the supine, apocopating the desinence in are or ari, and appending that in us or um. Just as optare, in my view, denotes a participle optus from an original and unknown verb of which optare is the continuative. And my opinion is borne out by seeing how in some of these verbs a participle is preserved by anomaly, as we have noted in the case of visere, which clearly seems to belong to another original verb, and from which selfsame participle I believe the verb that remains was formed. For example, the verb potare, which, aside from potatus, has the participle potus. I believe that this anomalous participle of the said [1119] verb is not a contraction of potatus, as the grammarians would have it, but a regular participle of a verb that had the perfect povi, as motus has the perfect movi, fotus has fovi, votus has vovi, notus has novi from nosco, with notare its continuative, and for its participle indeed does not have notus but notatus. And the first indicative voice of the original verb of potare [to drink] would have been poo, which the grammarians reckon derives indeed from πόω, an ancient Greek verb no longer used in this and the majority of its voices (Forcellini). And I would point out that the strict meaning of potare is in fact continuative, and denotes a more drawn-out action than does the verb bibere, as every ear attuned to good and genuine Latin can hear. *“Often it means to indulge in wine more abundantly, to be addicted to drunkenness,”* Forcellini remarks of this verb. Whence potatio is not strictly speaking drinking but an orgy of drinking, etc., that is to say, continuous drinking, as may be seen in Forcellini’s first two examples, which are from Plautus and Cicero, whereas in the third, which is from Seneca, it means the same thing as potio, that is, a drink, due to the incorrectness of the more modern and less correct writer.1 And it is plain to see that potio, a word derived from potus, participle of the lost verb as I maintain, signifies an action that is hardly continuous, that is to say, a simple drink: “Cum ipse poculum dedisset, [1120] subito illa in media potione exclamavit” [“When he himself had given her a cup, suddenly in mid-drink she cried out”] (Cicero),1 that is to say, in the act of drinking. Whereas potatio, being formed from potatus, from potare, means an orgy of drinking, as I have said, and it could not be properly and fittingly expressed by means of a word created from the verb bibere. An observation that is, in my view, very telling, and that serves to demonstrate and confirm both the existence of the original verb potare, with the participle potus, and my whole theory of continuative verbs.

  Let us give another example of such anomalous participles denoting the existence of an original verb, of which the verb that remains and has the said participle is, in my view, the continuative. Auctare [to increase], as we saw on p. 1114, is the continuative of augere [to increase], from its participle auctus, and it has the participle auctatus. Mactare [to sacrifice] is the same as magis auctare [to increase more], but aside from mactatus it has the participle mactus. And just as mactatus is magis auctatus, so too mactus (and Festus says as much)2 is magis auctus. Here, then, we obviously have to do with an old and obsolete verb magere or maugere, that is magis augere [to increase more], of which mactus is the participle and mactare the continuative created from the participle mactus, which is incorrectly ascribed to it. See p. 1938, paragraph 1 and pp. 2136 and 2341.

  The verb stare [to be] is, in my view, without a doubt the continuative of the verb esse [to be], formed from an old participle or supine of this latter verb, such as stus or stum, [1121] or rather from situs or situm, contracted into stus or stum.1 See also Forcellini, under Lito as, beginning, and under Luo is, end. Or perhaps at first one said sitare, like secutari, and solutare from which soltar for solvere, as I said on p. 1527, and voltare for volutare, etc. The analogy between the verb essere and stare may be seen in our participle stato from essere [to be], and in the French été, although the French do not have the verb stare. We have an obvious sign of the participle situs in the Spanish sido, which is indeed the participle of ser, to be. And perhaps this participle does still subsist in the Latins’ situs, which means situated, but which is often usurped by writers giving it a meaning markedly similar to that of a participle of the verb essere, and which Voss very unconvincingly derives from sinere [to allow].2 It is a well-known fact that in Plautus (Curculius 1, 1, 89) some read site to mean este, from which situs, as naturally as auditus from audite, and that the old conjugation of the present indicative of esse was, according to Varro (De lingua latina, bk. 8, ch. 57) esum, esis, esit; esumus, esitis, esunt. In other respects, Forcellini himself, noticing that the verb stare is often used instead of esse, adds, *“with some sense of duration”* (under the entry for sto) (and gives some examples of it), that is to say, I would argue, in line with the original characteristics of this verb which is the continuative of esse. Adsentari [to
assent], which Forcellini says is the same as adsentiri, is perhaps simply an anomalous continuative or frequentative either contracted from adsentitari or through adsensari. In the Isidorian Glossary (Isidore’s Opera, last vol., p. 487) we find “sentitare, in animo sensim diiudicare” [“sentitare: to judge gradually in one’s mind”].3 See p. 2200. See p. 1155 and p. 2145, end, and p. 2324, end.

  I believe I can affirm (1) that all or almost all the Latin radical verbs (by which I mean verbs that are not compound, not derived, and not created from nouns, as populo [to lay waste] is from [1122] populus [people], or from other words), and regular, that is to say, not subject to anomalies, always consist of a single and unvarying root syllable, most of them containing only three radical letters (in precisely the same manner as Hebrew verbs); such as parare, docere, legere, facere, dicere, where the radical and constant letters are par, doc, leg, fac, dic. Sometimes with several radical letters, but still a single syllable, as with scribere (which in times past took the form scribsi and scribtum, etc., and so too in the case of other similar verbs, with the b changed to p or vice versa, etc., as may be seen in Fronto),1 where there are five radical letters: scrib and yet they still make up a single syllable. Sometimes likewise of one syllable and only two letters, as with amare, whose radical letters are am, and so too also with ponere, cedere, and the like, where the only unvarying letters are po and ce, forming posui, positum, positus; cessi, cessum, cessus: but such verbs belong rather among the anomalous verbs. It could be said that the g of legere is not preserved in the supine, lectum, and in the participle; that the a of facere is lost in the perfect, feci, and the c of dicere in dixi. But dixi obviously contains the c, being the same as dicsi; and the g of legere turns in the supine and in the participle into c, for greater softness; it is not, however, lost or omitted as the o in lego is, and as the other letters and syllables that serve only the inflection of verbs are. And the same [1123] goes for the a in facere, changed in the perfect into e, either for greater softness or quite arbitrarily, or on account of innovations introduced with the passage of time, which were not original; but at any rate it is changed and not omitted. Likewise texi and tectum from tegere are the same as tegsi and tegtum. See p. 1153. The early Latins used, in fact, to write dicsi, and legsi, and legs, and coniugs, etc., and the x of the Latins meant CS and sometimes GS. See Forcellini, letter X and the Encyclopédie. Grammaire, letter “X.”1

  (2) I hold that all these radical and regular verbs, having only one radical syllable, have only two syllables in the first person singular of the present indicative, two likewise in the third person (like Hebrew verbs in the third person of the perfect, which is their root), and three in the infinitive.

  (3) I hold that all, or at any rate almost all regular Latin verbs which have more than one radical syllable, more than two syllables in the first and third person singular of the present indicative, and more than three syllables in the infinitive, are not radical verbs, even though they may appear such, but derivatives, even though their source has not been found.

  We must exempt from the above rules the regular fourth-conjugation verbs that have two unvarying radical syllables, as in the case of audi in audire. We must, I would argue, exempt them from the rule stipulating a single radical syllable, but not from the one stipulating only two [1124] syllables in the first and third person present indicative, and only three in the infinitive. In the infinitive—audire, sentire, etc.—it is clear that they only have three syllables. Likewise in the third person present indicative it is clear that they have only two of them, audit, sentit. In the first person, audio, sentio, they would seem to have three of them. But I have no doubt whatsoever that in earlier times these words and others like them were reckoned to consist of only two syllables, with the io in audio, for example, being regarded as and pronounced as a diphthong. In the same way as these latter vowels when combined thus are actual diphthongs in the Italian language, which bears so much greater a resemblance in the forms both of speech and of words and pronunciation to the ancient Latin language than it does to classical Latin.

  So also the ancient pronunciation of Greek diphthongs, which were pronounced in full, did not stop them being regarded as consisting of just the one syllable. Regarding which diphthongs I will have something to say shortly. See pp. 1151, end, and 2247.

  The above considerations also undermine somewhat the exception we have admitted as regards fourth-conjugation verbs and prove that if these latter appear to have 2 radical syllables, it is rather an accidental difference in inflection than an essential attribute of the verb as such, and it does not affect the overall number of its syllables, radical or otherwise, a number which in the contexts specified is the same in these verbs as in the others.

  I say the same of second-conjugation verbs, where doceo, according to recognized Latin prosody, is trisyllabic. The same with facio, and the like. The same with the verb suadere, suescere, and the like (verbs, moreover, which are anomalous), which, without belonging to the fourth conjugation, today have two radical syllables, sua and sue, which in ancient times, in my view, were only one syllable.

  According to which opinion, I think that one could also note it to be a constant feature of very earliest Latin that the first and third person singular [1125] of the present indicative and of the perfect were likewise disyllabic in all the radical and regular verbs, in precisely the same fashion as in Hebrew the third person of the aforesaid number and tense. See p. 1231, paragraph 2. With third-conjugation verbs, this is obvious, as in legi and legit, feci and fecit, dixi and dixit. With verbs of the second conjugation, one cannot dispute the claim, once the opinion cited above, which I believe to be as certain as can be, has been granted (it being natural for the untrained ear to regard two linked vowels as a single syllable, and characteristic for one of some refinement and delicacy to distinguish two syllables): so that, according to this opinion, docui and docuit were disyllabic in antiquity. That leaves the first and the fourth conjugation, where amavi and amavit, audivi and audivit are trisyllabic. Now, where the fourth conjugation is concerned, I think that the original perfect was in ii, that is, audii and audiit, a perfect that still endures and is still common to all or to almost all the regular verbs of that conjugation, many of which lack the perfect in ivi, as does sentire, which goes sensi. Audii and audiit (which you will often find written in the old style as audi and audit, like others such as is which are now written double) were, according to what I have said, disyllabic. As to the letter v, I think that it was inserted later between the two is of the perfect, for greater softness. And [1126] so far am I from believing that the desinence in ivi of the perfect was original, that in fact I reckon that even the very ancient desinence of the perfect indicative of the first conjugation was not avi but ai, nor did one say amavi but amai, a disyllabic word as explained above. Confirmation of my argument here is supplied on the one hand by Italian, which does indeed say amai (and recall in this regard what I said on p. 1124, middle), (as also udii), and by French, which says j’aimai; on the other hand, and far more important, is the fact that scholars know that the letter v, “consonne que l’ancien Orient n’a jamais connue” [“a consonant that the ancient East never knew”] (Villefroy, “Lettres à ses Elèves pour servir d’introduction à l’intelligence des divines Ecritures,” Letter 6, in Paris 1751, tome 1, p. 167),1 was not so very old. See p. 2069, beginning. And setting aside the arguments adduced to show that the Eastern peoples are more ancient than the Western, and the derivation of the latter and their languages from the former, I will simply point out that the letter v is missing from the Greek language, with which Latin certainly has a common origin, whether it derives from Greek, or whether it is, as I believe, a sister. And furthermore, Priscian (bk. 1, p. 554, as edited by Putsch) (Forcellini quotes him to this effect, beginning of the letter u in my 15th-century edition at the end of p. 16) says that in antiquity the letter u “multis italiae populis in usu non erat” [“was not in use among many of the peoples of Italy”].2 An
d the fact that among the Romans the consonant v was at the beginning simply an [1127] aspirate, and a smooth one at that, may be ascertained in my view by noting that it stands at the beginning of quite a few Latin words which are twins of other Greek words, which instead of that letter have a spiritus lenis or a spiritus tenuis, such as ὄϊς [sheep] ovis [sheep], vinum [wine] οἶνος [wine], video [to see] εἴδω [to see], viscus or viscum [mistletoe] ἰξὸς [mistletoe]. (Sometimes also instead of a spiritus densus like υἱὸς [son], whence the Aeolians’ ϝυἰὸς [son], the Latins’ filius).1 See Encyclopédie. Grammaire, art. “H,” p. 214, col. 2, at the beginning, and “F,” etc. And all grammarians agree as to their being twin words. Whereas the Latins were in the habit of turning the Greeks’ spiritus densus into s (and the Greeks wrote it as a sigma in antiquity), as in ὕπνος [sleep] which among the Romans was first said as sumnus (Gellius)2 and then as somnus, etc. See p. 2196. Indeed, one’s last lingering doubts in this regard would be dispelled if one were to read what Forcellini (entry for Digamma, scrutinize it) and Priscian (pp. 9, end–11, scrutinize it) have to say. From whom it would appear that for the ancient Romans the consonant v was exactly the same thing as the Aeolic digamma (since the Latin language took a fair amount from the Aeolians, as is well known). The digamma was an aspirate among the Aeolians, or a kind of aspirate that used to be put in front of words beginning with a vowel, instead of the spiritus, and (note well) that used to be interposed between vowels in the middle of words to avoid hiatus, as in amai, and as in an inscription in Gruter, ampliaϝit terminaϝitque [enlarged and fixed the limits].3 (See Encyclopédie. Grammaire, art. “F”; Cellarius, Orthographia, Padua, Comino, 1739, pp. 11–15.) And see the passage from Servius in Forcellini regarding the perfect in the fourth conjugation.4 From these observations, where it is clear that ancient Latin v was (as it is today in German) the same as an f, there is no doubt now that it was an aspirate, since the f was not at the beginning a letter, but an aspirate, and a smooth one at that. And likewise, vice versa, the Spanish, who at first used to say fazer, ferido, afogar, fuso, figo, fuìr, fierro, filo, furto, fumo, fondo, formiga, forno, forca, fender, now say hazer, herido, ahogar, huso, higo, huìr, hierro, hilo, hurto, humo, hondo, hormiga, horno, horca, hender, etc. See pp. 1139 and 1806. In short, it may plainly be seen that the original and regular ending of perfects in the first and fourth conjugation was ai and ii, transmuted into avi and [1128] ivi on a whim to soften the sound, due to pressure from the dialect and from irregular, corrupt, and popular pronunciation that tends always and unceasingly to foster alteration in the aspect of words, as time passes, and in the end is introduced into the written forms and turns into a rule, as may be seen in our own, and indeed in all languages. See p. 1155, last paragraph and pp. 2242, paragraph 1, and 2327.