# Romance languages : Auxiliaries



## J.F. de TROYES

Some Romance languages use two auxiliaries, _to have_ and _to be_ for compound tenses, as_ *ho* caminato _(Italian), _j'*ai *marché _(French) , but _*sono* andato_, _je* suis* allé_. There are few verbs requiring the auxiliary _to be_, but they are very common. Instead Romanian, Catalan, Spanish, Portuguese use just one auxiliary. I've also read that some intransitive verbs were conjugated in old Spanish with _ser_, as in _Buen, don Guido, ya _eres_ ido y para siempre jamás. 
_I wonder if texts of old Spanish and other Romance languages show this feature and, if so, from what  period the auxiliary _a avea_,_ haber _... has prevailed.

Thanks to all of you.


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## Montesacro

J.F. de TROYES said:


> Some Romance languages use two auxiliaries, _to have_ and _to be_ for compound tenses, as_ *ho* cam*m*inato _(Italian), _j'*ai *marché _(French) , but _*sono* andato_, _je* suis* allé_.



Some verbs in Italian can take both auxiliaries depending on their meaning (I'm not talking about active and passive forms).
For example:
_È volato in cielo_ (he flew to heaven, i.e. he died), intransitive, motion towards.
_Ha volato con Lufthansa_ (he flew with Lufthansa), intransitive, neither motion towards nor motion from.


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## olaszinho

There are some differences in the use of the auxiliaries  between French and Italian:
J'ai réussi - sono riuscito 
le temps a changé - il tempo è cambiato, but ho cambiato l'auto - j'ai changé de voiture
Il a neigé - è nevicato 
il a plu - è piovuto
j'ai vécu à Paris - sono vissuto a Parigi.
tu as été - sei stato and many others.
As a matter of fact, the use of the verb to be as an auxiliary is more common in Italian than in French.


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## merquiades

There is a good theory explaining what occurred in the process from Vulgar Latin to Modern Spanish.  I'm writing from memory so I might inadvertently leave something out.  I'll check my books and complete it later.

1) The compound tenses that developed out of VL had both "habere" and "essere".
The transitive verbs came about out of the structure... Haber + direct object + (passive) past participle.
My VL is bad so I'll write what the equivalent would be in Spanish and English.

*He dos cartas escritas.  Literally,  I have/ possess now two letters that have been written.  Changing word order and making *He escritas dos cartas didn't change anything.
"Have" and "(having been) written" are two independent actions that are not linked together.  "Have" has a literal sense and the past participle matches and agrees with "letters" in gender and number because "letters (having been) written" go together.
Take out "cartas" and replace it with the direct object pronoun "las" and you get "*las he escritas".  Add any other element like adverbs or negation, the word order is flexible but they commonly go in the middle.  *Las he ya escritas.  I have them already written.

*Soy [a Italia] ido.  I am/existing now [in Italy] (having) gone there.  I am the exiting now [in Italy] as a result of the process of having gone there.   You cannot use "habere/have" because there is no active process and no direct object that is being acted upon.  You cannot say I have.... something.... (having) gone.  This structure was used for all intransitive verbs.

2)  In Old Spanish "haber" slowly over time loses it's active meaning of "have, own, possess".   It is replaced by "tener" originally "have, hold, get" that takes over the meaning of "possess".  *He una casa.  *He veinte años become Tengo una casa.  Tengo veinte años.  Similarly "ser" with the meaning of "state resulting from a process" loses this meaning to keep only "exist".  "Estar" takes over these meanings.  "La casa está construida" (the house is built after the process of building it) replaces "La casa es construida".
Both "Haber" and "ser" lose their original meaning in these structures with past participle.  

3) At the end of the process (16th century) "haber" cannot exist without the past participle as it no longer means anything tangible.  The two become joined together (orally at least) in the same way as the future "infinitive + haber" does.  Hablar he (hablaré).  He escrito could have been written (Heescrito).  "Haber" loses its tonic accent and is pronounced as a kind of prefix preceding the participle. No element can go in the middle anymore.  "Ya he comprado" (I already bought).
Both "haber" being identified as a marker for the compound tenses and "estar" taking over "ser's" meanings brings about "haber" becoming universal.  This apparently is also fueled by "haber/ hay" developing some connotations of "to be" in set expressions too.  For example: "Hay dos casas" (there are two houses).  "He aquí dos cartas" (Here are two letters). 
"Ser" was kept for the true passive, a function "haber" never had. "La casa es constuida por los albañiles".  The emphasis is on the building not the result per se.

4) "Haber" + becomes a full fledged verb tense and is universal for all verbs.  Therefore past participles don't have to agree with objects anymore in the same sense that they never agree with any other verb tense in Spanish.
"He escrito las cartas" (I wrote the letters).  "Ya las he escrito" (I already wrote them).
"Tener" emerges with a similar active meaning with the past participle that "haber" originally had back at the beginning.
"Tengo dos cartas escritas" (I have two letters that have been written).  "Las tengo escritas" (I have them written).  Also "tener que" replaces "Haber de" (mostly) to express obligation.  "Tengo que irme" formerly only "He de irme" (I have to leave).   Fossilized expression like "He sed" become "Tengo sed" (I'm thirsty) as "haber" is relegated only to the use in verb tenses.

Following this scheme, I remember linguists saying that French would be considered less evolved than Spanish, but Portuguese would be more so.
"Avoir" still has all its original active meanings, and past participles are seen as autonomous because they agree with direct objects. Adverbs and negation go in the middle, still separating the "avoir" from the participle.  "Être" retains all its meanings and is used with intransitive verbs.
Portuguese however has gone beyond "Tengo duas cartas escritas" and "ter" has managed to replace "haver" in all of its meanings and uses.  "Tenho escrito duas cartas".  "Tem duas cartas na mesa" (There are two letters on the table)

Catalan as spoken in French Catalonia uses the two auxiliaries in a way similar to French.  In Spain however it parallels Spanish with "Haver" as the universal auxiliary for compound tenses.  This is a rather recent development though.

** I cannot remember at all how reflexive verbs fit into the pattern though.  I'll fill in the gaps later when I find the information.


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## fdb

We recently had a copious discussion of this issue in : 
Verbes qui utilisent être aux temps du passé


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## olaszinho

As for Portuguese, the verb "ter" has not replaced "haver" in all its meanings and uses hitherto. For instance, the form há = there is/ there are is still vital in European Portuguese, "tem" is used essentially in Brazil. Even the verb "haver" as an auxiliary is not completely disappeared, particularly in formal and literary Portuguese.  As a consequence, eu tinha dito, eu  havia dito and eu dissera can be translated into the English verb form " I had said".


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## CapnPrep

J.F. de TROYES said:


> Instead Romanian, Catalan, Spanish, Portuguese use just one auxiliary.


Romanian does not divide verbs into two classes like Italian and French, but it does use both _have_ and _be_ as temporal auxiliaries.


merquiades said:


> 3) At the end of the process (16th century) "haber" cannot exist without the past participle as it no longer means anything tangible.  The two become joined together (orally at least) in the same way as the future "infinitive + haber" does.  Hablar he (hablaré).  He escrito could have been written (Heescrito).  "Haber" loses its tonic accent and is pronounced as a kind of prefix preceding the participle. No element can go in the middle anymore.  "Ya he comprado" (I already bought).


The future/conditional forms are more grammaticalized than the participial structures. For example, the infinitive has undergone phonetic changes in forms like _vendré_, _haré_, and you can say _*He* escrito y enviado la carta _(where you do have some elements in between the auxiliary _he_ and the participle _enviado_), but not *_Escribir y enviar*é* la carta_. 


merquiades said:


> ** I cannot remember at all how reflexive verbs fit into the pattern though.  I'll fill in the gaps later when I find the information.


Reflexive verbs in early Romance are thought to have combined with _be_, either because they are structurally similar to intransitive verbs, or because they have a semantic affinity with the mediopassive deponent verbs that were the original source for compound perfects of the form _esse_ + participle.

See also:
Origin of Germanic and Romance perfects using auxiliaries to be and to have


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## merquiades

CapnPrep said:
			
		

> The future/conditional forms are more grammaticalized than the participial structures. For example, the infinitive has undergone phonetic changes in forms like vendré, haré, and you can say He escrito y enviado la carta (where you do have some elements in between the auxiliary he and the participle enviado), but not *Escribir y enviaré la carta.



There has been a big change since Old Spanish.  There were numerous verbs with irregular futures.  They dropped the vowel before -r and adapted the phonetic modifications necessary for that time:  combré, bebré, escribré, mobré, perdré, doldrá but strangely enough they all became regular again.  That must mean the speakers no longer made the link between the future stem and the infinitive and then later on they realized it again.  If I'm not mistaken nowadays there are only twelve irregular future/conditional stems in Spanish.
Yes, I didn't think about the series of past participles.  If "haber" were to be considered a functional prefix perhaps the prefix doesn't need to be repeated before each element.  I don't think that can be answered though and I'm not sure taking the discussion that way is productive.



			
				CapnPrep said:
			
		

> Reflexive verbs in early Romance are thought to have combined with be, either because they are structurally similar to intransitive verbs, or because they have a semantic affinity with the mediopassive deponent verbs that were the original source for compound perfects of the form esse + participle.


Right, but they still came to take "haber" in Spanish.

It is an interesting coincidence that Germanic languages use "haben" for transitives and "sein" for intransitives like French and especially Italian.  I wonder if there was influence in one direction or another.  Berndf's post in the other thread you quoted gives food for thought.

Edit:  I just realized that German uses the Vulgar Latin structure:   have/ be auxiliary + object + past participle
Ich habe ein haus gekauft.  Ich bin ins kino gegangen.


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## Youngfun

olaszinho said:


> There are some differences in the use of the auxiliaries  between French and Italian:
> J'ai réussi - sono riuscito
> le temps a changé - il tempo è cambiato, but ho cambiato l'auto - j'ai changé de voiture
> Il a neigé - è nevicato
> il a plu - è piovuto
> j'ai vécu à Paris - sono vissuto a Parigi.
> tu as été - sei stato and many others.
> As a matter of fact, the use of the verb to be as an auxiliary is more common in Italian than in French.


But also "ho vissuto" when transitive:
ho vissuto la mia vita

I don't know if "ho vissuto a Parigi" would be correct in Standard Italian.

Also: ha nevicato, ha piovuto
At the elementary school, I was taught that for "atmopheriscal" verbs, we must normally use "to be", but "to have" when we want to indicate a duration.
 So: Ieri ha nevicato. 
But: Ha nevicato tutta la notte / Ha nevicato per tre ore.

What do you think?
I think this reasoning work for the verb "vivere" too.
sono vissuto a Parigi - ho vissuto a Parigi per 10 anni. 
Or shoud I say "sono vissuto a Parigi per 10 anni"?



olaszinho said:


> As for Portuguese, the verb "ter" has not replaced "haver" in all its meanings and uses hitherto. For instance, the form há = there is/ there are is still vital in European Portuguese, "tem" is used essentially in Brazil. Even the verb "haver" as an auxiliary is not completely disappeared, particularly in formal and literary Portuguese.  As a consequence, eu tinha dito, eu  havia dito and eu dissera can be translated into the English verb form " I had said".


I think that in colloquial Brazilian, "ter" has already replaced "haver" in all its meaning, including tem/têm = there is/there are

Btw, if a thread about this topic already exists, maybe this thread will be merged to that one...


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## J.F. de TROYES

CapnPrep said:


> Romanian does not divide verbs into two classes like Italian and French, but it does use both _have_ and _be_ as temporal auxiliaries.



 What I mean is that Romanian does'nt use _to be _as an auxiliary to form compound past tenses, but just to conjugate  the passive voice . Is it right ?


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## CapnPrep

J.F. de TROYES said:


> What I mean is that Romanian does'nt use _to be _as an auxiliary to form compound past tenses, but just to conjugate  the passive voice . Is it right ?


It is also used in some active tenses, but only in the base form _fi_, usually in combination with another conjugated auxiliary: future perfect (_voi *fi*_), past subjunctive (_să *fi*_), past conditional (_aş *fi*_), past presumptive (_oi *fi*_).


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## J.F. de TROYES

merquiades said:


> There is a good theory explaining what occurred in the process from Vulgar Latin to Modern Spanish. I'm writing from memory so I might inadvertently leave something out. I'll check my books and complete it later.
> 
> *Soy [a Italia] ido. I am/existing now [in Italy] (having) gone there. I am the exiting now [in Italy] as a result of the process of having gone there. You cannot use "habere/have" because there is no active process and no direct object that is being acted upon. You cannot say I have.... something.... (having) gone. This structure was used for all intransitive verbs.



Thanks a lot. Your paper is highly relevant. I was aware of how the lexical verb _habere_ has gradually turned into an auxiliary, but comparing it in French, Spanish and Portuguese is really enlightening. The periphrase P.P.+ habeo was already used in the old latinity (Plautius :_res omnes relictas habeo_), but I had'nt read anything about the parallel evolution of _esse/essere_. I wonder if there are Latin examples showing as accurately as with_ habeo _how this verb has become the auxiliary used in current Italian, Occitan , Corsican or French. Unlike _habere_, _esse _was usual as an auxiliary in Latin, especially for deponent verbs . From the early times  their infectum tenses were  conjugated as active verbs in the spoken language and their perfectum tenses using _esse_ remained : _nascitur/natus est_ was changed into _nascit/natus est_, _ingreditur/ ingressus est_ into _ingredit/ingressus est_ and so on . They finally vanished in Late Latin ( _Flubius Minon nascit prope Pereneum _[the Minho river  has its source near the Pyrenees,  9-10th century, in Díaz y Díaz]. Italian S_ono andato, _French _Je suis allé _use the same pattern as deponent verbs . Many deponent verbs were transitive, but your above explanation is convincing, showing the auxiliary _habere _couldn’t fit intransitive verbs. *However modern Italian and French don’t use *_to be_* with all intransitive verbs *; far from it they are just about 25-30  in French, most of them being semantically perfective and expressing move or change. ( _Je suis venu_ , _I’ve come_ but _J’ai couru_, _I’ve run_ ). It is unclear why such verbs and only those are conjugated with _être _(_to be_).


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## merquiades

J.F. de TROYES said:


> *However modern Italian and French don’t use *_to be_* with all intransitive verbs *; far from it they are just about 25-30  in French, most of them being semantically perfective and expressing move or change. [/FONT][/COLOR]( _Je suis venu_ , _I’ve come_ but _J’ai couru_, _I’ve run_ ). It is unclear why such verbs and only those are conjugated with _être _(_to be_).





> *Soy [a Italia] ido. I am/existing now [in Italy] (having) gone there. I am existing now [in Italy] as a result of the process of having gone there. You cannot use "habere/have" because there is no active process and no direct object that is being acted upon. You cannot say I have.... something.... (having) gone. This structure was used for all intransitive verbs. (corrected bad sentence!)



Yes, it is puzzling to me why a good number of intransitive verbs now use "avoir" in French.  I think in Italian the number is much higher, but I hesitate to say all.  Perhaps in an earlier stage of the language after the common knowledge of vulgar Latin logic was lost, there was an attempt to regularize the pattern like in Spanish.  Maybe it wasn't completely successful because the most common verbs using "être" as an auxiliary were so ingrained into the average speaker's mind it was impossible to change. "Je suis allé" is a daily expression.  So common are these verbs that anglophone learners of French don't even learn the reason why "être" is an auxiliary verb anymore.  They learn the made up expression "Dr. & Mrs. Vandertrampp" that has all the common verbs in it (devenir, revenir,mourir, revenir, venir, aller, naître... etc.) and take it just as an irregularity to get over. Regular means "avoir".

By the way, this is the perfect opportunity to post something astonishing that happened to me last week.  A neighbor (monolingual French speaker, with bts degree, born and raised in Lorraine of a non-immigrant background) who went to Turkey for a week posted a message on my facebook page.  Here it is..  Là je suis dégouté.  Il pleut tous les jours.  Si j'avais su, je n'aurais pas venu.  I couldn't believe my eyes.


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## CapnPrep

merquiades said:


> A neighbor (monolingual French speaker, with bts degree, born and raised in Lorraine of a non-immigrant background) who went to Turkey for a week posted a message on my facebook page.  Here it is..  Là je suis dégouté.  Il pleut tous les jours.  Si j'avais su, je n'aurais pas venu.  I couldn't believe my eyes.


There are speakers who produce such forms spontaneously, but this particular example is almost certainly a joke (it's a misquotation of a well-known line from _La Guerre des boutons_).


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## merquiades

CapnPrep said:


> There are speakers who produce such forms spontaneously, but this particular example is almost certainly a joke (it's a misquotation of a well-known line from _La Guerre des boutons_).



Thanks for the info.  I would never have got that cultural reference.  It's beyond me.  Well, at least I know it's not his mistake! Reading about it, it turns out that I'm the one who is _inculte._


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## olaszinho

Other common Italian verbs using the auxiliary to be instead of to have like in French.

sono cresciuto = J'ai grandi
sono ingrassato = j'ai grossi
è dimagrita = elle a maigri

The use of the auxiliaries may be tricky sometimes. Some verbs take EITHER essere or avere as the auxiliary verb in compound tenses. It depends on the context of the sentence. Here are a few examples of verbs functioning both transitively and intransitively:
bruciare (to burn) 
Hai bruciato la torta? (Did you burn the cake?) Durante la notte scorsa la cascina è bruciata. (During the night,the dairy burned.)
diminuire (to reduce, decrease) 
Abbiamo diminuito il consumo d'energia in casa. (We reduced energy consumption athome.)
I prezzi della carne sono diminuiti questa settimana. (The price of meat has decreased this week.)
finire (to finish) 
Il professore ha finito la conferenza alle tre. (The professor finished the conference at three o'clock.)
La conferenza è finita alle tre. (The conference finished at threeo'clock.) 
The following table lists commonly used verbs that can be both transitive and intransitive, depending on their use.
VERBS THAT MAY BE TRANSITIVE AND INTRANSITIVE
Affogare  (to drown)
aumentare (to increase)
bruciare (to burn, to sting)
finire (to finish, to complete)
incominciare (to begin, to start)
iniziare (to begin, to initiate)
mutare (to change, to alter)
passare (to pass, to go by)
raddopppiare (to double)
salire (to ascend, to climb)
sfuggire (to avoid, to escape)
terminare (to finish,to end)
vivere (to live, to be alive) and many others.


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## Youngfun

Could be "è bruciata" passive? I always get confused.


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## olaszinho

Youngfun said:


> Could be "è bruciata" passive? I always get confused.



Hi Youngfun.
No, it is active. E' stata/fu/venne bruciata DA.. is passive.  To be more precise, it is not a passive verb form in the above example. However, you could say: l'erba è/viene bruciata DAL contadino.


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## J.F. de TROYES

merquiades said:


> Thanks for the info. I would never have got that cultural reference. It's beyond me. Well, at least I know it's not his mistake! Reading about it, it turns out that I'm the one who is _inculte._



The sentence pronounced in the film by a kid called _Petit-Gibus_ and well known by most of French people _Si j'aurais su, j'aurais pas venu_ ( 3 grammatical errors  ) reminds me of a traditional song published in 1846  starting with these lines : _*J'ai descendu* dans mon jardin / pour y cueillir du romarin _( I've come down to my garden / in order to pluck rosemary ) . The publisher said he had heared the song in a Paris public garden. Such occurrences may be due to children that don't yet master their language, but hesitation between either auxiliary could have happened for some verbs in the past. Maine de Biran, Journal, (1816, p. 206) writes : _*J'ai resté *seul avec ma femme dans une grande voiture _and  Gide, Journal(1923) :  _J'ai ramené Martin du Gard à Cuverville, où il *a demeuré* trois jours ( _Quoted in CNRTL_). _Maybe archaisms.


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## merquiades

olaszinho said:


> Other common Italian verbs using the auxiliary to be instead of to have like in French.
> 
> sono cresciuto = J'ai grandi
> sono ingrassato = j'ai grossi
> è dimagrita = elle a maigri
> 
> The use of the auxiliaries may be tricky sometimes. Some verbs take EITHER essere or avere as the auxiliary verb in compound tenses. It depends on the context of the sentence. Here are a few examples of verbs functioning both transitively and intransitively:
> bruciare (to burn)
> Hai bruciato la torta? (Did you burn the cake?) Durante la notte scorsa la cascina è bruciata. (During the night,the dairy burned.)
> diminuire (to reduce, decrease)
> Abbiamo diminuito il consumo d'energia in casa. (We reduced energy consumption athome.)
> I prezzi della carne sono diminuiti questa settimana. (The price of meat has decreased this week.)
> finire (to finish)
> Il professore ha finito la conferenza alle tre. (The professor finished the conference at three o'clock.)
> La conferenza è finita alle tre. (The conference finished at threeo'clock.)
> The following table lists commonly used verbs that can be both transitive and intransitive, depending on their use.
> VERBS THAT MAY BE TRANSITIVE AND INTRANSITIVE
> Affogare  (to drown)
> aumentare (to increase)
> bruciare (to burn, to sting)
> finire (to finish, to complete)
> incominciare (to begin, to start)
> iniziare (to begin, to initiate)
> mutare (to change, to alter)
> passare (to pass, to go by)
> raddopppiare (to double)
> salire (to ascend, to climb)
> sfuggire (to avoid, to escape)
> terminare (to finish,to end)
> vivere (to live, to be alive) and many others.



This use of "avere" or "essere" depending on if there is an object seems very coherent and precise to me.  I suppose with the same logic one would say:  Ho corso la maratona.  L'ho corsa but then Sono corso stamattina durante due ore.

When you use the passive with "essere" or "venire"  is there a nuance between them or are they strictly the same?
La carne è stata mangiata dai lupi.  La carne è venuta mangiata dai lupi.
Does "venire" give the idea of slowness?


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## Youngfun

You are mostly right.
"Ho corso la maratona" and "L'ho corsa" are right. The same for "correre" used in the figurative meaning: "Ho corso un grande rischio".
And: 
Sono corso a casa. 

But there is a strong tendency to use "avere" when expressing duration.
So: 
Stamattina ho corso _per_ due ore. (_durante_ = during)
Also:
Ha nevicato per due ore.
Ha piovuto per tutta la notte.

The passive "venire" can only be used in the present tense.
"La carne viene mangiata dai lupi." = The meat gets eaten by the wolves, or is usually eaten by the wolves.
I think "venire" usually implies a habit.


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## olaszinho

Youngfun said:


> The passive "venire" can only be used in the present tense.
> "La carne viene mangiata dai lupi." = The meat gets eaten by the wolves, or is usually eaten by the wolves.
> I think "venire" usually implies a habit.



"I think "venire" usually implies a habit"  Really??

Venire can be used with "Passato remoto" and the future tense, too. It is quite common: il ponte fu/venne distrutto the brigde was destroyed or la scuola verrà/sarà chiusa = the school will be closed. In Italian both essere and venire are commonly used to form the passive voice.


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## Youngfun

Yes... I was wrong... Actually, "venire" can be used in any simple tense (presente, passato remoto, imperfetto, futuro semplice), but not composed tenses.


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## CapnPrep

I don't think a detailed discussion of passive auxiliaries in modern Italian really belongs in this thread about the history of Romance temporal auxiliaries… Besides, this topic is already covered in many, many threads in the Italian forums. For example:
Venire (auxiliary) as 'to become' in the passive voice
una regola va rispettata vs. viene rispettata
Venire descritto
Passive voice with essere or venire
Venire v Essere nel passivo
Ti verrà chiesto di eseguire l'attivita nuovamente
verrà vs sarà
andava(no) + participio passato
Andare as an auxiliary in the passive voice
viene usato


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## J.F. de TROYES

olaszinho said:


> Other common Italian verbs using the auxiliary to be instead of to have like in French.
> 
> The use of the auxiliaries may be tricky sometimes. Some verbs take EITHER essere or avere as the auxiliary verb in compound tenses. It depends on the context of the sentence.



It's the same for French for verbs that can be transitive or intransitive as _changer_, _brûler_, _descendre_ and so on : _je suis descendu en courant ( I ran down ) , _but _J'ai descendu tous les sacs ( I've taken down all the bags) .  _However , as it was said, verbs using the auxiliary _être_ are less numerous than in Italian.


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## olaszinho

> It's the same for French for verbs that can be transitive or intransitive as _changer_, _brûler_, _descendre_ and so on : _je suis descendu en courant ( I ran down ) , _but _J'ai descendu tous les sacs ( I've taken down all the bags) .  _However , as it was said, verbs using the auxiliary _être_ are less numerous than in Italian.



This is true and I'd like to add another very common verb in French:_ sortir _- to go out, _Je suis sorti _- I've gone out, but _elle a sorti la voiture du garage _- she took the car out of the garage. Anyway, some Italian verbs work in a different way from the French ones, for instance: _le temps a changé - il tempo *è* cambiato _- the weather has changed;
_les prix ont augmenté - i prezzi* sono* aumentat_*i.*


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## merquiades

I just remembered another particularity about Italian that doesn't exist in other Romance Languages (unless they do it in Romania, I don't know).  The auxiliary verb has to agree with the infinitive when modal verbs are used and not with the conjugated model verb.  So if that infinitive verb takes "essere" the whole structure changes to match that:
Sarei dovuto andarci. 
È voluta venire da me. 
Si sono potuti vestire da streghe.


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## Angelo di fuoco

olaszinho said:


> Hi Youngfun.
> No, it is active. E' stata/fu/venne bruciata DA.. is passive.  To be more precise, it is not a passive verb form in the above example. However, you could say: l'erba è/viene bruciata DAL contadino.



Mi dispiace, ma devo darti torto: per dire che si tratta della voce passiva non è necessario che appaia l'agente. "'È bruciata" può dunque essere due cose: forma della voce passiva nel presente (!) oppure una forma del passato prossimo. Comunque proprio per la sua ambiguità semantica, per non complicare troppo le cose si suole dar preferenza ad altre forme: brucia o viene bruciata per il processo, è (stata) bruciata per il resultato.


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## Angelo di fuoco

olaszinho said:


> The passive "venire" can only be used in the present tense.
> "La carne viene mangiata dai lupi." = The meat gets eaten by the wolves, or is usually eaten by the wolves.
> I think "venire" usually implies a habit.
> 
> "I think "venire" usually implies a habit"  Really??
> 
> Venire can be used with "Passato remoto" and the future tense, too. It is quite common: il ponte fu/venne distrutto the brigde was destroyed or la scuola verrà/sarà chiusa = the school will be closed. In Italian both essere and venire are commonly used to form the passive voice.



No, essere per il passivo "di stato", venire per la voce passiva "d'azione".


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## Youngfun

Grazie, Angelo. Mi sembra una spiegazione ragionevole.


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## olaszinho

Mi riferivo all'esempio, in quel caso  era attiva. Chiaro che può essere sia attiva sia passiva, ma ovviamente dipende dal contesto.


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## olaszinho

Angelo, ora vuoi venirci ad insegnare la grammatica italiana? Certo ogni suggerimento e segnalazione sono ben accetti, ma qui la differenziazione mi pare stucchevole, tale distinzione l'ho trovata soltanto in qualche vecchia grammatica, ma certamente non in tutte. Ne avrò almeno una quindicina a casa. Il dato di fatto è che nell'italiano contemporaneo tanto venire come essere possono fungere da ausiliari nel passivo, senza alcuna differenza considerevole, naturalmente come ha precisato Youngfun, solo coi tempi semplici. Gli esempi: il ponte fu/venne distrutto; la scuola sarà/verrà chiusa sono perfettamente corretti e si trovano normalmente nell'italiano.


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## J.F. de TROYES

olaszinho said:


> Il dato di fatto è che nell'italiano contemporaneo tanto venire come essere possono fungere da ausiliari nel passivo, senza alcuna differenza considerevole, naturalmente come ha precisato Youngfun, solo coi tempi semplici. Gli esempi: il ponte fu/venne distrutto; la scuola sarà/verrà chiusa sono perfettamente corretti e si trovano normalmente nell'italiano.



Unfortunately I am unable to write properly in Italian  , but I can read it. So can you confirm that expressing an agent  is as usual with _venire_ as with _essere_  ?   Is the following sentence right : _il ponte fu/venne distrutto da un bombardamento _?


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## olaszinho

> Unfortunately I am unable to write properly in Italian
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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> 
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> 
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> 
> , but I can read it. So can you confirm that expressing an agent  is as usual with _venire_ as with _essere_  ?   Is the following sentence right : _il ponte fu/venne distrutto da un bombardamento _?


Oui, bien sûr. C'est un exemple que j'ai trouvé dans un livre de grammaire. De plus, on peut lire des phrases pareilles dans tous les livres d'histoire.
_La chiesa venne distrutta da una bomba tedesca _- l'église fut détruite par une bombe allemande.


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## Angelo di fuoco

olaszinho said:


> Angelo, ora vuoi venirci ad insegnare la grammatica italiana? Certo ogni suggerimento e segnalazione sono ben accetti, ma qui la differenziazione mi pare stucchevole, tale distinzione l'ho trovata soltanto in qualche vecchia grammatica, ma certamente non in tutte. Ne avrò almeno una quindicina a casa. Il dato di fatto è che nell'italiano contemporaneo tanto venire come essere possono fungere da ausiliari nel passivo, senza alcuna differenza considerevole, naturalmente come ha precisato Youngfun, solo coi tempi semplici. Gli esempi: il ponte fu/venne distrutto; la scuola sarà/verrà chiusa sono perfettamente corretti e si trovano normalmente nell'italiano.



Cosí spiegò la differenza tra essere e venire la mia docente d'italiano all'università, precisando comunque che mentre il verbo essere può usarsi in tutti i casi, il verbo venire è solamente limitato a proposizioni passive "d'azione".


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## J.F. de TROYES

One more question about _venire_ used as a passive auxiliary. Is this usage as old as that of _essere_ ?   Can this grammatization can be traced back  ?


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## merquiades

J.F. de TROYES said:


> One more question about _venire_ used as a passive auxiliary. Is this usage as old as that of _essere_ ?   Can this grammatization can be traced back  ?



Here they say it goes back at least to Dante and Boccaccio's time.


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## Angelo di fuoco

merquiades said:


> Here they say it goes back at least to Dante and Boccaccio's time.


Vale a dire: fino alla nascita della lingua letteraria italiaana.


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## CapnPrep

merquiades said:


> Here they say it goes back at least to Dante and Boccaccio's time.


It can apparently be found before Dante, but no earlier than the 13th century: "La costruzione con _venire_ ha origini incerte, e non è attestata prima del Duecento, al più presto" (Maiden 1998, p. 167).


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## Youngfun

Angelo di fuoco said:


> Vale a dire: fino alla nascita della lingua letteraria italiaana.


Volevi dire: sin dalla nascita della lingua italiana letteraria?


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## Angelo di fuoco

Credo non abbia senso combinare "è rintracciabile" con "sin da".


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