# Italian serà



## Cenzontle

*Moderator note: Cut from here.

... *I remember noticing that they erroneously traced "sera" back to Latin  "esse" (rather than to "sedere"—a suppletive paradigm)


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## berndf

Can you explain why you think it is a suppletion from _sedere_? After all _sedere _maintained its own future form _sederà, siederà_ until this very day. Here, the French _ser-_ future is also explained as having originated from _(es)ser(e)_ + conjugation of _avoir_.


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## CapnPrep

See also the following thread:
how did French acquire ser- and ir-?

It is pretty well established that _sedere_ got mixed into the conjugation of _*essere_ in Iberian Romance, and this has no doubt also been proposed for French and Italian, but it is not necessary from a phonetic point of view, and introduces other problems for these two languages that would require explanation. I can understand that someone might find it suspicious/unsatisfying to derive Spanish/Portuguese _será_ from _sedere_ but French and [Old] Italian _sera_/_serà _from _*essere_, but that is the consensus, and there are reasons for it.


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## berndf

Thanks, that confirms my understanding.


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## merquiades

The formation of the verb "to be" in Romance languages has always baffled me.
In Spanish and Portuguese the future/conditional stem "ser-", the past participle "sido" and the gerundo "siendo/sendo" are always said to derive from sedere> seer > ser, originally to sit.  The verb sedere itself did not survive in these languages and was replaced by sedentare> sentar.  But now that I read CapnPrep link that affirms the French stem "ser-" (probably Italian ser-/sar- too) come from esse> (es)sere>  ser-,  I have doubts.  This explanation would be much more logical in Iberian Romance too.  I think all these ser- forms must derive from the same source (whatever it is).  Knowing that "sedere" survives in Italian makes it seem even more plausible that "esse" is the source for all.

I see Italian modern "sarà" just as a variant.  There appears to be a lot of er/ar hesitation in the Italian future/conditional stem in general.  Regular "are" verbs switch "a" for "e" whereas ser- becomes sar-.  Other one syllable stems have "ar" too:  darà, farà.

Back to "sedere" (to sit), it's rather odd that other forms in French (stem ét- for the imperfect, past participle été, gerund étant, infinitive être) derive from "stare" (to stand).  Italian past participle "stato" (Catalan "estat") also have that origin.  Besides, the second verb to be "estar" in Spanish/Portuguese/Catalan also derives completely from "stare".  

There is an underlying notion of sitting and standing mixed into the equation of forming "to be" in Romance that I don't quite grasp.


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## berndf

merquiades said:


> Back to "sedere" (to sit), it's rather odd that other forms in French (stem ét- for the imperfect, past participle été, gerund étant, infinitive être) derive from "stare" (to stand).  Italian past participle "stato" (Catalan "estat") also have that origin.  Besides, the second verb to be "estar" in Spanish/Portuguese/Catalan also derives completely from "stare".


Some forms of _être _are certainly derived from _stare_. But the infinitive probably not. The development is probably CL _esse_ > VL _essere _> OF _estre_. The OF infinitive _estre_ contrasts with _ester_ < _stare _(the verb still exists though restricted to set phrases, like _ester en justice_). (Click)


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## CapnPrep

merquiades said:


> But now that I read CapnPrep link that affirms the French stem "ser-" (probably Italian ser-/sar- too) come from esse> (es)sere>  ser-,  I have doubts.  This explanation would be much more logical in Iberian Romance too.


The problem is that Old Spanish forms like _seer_ derive straightforwardly from _sedere_, not *_essere_.





			
				merquiades said:
			
		

> I think all these ser- forms must derive from the same source (whatever it is).


That would be the simplest explanation, a priori, but the evidence seems to point toward a more complex state of affairs. Another thing to keep in mind is that words can have more than one etymological origin. So a given form might derive to varying degrees from both _sedere_ and *_essere_. I don't think this is likely to be the case in French or Italian, but it could perhaps be argued for some parts of the Spanish paradigm.


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## Outsider

I suppose the Iberian Romance future and conditional (infrequent, somewhat high register tenses even today) could have been borrowed directly from French, Italian and neighbouring languages, but the infinitive, the gerund, the past participle and the present subjunctive are not so easily explained.


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## jmx

Outsider said:


> ... the Iberian Romance future and conditional (infrequent, somewhat high register tenses even today) ...


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## merquiades

I think he's referring to Portuguese mostly where imperfect often replaces conditional and present replaces future.  That's probably because you have to break up the forms when you add object pronouns in the middle:  falar-te-ia.  It's not very comfortable.


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## CapnPrep

merquiades said:


> That's probably because you have to break up the forms when you add object pronouns in the middle:  falar-te-ia.


This shows that the link between the future/conditional and the infinitive is very strong in Portuguese, stronger than in the other Romance varieties. So it actually argues against Outsider's suggestion, that the future/conditional of _ser_ might have a different origin from the infinitive (e.g. borrowed from French or Italian).


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## francisgranada

merquiades said:


> ... I see Italian modern "sarà" just as a variant....


I agree, probably influenced by _darà_, _farà_.



> ... There appears to be a lot of er/ar hesitation in the Italian future/conditional stem in general.  Regular "are" verbs switch "a" for "e" whereas ser- becomes sar-.  Other one syllable stems have "ar" too:  darà, farà.


I don't think that it's a hesitation. Verbs in -are change this "a" quite regurarly in "e" (perhaps because of some kind of euphony). In case of _dare _the vowel "a" is rather "felt" as part of the stem and not of the infitive ending -are. The same in _fare_, which comes from an earlier _facere_. 



> There is an underlying notion of sitting and standing mixed into the equation of forming "to be" in Romance that I don't quite grasp.


I think here we have two different phenomena: _sedere _becomes _seer _(eventually _ser_) for merely phonetic reasons (lenition of "d") independently on the meaning of the verb, while in case of_ stare_ there is a certain "semantic shift".  

I can imagine, that the Spanish or Iberian Romance future _será _derives originally from (es)sere, like the Itialian and the French corresponding forms. The confusion may be of later date, when the infinitives ser (<essere) and seer (<sedere) were practically pronounced (almost) the same way, thus being spontaneousely considered as variants of the same verb. This could lead to an erroneous spelling, too, i.e. _seer _instead of _ser _also in case of "to be".

(The DRAE reports the verb _seer_, as archaism, both in the meaning of to be and to sit: 1. ser, 2. estar sentado)


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## Outsider

jmartins said:


>


There is a tendency to use the present instead of the future indicative, in Spanish as well as Portuguese, I believe. (Actually, this is common cross-linguistically, and found in the other languages mentioned in this thread.)

As for the conditional, while in modern Spanish it is not replaced by the imperfect indicative as frequently as happens in European Portuguese, in Spanish, historically as well as today, it is frequently conflated with the imperfect _subjunctive_.

So my suggestion -- which I have not had the chance to verify -- is that the future and the conditional might have been late additions to Spanish and Portuguese, borrowed from other Romance languages rather than developed directly from Latin.



CapnPrep said:


> This shows that the link between the future/conditional and the infinitive is very strong in Portuguese, stronger than in the other Romance varieties. So it actually argues against Outsider's suggestion, that the future/conditional of _ser_ might have a different origin from the infinitive (e.g. borrowed from French or Italian).


That's an interesting observation, but I disagree with your conclusion. As a matter of fact the forms of the future and the conditional with detached and infixed pronouns (mesoclisis) are clearly confined to high registers today (the spoken language tends to avoid them even in Portugal; and of course Brazilians find them rather alien). Perhaps this has always been the case!


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## jmx

Outsider said:


> As for the conditional, while in modern Spanish it is not replaced by the imperfect indicative as frequently as happens in European Portuguese, in Spanish, historically as well as today, it is frequently conflated with the imperfect _subjunctive_.


Using the imperfect subjunctive instead of the conditional is rather 'high register', and limited to a short number of verbs. Using the conditional instead of the imperfect subjunctive, on the other hand, is common for 'low registers' in places like Bilbao or Buenos Aires, for example "lo haría si podría".


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## francisgranada

Outsider said:


> ...  So my suggestion -- which I have not had the chance to verify -- is that the future and the conditional might have been late additions to Spanish and Portuguese, borrowed from other Romance languages rather than developed directly from Latin ...


In theory, I could accept this as a possible hypothesis/explanation, but it seems to me a bit "strong", i.e. a relatively "radical" influence on the grammar of the Iberian Romance. Can we suppose/admit such an ifluence of Italian or French on the Iberian Romance from a historical point of view? 

At the moment, a common heritage from the "Protoromance" seems to me a more plausible hypothesis. This discussion leads necessarily to a more general question: where do the compuond tenses in the Romance languages come from? But this is evidently a question for a separate thread ...   

However, borrowing or not, it does not answer the original question: the etymology/origin of the stem "sar/ser" in Italian (and in the other Romance languages). Eventually, I'd like to "hear" your opinions on my prevoius post (#12), in context of the supposed different origin of the Iberoromance _ser-_ and the Italian/French _sar-/ser-._


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## CapnPrep

Outsider said:


> So my suggestion -- which I have not had the chance to verify -- is that the future and the conditional might have been late additions to Spanish and Portuguese, borrowed from other Romance languages rather than developed directly from Latin.


Please report back if you find any evidence to back this up. Future and conditional forms are used frequently in the earliest Spanish and Galician-Portuguese texts, so maybe you meant "late within the Proto-Romance period", although I don't see how this could possibly be proven, and I very much doubt that their status as high-register borrowed forms would have been maintained continuously for 1000 years…


francisgranada said:


> At the moment, a common heritage from the "Protoromance" seems to me a  more plausible hypothesis. This discussion leads necessarily to a more  general question: where do the compuond tenses in the Romance languages  come from? But this is evidently a question for a separate thread ...


There is already (at least) one:

Date of formation of "infinitive + avoir" future in French (and the Romance languages)?


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