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



## englishman

Does anyone know roughly when the current form of the French future tense came into use i.e. the "infinitive + avoir" form ?


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## Conchita57

Do you mean: 'aller + infinitive', as in, 'On va manger un morceau'?

Anyway, I wouldn't be able to answer your question. Let's hope someone else can.


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## Outsider

I think what Englishman means is the simple future:

je parlerai = parler + ai
tu parleras = parler + as
il parlera = parler + a
nous parlerons = parler + (av)ons
vous parlerez = parler + (av)ez
ils parleront = parler + ont​This is a very old transformation that probably goes back to Vulgar Latin, and is found in other Romance languages, too. So, it should be, very roughly, slightly over a thousand years old.


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## englishman

Outsider said:


> I think what Englishman means is the simple future:
> je parlerai = parler + ai
> tu parleras = parler + as
> il parlera = parler + a
> nous parlerons = parler + (av)ons
> vous parlerez = parler + (av)ez
> ils parleront = parler + ont​This is a very old transformation that probably goes back to Vulgar Latin, and is found in other Romance languages, too. So, it should be, very roughly, slightly over a thousand years old.



That is indeed what I was referring to (aller + infinitive is the futur prochain). Does this form exist in Spanish and Italian ? I don't speak either, so I have no idea. Where do you get the figure of 1000 years from ? The date of divergence of French from Spanish/Italian/Vulgar Latin ?


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## Conchita57

Oh, I had never thought of the simple future that way.  What a handy rule for students of French!


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## Outsider

englishman said:


> That is indeed what I was referring to (aller + infinitive is the futur prochain). Does this form exist in Spanish and Italian ? I don't speak either, so I have no idea.


The _futur proche_, or the simple future? For the simple future, see here. 



englishman said:


> Where do you get the figure of 1000 years from ? The date of divergence of French from Spanish/Italian/Vulgar Latin ?


Yes, that's it.


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## mgwls

I hadn't noticed that before, but yes, that does happen in Spanish too.

futuro simple = infinitivo + haber (in the present tense) (Except, it seems, in the 2nd person plural 'vosotros' form)

_yo_ amaré > amar + he
_tu/vos_ amarás > amar + has
_él/usted_ amará > amar + ha
_nosotros_ amaremos > amar + hemos
_vosotros_ amaréis > amar + habéis
_ellos/ustedes_ amarán > amar + han


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## Outsider

mgwls said:


> futuro simple = infinitivo + haber (in the present tense) (Except, it seems, in the 2nd person plural 'vosotros' form)
> 
> _yo_ amaré > amar + he
> _tu/vos_ amarás > amar + has
> _él/usted_ amará > amar + ha
> _nosotros_ amaremos > amar + hemos
> _vosotros_ amaréis > amar + (hab)éis
> _ellos/ustedes_ amarán > amar + han


I believe _heis_ is an old variant of _habéis_. I know that _hemos_ has the archaic variant _habemos_, at least.


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## Broca's Area

englishman said:


> Does anyone know roughly when the current form of the French future tense came into use i.e. the "infinitive + avoir" form ?


 
Hi, the first text written in a French variety we possess reads: _salvarai _"I will save/help" and _prindrai _"I will take" (_Oaths of Strasbourg_, 842 A.D.).


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## englishman

mgwls said:


> I hadn't noticed that before, but yes, that does happen in Spanish too.
> 
> futuro simple = infinitivo + haber (in the present tense) (Except, it seems, in the 2nd person plural 'vosotros' form)
> 
> _yo_ amaré > amar + he
> _tu/vos_ amarás > amar + has
> _él/usted_ amará > amar + ha
> _nosotros_ amaremos > amar + hemos
> _vosotros_ amaréis > amar + habéis
> _ellos/ustedes_ amarán > amar + han



That's pretty interesting. It suggests that this form of the future was already in use before French and Spanish diverged sufficiently to be different lanaguages. I wonder if it occurs in the Occitan languages too ?


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## Outsider

As far as I know, the only languages where it may be absent are the ones in the Eastern Romance branch, like Romanian.

In some languages of Italy (like Sicilian) it seems the simple future used to exist in the past, but has been replaced with a compound form.

These remarks are based largely on the content of this Wikipedia article.


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## englishman

Broca's Area said:


> Hi, the first text written in a French variety we possess reads: _salvarai _"I will save/help" and _prindrai _"I will take" (_Oaths of Strasbourg_, 842 A.D.).



Right. This reminded me of the book "Le français dans tous les sens", which in fact mentions this exact example. The author suggests it must have developed earlier than the 2nd half of the 1st millenium AD, as it's common to all romance languages. I guess it must come from Vulgar Latin.


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## brian

Same in Italian:

(io) _parlerò > parlare + ho
_(tu) _parlerai > parlare + hai
_(lui/lei) _parlerà > parlare + ha
_(noi) _parleremo > parlare + abbi(amo)
_(voi) _parlerete > parlare + (av)ete
_(loro) _parleranno > parlare + hanno_

And _h_'s are unaspirated (i.e. phonetically non-existent) in Italian, so it's basically the exact same thing as in French.  (Well, except for "abbi*a*mo" + "parlare" > "parler*e*mo.")


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## Hulalessar

Broca's Area said:


> Hi, the first text written in a French variety we possess reads: _salvarai _"I will save/help" and _prindrai _"I will take" (_Oaths of Strasbourg_, 842 A.D.).


 
The Strasbourg Oaths need to be treated with some caution as although the date of the text is 842, the only copy dates from the 11th century. There is also the possibility that at that time the forms did not imply the future, but obligation (cf English "to have to" and Spanish "haber de").

Since the form does not exist in Romanian and Sardinian and barely caught on in Portuguese, one theory is that it developed in a prestigious form of Vulgar Latin used in Northern France and spread from there.

It is interesting to note that there is little evidence for an "infinitive + habere" in Late Latin, which continued to use the classical forms of the future tense.

One puzzle is why the form should be stressed on the ending.


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## Outsider

Hulalessar said:


> Since the form does not exist in Romanian and Sardinian and barely caught on in Portuguese [...]


I beg your pardon?! What on earth do you mean. 



Hulalessar said:


> One puzzle is why the form should be stressed on the ending.


No puzzle at all. The forms of the future simple have the same stress as the verb _avoir_ and cognates.


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## Hulalessar

Outsider said:


> I beg your pardon?! What on earth do you mean.


 
I assume you are referring to Portuguese. I don't speak that language and was relying on remembering something I had read a while ago. I went back to the book and it says:

_En el portugués hablado moderno, que apenas utiliza el futuro sintético..._

Not quite as I had remembered it!



Outsider said:


> No puzzle at all. The forms of the future simple have the same stress as the verb _avoir_ and cognates.


 
I would expect a word that had become grammaticalised to be unstressed. The real indicator of the future is the presence of the "r", so perhaps that explains it.


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## Outsider

Hulalessar said:


> I went back to the book and it says:
> 
> _En el portugués hablado moderno, que apenas utiliza el futuro sintético..._
> 
> Not quite as I had remembered it!


Yes, and I have to wonder what they meant by that _apenas_...



Hulalessar said:


> I would expect a word that had become grammaticalised to be unstressed.


Why?



Hulalessar said:


> The real indicator of the future is the presence of the "r", so perhaps that explains it.


Not really, the conditional has the "r", too.


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## SerinusCanaria3075

Hulalessar said:


> There is also the possibility that at that time the forms did not imply the future, but obligation (cf English "to have to" and Spanish "haber de").


Yes, it's all about interpretation. Different languages had (and still do) that concept.
Romanian (like it's Greek neighbor) use the auxiliary verb "*to want*" plus the verb:

Romanian: _*Voi *dormi, *Vei* dormi, *Va* dormi_...
Greek (Modern): 
_*θα* κοιμάμαι_ [tha kimáme], _*θα* κοιμάσαι_ [tha kimáse]...
_*θα* κοιμηθώ_ [tha kimithó], _*θα *κοιμηθείς_ [tha kimithís]...

Which all translate as "_I/You will sleep_".

Sardinian though uses the auxiliary "aere [*to have*]" which would be somewhat similar to the Spanish construction _"*he* de dormir"_ which eventually became _"dormir*é*":_

Sardinian:
_*appo* a drommire_, _*as* a drommire_, _*at* a drommire, *amus* a drommire..._
(_*ho* da dormire_ -> _dormir*ò*_
_*hai *da dormire -> dormir*ai*_)

Sardinian still uses _compound forms_ to form the future, despite the influence it has had by the Spanish and Italians in recent centuries.


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## CapnPrep

Hulalessar said:


> I would expect a word that had become grammaticalised to be unstressed.


That does happen a lot, of course, but a form can grammaticalize along some dimensions and not others. (Another example would be adverbs in -_mente_, which retains its original stress.) In this case of the future, shifting the stress to the left would have made these forms less distinct from other verb forms. And that was the whole "point" of developing the new forms using _habere_: the original Latin future tense wasn't distinctive enough anymore.


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## Hulalessar

Outsider said:


> Yes, and I have to wonder what they meant by that _apenas_...


 
Interesting. Are you saying the form is used regularly in spoken Portuguese? If so, it shows you can't believe everything you read in books!


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## Outsider

Oh, wait, I've been a victim of a false friend... 

Now I see what they mean! They're right, the simple future _is_ barely used in modern spoken Portuguese. But notice that that very phrasing suggests it was used _more_, not less, in the past.


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## bo-marco

Same thing in Emilian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emilian_language - http://eml.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirandules)*.*

Example in Mirandolese dialect (future tense of verb "to *sing*", cantàr + present of verb "to have"):
[mè] a cantar*ò
*[tè] at cantar*à
*[lò] al cantar*à
*[nuàtar] a cantar*ém
*[vuàtar] a cantar*ìv
*[lōr] i cantar*àṅ*


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## killerbee256

Outsider said:


> Oh, wait, I've been a victim of a false friend...
> 
> Now I see what they mean! They're right, the simple future _is_ barely used in modern spoken Portuguese. But notice that that very phrasing suggests it was used _more_, not less, in the past.


I got the feeling in Brazil it was only used in formal writing but never in colloquial speech.


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