III. — Ou the Auxiliary Verbs in the Romance 

 Lanzuaores. 



By JOSEPH A. FONTAINE. 



DiEZ in his well-known " Grannnatik dcr Romanischen 

 Spracheu'' has treated the question of the use of the auxiliary 

 verbs in the Romance languages only in a general way, and 

 much must be added, especially as concerns their history. 

 Mr. Gessner in the Jahrbiich fiir romanische und englische 

 Sprache iind Literatiir : neue Folge, III. Band, 2. Heft, has 

 made a very interesting but somewhat complicated study of 

 esse, considered as an auxiliary verb, and has, moreover, no- 

 ticed important facts that had escaped the attention of Diez. 

 M. Camille Chabanneau in his " Histoire et Theorie dc la con- 

 jugaisoji frangaise " has devoted to the auxiliaries a few pages, 

 containing valuable suggestions as to their use ; but as a 

 general remark it may be said that he has treated this ques- 

 tion too briefly. It may be simply because a full treatment 

 was not directly included in the plan of his work. It may be 

 said also that, in a certain way, M. Chabanneau has explained 

 the use of the auxiliaries according to tendencies prevailing 

 in modern French, and has fallen into the error, common to 

 most grammarians, of trying to explain the inconsistent use 

 of the auxiliaries, especially with the so-called neuter verbs, in 

 accordance with modern usage. So far as I am aware, no one 

 has yet tried to explain the difficult problem by a thorough 

 comparison of modern usage with that of Old French. 



The main idea of M. Chabanneau is that the auxiliary is 

 nothing but the inflectional part of the main verb. Granting 

 this to be true, such a suggestion is not an historical explana- 

 tion, and does not account fuliy for the various and often in- 

 consistent uses of auxiliaries. 



Let it be admitted that at and suis are merely inflectional 



University Studies, Vol. I., No. I., July, 1888. T. I 



