Use of Auxiliary Verbs in Rouiancc Lajigiiages. 43 



Romance languages, where very often one is at a loss to find 

 any difference in the meaning of a verb when accompanied 

 by a reflexive pronoun and when without it. Wishing now, 

 after these observations, to discover why the reflexive pro- 

 noun is sometimes omitted and sometimes expressed, and the 

 reasons why some languages have a.dopted the auxiliary esse 

 and some others the auxiliary habere, I must present, to begin 

 with, a few considerations on the fate of the Latin verb itself. 

 On considering what has become of the deponent and neuter 

 verbs of the Latin m coming down to the Romance languages, 

 and how they have been used, especially in the old stage of 

 these languages as purely transitive verbs (compare se vionrir, 

 mourir quelqii' uti, iuiiter qiielqit iin, etiidicrqiiclqiie cJiose,perir, 

 se pe'rij', perir quelqiie e/iose, se naitre, se vejiii'), it may be 

 assumed that all the Latin verbs that have survived in the 

 Romance languages have been handed down in an active 

 form, having an active meaning and capable of expressing a 

 transitive action. Among these verbs there was a certain 

 number that contained in themselves a reflexive idea, that is, 

 that the subject was doing the action for its own self. Such, 

 for instance, ^.re *inorio, ambiilo, i'e?iio, vado, vivo, desccndo, 

 ascendo, etc. The idea expressed by these verbs might be 

 rendered by inorio vie, aiiibiilo vie, vcnio vie, vado vie, vivo 

 vie, etc. We know that a strong analytical tendency pre- 

 sided over the formative period of the verbal system in the 

 Romance languages, and it was, no doubt, this tendency that 

 caused them to give to Latin verbs that were intransitive in 

 their synthetical state, complements, just as other comple- 

 ments were given to other verbs more intransitive in their 

 outward appearance. But since the verbs of the first cate- 

 gory, on account of the very essence of their internal mean- 

 ing (which meaning was arrived at by the disintegrating or 

 analytic genius of the new languages) were left, by general 

 consensus undoubtedly, to express an action especially for 

 che benefit of the subject itself, without going outside of it ; 

 so that no other complement could be given them but a 

 reflexive complement expressed by the pronouns nie, te, se. 



7?> 



