44 J- -A- Fontaine, 



Hence we have the name of reflexive verbs given to me 

 morio, vie vivo, me vado, nie desccndo, me venio, etc., which 

 verbs have been used in a reflexive form in all the Romance 

 languages^ and are the legitimate growth and legitimate rep- 

 resentatives according to the analytical tendency of the Latin 

 verbs vivo, venio, morior, etc. 



Grammarians say that J' ai veeu,je snis inort,jc snis alle,je 

 suis Venn, je snis descendu, etc., are neuter verbs. Appar- 

 ently they are ; but before these forms arose we had je me 

 snis vecn,Je me snis moi't,je me snis alle, je me snis venn, je 

 me suis descendn, etc. ; and these verbs are nothing but re- 

 flexive verbs. When the question -of the conjugation of such 

 verbs as me vivo, me mo7'io, me venio arose, or, to speak more 

 plainly, when these verbs came to be used in all their tenses, 

 it was very easy to conjugate them in their simple tenses. 

 But in compound tenses (and here let us remember what 

 M. Chabanneau said in his Histoire, p. 5) the difficulty was 

 greatly increased. There must have been, at the time of the 

 formative period, two tendencies working in the Romance lan- 

 guages : one, the analytical, resolving the compound tenses 

 into periphrastical by combination of the auxiliary habere and 

 of the past participle of the conjugated verb. The indicative 

 present being j'V me vais,je me descends, je me pais, the com- 

 pound tenses of the preterite regularly became y^;' viai alle,je 

 mat descendn, je in ai parti. This is the most natural ex- 

 planation, and this accounts for the well-known fact that a 

 great number of French dialects still use the auxiliary avoir 

 in combination with compound tenses of reflexive verbs, and 

 that children and uneducated people do the very same thing. 

 It would be of great importance to know the relative use of 

 esse and habere in the different Romance dialects. Very 

 likely in all of them instances of the use of both auxiliaries 

 are to be found, with this difference, that they are more or 

 less abundant, according to each dialect. M. Chabanneau 

 has mentioned the fact that several dialects of France make 

 use of avoir as well as etre. I may say, that in the Parler 

 Sancerrois, and in the Berry generally, this use is very com- 



74 



