48 J' A. Fontaine, 



latest traces of the Spanish reflexive verb conjugated with 

 scr are to be found. We see, then, that as long as the French 

 and Spanish languages can be compared, the opposite pro- 

 cess of development in this particular took place. Thus, 

 while the Latin or conservative influence was predominating 

 in the French, the modern tendency was predominating in 

 Spanish. The explanation of this is plain enough. We know 

 that the southwest languages of the Romance family (the 

 Spanish and Portuguese) have a development totally inde- 

 pendent of that of the northeast group (the French and Ital- 

 ian). One of these characteristics is found in the way these 

 different languages have treated their verbal system. Where- 

 as, on the one hand, the French, and yet more the Italian, 

 have striven against the influence of analogy to keep alive 

 the strong Latin conjugation, whether by retaining original 

 Latin strong verbs, or by making weak Latin verbs strong, the 

 Spanish and Portuguese have, on the other hand, transferred, 

 we may say, the whole of the Latin strong conjugation to the 

 weak conjugation, thus yielding to the unifying power of anal- 

 ogy. Thus one may see how independently each language or 

 each group of languages develops. And we must not wonder 

 that the Spanish and Portuguese use habei" and ter with their 

 reflexive verbs, and the French and Italian esse. Even in 

 these two languages the development of the use of esse was 

 not totally accordant. From the very beginning the French 

 made no difference whether the reflexive pronoun that accom- 

 panied the verb was in the accusative case or dative ; every- 

 where etrc was made use of. The Italian, on the contrary, 

 used at first avere whenever the reflexive pronoun was in a 

 dative case, and essere when it was in the accusative case ; 

 but later on averc yielded to esscrc in the dative case also. 

 I have already mentioned above the great freedom of the 

 Romance languages in older times to express or to leave out 

 the reflexive pronoun without altering the meaning of the 

 verb. How shall we account for that peculiarity, which is 

 common to all the Romance languages .'' Here, again, I 

 attribute it to two tendencies : the conservative, which was 



78 



