The vowel-system that developed in course of time is thus as follows:—
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In the department of flexion we find less radical changes. The genitive was the first case to disappear. In general its functions were usurped by the preposition de. But for the possessive sense the dative was adopted, cf. Hic Requiescunt Membra ad Duos Fratres, in an inscription from Gaul. The accusative serves for the case after prepositions under all circumstances, and therefore even in places where the older language used the ablative, e.g. magister cum suos discentes in a Pompeian inscription. Nouns of the third declension with monosyllabic nominative, e. g. lens, stirps, ars, &c., form a dissyllabic nominative, e.g. lentis, stirpis, &c. The dividing line between masculine and neuter, at all times doubtful, is frequently broken down, especially in the singular, e.g. cubitum instead of cubitus, and there are converse cases. The absorption of the fourth declension by the second is almost complete. In the declension of the pronouns the genitives ipsuius, illuius, dat. ipsui, illui, fem. illaeius, illaei, are found in several inscriptions, but do not belong to the common language, since, as we have already said, they are not at home in the Iberian peninsula. On the other hand, all the Romance languages show that *eo took the place of ego. The use of ille as personal pronoun, and also of ipse, and of both these forms as articles, dates from ancient times. We find a parallel to the weakening of these demonstratives in the amalgamation of the pronominal combinations to be found as early as Plautus with ecce, eccum, which results in new forms, e.g. ecceille (0. Fr. cil, Mod. Fr. celui) or eccuille (Ital. quegli, Sp. aquel); ecceiste (Fr. ce- (t)); eccuiste (Ital. questo, Sp. aqueste). In the verb-system, a characteristic change is the disappearance of the future and passive forms, the explanation of the phenomenon in both cases being psychological rather than formal. Popular language is not familiar with the future, and replaces it by the present—or, more strictly speaking, the vulgar person deals only with the present or the past. The case of the passive is similar. The transposition of active into passive is too complicated a process for the simple mind. The object of the action remains the object; when the subject of the action is not known, they resorted to the indefinite third person plural, e.g. vendunt casam is the popular mode of expressing domus venditur. And further, the perfect amatus sum was replaced by amatus fui, since fui was a perfect and could now take over the function of a present. For the moment, all other tenses and moods of the verb were preserved, only of the infinite forms, the gerundive, perfect infinitive and the two supines disappeared. Of the gerund nothing remained but the ablative. In compensation, however, we soon find a form habeo cantatum springing up beside cantavi in use as perfect, e.g. litteras scriptas habeo meant in the first instance, "I possess written letters," with nothing implied as to who wrote the letters; but later this usage is limited to cases where the owner is also ' the originator of the state of things expressed in the participle, and thus it attains to the force of a perfect.
There is little change in the formation of individual verb-forms. It is natural that the infinitives esse, velle, posse, being exceptional, should have been brought into line with all the rest. This was done by simply adding -re on to esse (Ital. essere, Fr. être), while the other two were constructed from the forms of the verb whose ending was accented, or from the perfect, e.g. volebam, potebam, volui, potui, gave rise to *volere, *potere, on the analogy of docebam, docui, monebam, monui, nocebam, nocui, &c.; with infinitives, docere, monere, nocere, &c. (cf. Ital. volere, potere, Fr. vouloir, pouvoir, Sp. and Port. poder, Rum. urea, putea). In other infinitives there is much confusion, especially as between -ēre, and -ĕre verbs, noticed by the Latin grammarians themselves; we have evidence, too, that at an early stage the present forms in -io, -iam led to a confusion of the -ire and -ĕre conjugation, e.g. Plautus has morire (Ital. morire, Fr. mourir, Sp. morir, Rum. murí); Lucretius has cupire; Cato has fodire, &c. For the rest we may note as important that perfect-forms without u-, such as -asti, -astis, -arunt, infected the first person singular, e.g. -ai instead of -avi. A new type in -idi arose on the model of vendidi, and then affected other verbs in -ndere, e.g, descendidi (in Gellius), prendidi (in the grammarian Probus) and in general verbs of the third conjugation. But its spread was slow, so that it can scarcely be said to have been common to all the languages.
In the formation of words the popular language probably had far greater freedom than the written language. We find not only a marked preference for diminutives in -ulus and -ellus, but many other types are established, or new ones created. And as the chief ones we must mention the post-verbalia (nouns constructed out of verbs). Thus pugnare, being itself derived from pugnum, then produces pugna (on the pattern of planta, plantare), and these formations soon became extremely common, and not only in a- verbs, but also in ĕre-verbs, cf. in particular dolus, "grief" (not to be confused with the ancient dolus, "craft"), C.I.L. x. 4510 (Rum. dor, Ital. duolo, Fr. deuil, Sp. duelo). As examples of other types we have -ura beside -or, which we can trace back to ardura, a contamination of ardor and arsura, which extended to fervura; also to strictura beside strictus; directura beside directus, when the old participles had separated both in form and in meaning from the verbal-system and had become adjectives, whose t was felt to be part of the stem. Another feature of the verb is the gradual retreat of old simple formations in favour of derivatives from the participle, e.g. cantare, adjutare, ausare, &c., in place of canere, adjuvare, audere; then for denominatives -icare and the Gr. -izare (Ital. -eggiare, Fr. -oyer, Sp. -ear) which, coming in with Christianity, was soon added on to Latin stems, e.g. (in Fulgentius) citherizantium aut tibizantium.
Among points of syntax we may single out the replacing of infinitival sentences (following verbs of feeling, seeing, hearing, wishing) by clauses with ut, quod or quia, whence Ital. che, Fr. que. The latter particle spread most rapidly, and soon took precedence over the other conjunctions, not only in the cases just mentioned, but in introducing object-, subject- and final-clauses.
It is in the vocabulary that it is most difficult to define the relations of the common and the literary language. So much of the Latin vocabulary as appears over the whole Romance area comes of course from the everyday language which was used from the mouth of the Ebro to that of the Danube, but it is by no means all. It is more interesting to inquire whether anything can be reconstructed from Romance, and, if so, how much? The existence of a form aiutare, for example, mentioned above (Ital. ajutare, Fr. aider, Sp. ayudar, Rum, aiutá) and appearing in all the Romance languages, is indisputable. Between Fr. grolle ("crow"), Lyon. grola, Gascon. agraulo, Tirol. grolo, and (with change of gender) Apul. raulu, Rum. graur, the connexion, both in form and meaning, is so close that one is led to assume a common basis for all these words. This basis is *graulus, -a, and it is safe to assume that such a word goes back to Latin, though remembering that it was not found in the western regions. Rum. aflá, Sic. asciari, Sp. hallar, Port. achar, Gris. aflár, Dalm. afluár, "to find," all point to afflare, and in this case, too, the change in meaning may be safely ascribed to Latin, only in this case Gaul is not included. Rum. aripă, Fr. aube, Prov. aubo, Sp. alabe, "paddle-board," in Rum. meaning also "wing," and in Sp. also "the wickerwork on both sides of a vehicle," in Port. "the wing of a parapet," point to a form *alapa, which meant "wing " and which must have belonged to the vulgar language, even though no trace of it survives in Italy. Many other points could be enumerated, but problems are involved which have as yet hardly been taken up.[1]
In dealing with the division of this common language into a number of individual languages there are still further points of view to be considered. Before we can touch upon these, we must first take a general survey of these languages. There are altogether nine—Rumanian, Dalmatian, Sardinian, Italian, Raeto-Romanic, French, Provençal, Spanish and Portuguese. Of these nine languages, Dalmatian is now extinct, and even what we learn of it from the ancients is very meagre. On the one hand, Ragusa and the plains of Dalmatia never attained the degree of independence in literature which would have brought about a floruit in the language such as Provençal has to show. Neither, on the other hand, was its political independence stable enough, nor was it sufficiently remote to escape intercourse with the rest of the world, like the Raeto-Romanic dialects. The hordes of Slavs pressing forward from the inner regions of the hinterland soon put an end to the Romanic civilization, first in the country and then in the towns. And when the Venetians, who were, both in point of culture and of commerce and of politics, on a higher level, regained their power over the Dalmatians by occasional conquests, chiefly over the cities, the result was of course all in favour of the Venetian dialect. On the island of Veglia alone there were still living about the middle of the 19th century a few people who still spoke Old Dalmatian. The last of these is now dead. Our approximate notions of this language are gleaned from the speech of these natives of Veglia, from a few more ancient notes, place-names, proper names and from the Romance elements in the Servo-Croatian dialect of Ragusa.[2] We may begin by reducing these nine languages to seven groups—Dacian, Dalmatian, Sardinian, Italic, Raetic, Gallic and Iberian. The most striking peculiarity of the first three of these groups is the absence of Germanic words in the vocabulary. In other words, they were withdrawn from the influence of the general "Average-Latin" before the beginning of the more decided permeation of Latin by Germanic elements. There are other signs of their antiquity. In Central Sardinian c before e, i, and
