Reconstruction talk:Latin/posso

I think that Potēre should have the second conjugation, except with the present indicative stem as "poss-" instead of "pot-."

*Posso or *poteo?

@NicodeneSince this used to be *poteo, do you think the Romance forms with a -t- or -d- in the first-person singular present conjugation were later developed analogically from the infinitive? E.g. Romanian pot, Galician podo, Spanish puedo, Occitan pòdi, etc. That would make sense actually, since *poteo would presumably yield a -ț in Romanian and a -zo in Spanish. But then there's also Sicilian pozzu. Word dewd544 (talk) 22:54, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

Hi @Word dewd544. Below is a list of Romance 1SG forms presented by Rohlfs and Pittau combined with those added by various users on Wiktionary. (We'll take it on faith that they did not make up anything.)

• From possō: Italian posso, Ligurian posu, Venetian poso, Dalmatian puas, Ladin posse, Romansch poss, Portuguese posso.
  • From *posseō: Franco-Provençal pois, French puis
• From poteō: Central Italian pozo (Treia), Neapolitan pozzo, Calabrian puozzu, Sicilian pozzu, Sardinian pottho (Nuoro)
• From *potō(?): Romanian pot, Lombard pòdi (Milan), Occitan pòdi, Spanish puedo, Galician podo

I have provided possō and poteō without asterisks because, per Grandgent and Laurent, they are both attested, with the former preceding the latter by six centuries. That matches my earlier intuition that possō is probably older, as it represents a simple regularization of Latin possum rather than a new analogical form.

Incidentally, considering that we have attestations of both these 1SG forms and the infinitive potēre (per Grandgent, loc. cit.), this should probably not be a reconstructed entry at all.

If we do provide a past participle (or 'supine'), however, it will have to be with an asterisk, as there does not seem to be any attestation of *potūtus or another inflexion of it. That many Romance forms reflect a 1SG *potō (whether independently or not) may also bear mention, at least in a note. Nicodene (talk) 08:48, 11 July 2022 (UTC) Nicodene (talk) 08:48, 11 July 2022 (UTC)

It is odd that Galician and Portuguese, under this breakdown, took different Vulgar Latin forms. Which makes me think it was something later developed independently within each language. As for Old French puis, couldn't that also have come from some alteration of poteo as well, conceivably? Anyhow, yes *posso does make sense to be one of the "original" forms of this verb, since it is essentially just a regularization of possum. I'm okay with poteo being created as an attested term as well. However, it is the verb's infinitive which seems to be more relevant in terms of the Romance descendants in this case. Word dewd544 (talk) 21:32, 11 July 2022 (UTC)

@Word dewd544 According to the Real Academia Galega, Medieval Galician only had posso, which has been entirely lost in the modern language.

If we look at Modern French puis in isolation, yes, it could reflect either *posseō or poteō. The medieval forms are the tiebreaker here, as we find pois and puis in the earliest texts (as far back as the Oaths of Strasbourg), which show /s/ rather than the /ts/ expected of poteō. Similarly, Old Catalan had puix, which can only reflect *posseō. (Poteō would have yielded *pou; cf. Catalan pou < Latin pŭteum.) Nicodene (talk) 07:55, 12 July 2022 (UTC)