ser/ir preterite

[shoobydoowap]

¡Buenas tardes! My question is in regard to ser/ir in the preterite tense. I realize they both are identical (fui, fuiste, fue, fuimos, fuisteis, fueron), but I'm wondering why are they identical? Is there some particular reason? In Latin, the equivalent verbs are different in the preterite. Is there some historical reason these two are different? Some linguistic reason? I'm just curious. Thanks!

 

[Juana la Loca]

¡Buenas tardes! My question is in regard to ser/ir in the preterite tense. I realize they both are identical (fui, fuiste, fue, fuimos, fuisteis, fueron), but I'm wondering why are they identical? Is there some particular reason? In Latin, the equivalent verbs are different in the preterite. Is there some historical reason these two are different? Some linguistic reason? I'm just curious. Thanks!

Simplemente son idénticos. En ese tiempo se conjugan igual
¿Por qué en inglés es igual "ser" (to be) y "estar" (to be)? Cosas que pasan...
En serio, lo he buscado y no hay ninguna curiosidad al respecto... simplemente es así...
Es como muchos de vuestros verbos irregulares... ¿Por qué son iguales en presente, pasado y participio? (run, run, run - read, read, read - put, put, put... etc)

 

[Cracker Jack]

Simplemente son idénticos. En ese tiempo se conjugan igual
¿Por qué en inglés es igual "ser" (to be) y "estar" (to be)? Cosas que pasan...
En serio, lo he buscado y no hay ninguna curiosidad al respecto... simplemente es así...
Es como muchos de vuestros verbos irregulares... ¿Por qué son iguales en presente, pasado y participio? (run, run, run - read, read, read - put, put, put... etc)

Hola shooby. Well, it's not only in presente e indefinido but in all moods that both forms are identical.

Juana, sólo en español existe el uso de ser (to be) y estar (to be). En otros idiomas, ser y estar utilizan un sólo verbo.

 

[dakotabrett]

Juana, sólo en español existe el uso de ser (to be) y estar (to be).

En portugués también existe..

 

[Outsider]

"Ser" y "estar" también existen en catalán. Y otras lenguas romances tienen verbos análogos, aunque con uso más restricto, o significados más distintos. Fíjense.

 

[clevermizo]

¡Buenas tardes! My question is in regard to ser/ir in the preterite tense. I realize they both are identical (fui, fuiste, fue, fuimos, fuisteis, fueron), but I'm wondering why are they identical? Is there some particular reason? In Latin, the equivalent verbs are different in the preterite. Is there some historical reason these two are different? Some linguistic reason? I'm just curious. Thanks!

The preterite of ser is easy to explain in form. The preterite of ser comes directly from the Latin preterite of esse: fui, fuisti, fuit, etc.

The problem with the case of ir is that it is actually diachronically composed of more than one verb:

It takes its present tense/present subjunctive from Latin vadere: vado, vadis, vadit...
It takes its infinitive, participial forms and imperfect past from Latin ire.
It takes its preterite, imperfect subjunctive from Latin esse as above.
Its future/conditional are native Romance constructions built on the infinitive with suffixes.

So the question is not why do ser and ir have the same preterite forms, but rather, why did the verb "to go" in the evolution of Spanish adopt the preterite froms of the verb "to be."

As to this, I will look into it but I do not have an answer as of yet.

 

[shoobydoowap]

Ahh, thanks so much for the replies! Outsider, gracias por el enlace!

 

[Idiomático]

En portugués también existe..

Y en italiano: essere, stare.

 

[stooge1970]

The preterite of ser is easy to explain in form. The preterite of ser comes directly from the Latin preterite of esse: fui, fuisti, fuit, etc.

The problem with the case of ir is that it is actually diachronically composed of more than one verb:

It takes its present tense/present subjunctive from Latin vadere: vado, vadis, vadit...
It takes its infinitive, participial forms and imperfect past from Latin ire.
It takes its preterite, imperfect subjunctive from Latin esse as above.
Its future/conditional are native Romance constructions built on the infinitive with suffixes.

So the question is not why do ser and ir have the same preterite forms, but rather, why did the verb "to go" in the evolution of Spanish adopt the preterite froms of the verb "to be."

As to this, I will look into it but I do not have an answer as of yet.

This reminds me of anomalous verbs, which I learned about while studying Old English, in which one verb takes its forms from two or more other verbs. It happened with "to be" in English also. The present conjugation and preterite conjugation come from at least 2 different verbs.

 

[clevermizo]

This reminds me of anomalous verbs, which I learned about while studying Old English, in which one verb takes its forms from two or more other verbs. It happened with "to be" in English also. The present conjugation and preterite conjugation come from at least 2 different verbs.

It's a common occurrence in Indo-European linguistics.We also have the verb "go" which takes its past in "went" from the original past tense of the verb "to wend."

In Romance languages, the verb "to go" is almost always this way: Almost all the Romance languages use a present tense from "vadere," but there are plenty of differences in the preferred roots for the perfective past forms and the infinitive.

 

[stooge1970]

It's a common occurrence in Indo-European linguistics.We also have the verb "go" which takes its past in "went" from the original past tense of the verb "to wend."

In Romance languages, the verb "to go" is almost always this way: Almost all the Romance languages use a present tense from "vadere," but there are plenty of differences in the preferred roots for the perfective past forms and the infinitive.

It's pretty fascinating, isn't it?

 

[clevermizo]

It's pretty fascinating, isn't it?

Yeah, it is. It's hard to tell what causes what to happen though. However, the neat thing that we can use information from that for is reconstruction. For example, because almost all Romance languages used a present tense from vadere, it's a pretty good guess that this present tense was stable in the spoken Latin before it left the Italian peninsula, and enables to us to stab at what a late spoken Latin might have sounded like. Other phenomena though (such as the future subjunctive in Portuguese and older Spanish) are localized to specific regions.

Edit: Interestingly, I think that the use of the forms fui-fuiste-etc. for the preterite of "to go" is unique to the Iberian peninsula. The simple past in French and Italian is stable according to the appropriate infinitive in each case (aller or andare). The punctual nature of the preterite can overlap with "to be" as well, as "I was there" and "I went there" are not entirely unrelated concepts. "Fui a España una vez" does not so much describe the nature of the locomotion as much as the nature of consequently having been in Spain. That's just my conjecture though. The fact that this did not occur outside of Iberia is probably just probability. This doesn't change the fact that they are still different verbs and have different government of prepositions.

 

[Forero]

The same Indoeuropean root appears in both Spanish fui, from the Latin perfect, and English been, used in forming perfect tenses. "Been" seems to stand for "gone" only in the perfect tenses: "I have been to Paris", "I had been to Paris". (We would not say "I was to Paris" or "I am to Paris.")

That may be just coincidence, but I find it interesting. More to the point, this page mentions the change of meaning of fuerunt in campum from "they were (on their way) into the country" to "they went into the country" in Classical Latin. The preposition changed from "in" to "ad" ("Fueron al campo") in Vulgar Latin times when the "-um" ending became confused with the "-o" ending ("Fuerunt in campo" = "They were in the country").

 

[mrule]

At the risk of creating a false folk-etymology, I wonder if the use of "fue" etc. in the preterit of "ir" results from the conceptual similarity of "was" and "went", under influence of another conceptually related verb "fugar" ( flee ), which in the preterit resembles "fui" etc.. if you make the g silent ( or pronounce the g like a vowel ). This is an utter fabrication of course, but it helps me remember.