Formae Passivae Verbi Esse

[diaphanus]

"Formae Passivae Verbi Esse"
"Passive Forms of the Verb Esse"

I have been thinking of what the passive forms of the Latin verb esse might be.

Some are likely to point out that these forms would not have any real meaning, and while they might be right, I am more interested in the morphology of these hypothetical forms than in their possible or impossible meanings.
I should make this clear: the forms that I have here are really what esse would be if it were actually a deponent verb.

Notes on the Verb Esse

1. The root of esse is ES, and its present stem is es-. The verb is one of the “irregular” verbs in Latin, and like the other “irregular” verbs in the language, it has both athematic and thematic forms.
   
   
2. The athematic forms were formed by adding the personal endings directly to the root (used as the stem): es, est, estis. The present stem of esse has the thematic form s-, and this form was used to produce the thematic present indicative forms and the subjunctive forms: sum, sumus, sunt, sim, sīmus, sint. The e of the stem drops out when a vowel appears before the stem in order to avoid an intervocalic -s-, which becomes -r-, as seen in the imperfect and future forms: eram (for es-a-m), ero (for es-e/o-ō). Esum, said to be an older form of sum, comes from a time before the establishment of that intervocalic -s- rule. In the present indicative system, the s- appears before the thematic vowel e/o (usually appearing as i/u in Latin), and the personal endings are added (along with any necessary phonetic change): sum (si/u-ō-m for se/o-ō-m), sumus (si/u-mus for se/o-mos).
   
   
3. There was a tendency for the endings of these “irregular” verbs to regularize into third-conjugation endings, but by the time of Classical Latin, these verbs had regularized in different stages. Some of these verbs have forms that are more regular (according to the third conjugation) than others:
   
   
   1. Ferēns, ferentem, with regularized -e-.
      
      
   2. iēns with regularized -e-, but euntem with unregularized thematic vowel -u-.
      
      
   3. Volēns, volentem with regularized -e-, but derivative voluntās (volunt-, the older stem of volēns + -tās) with unregularized thematic vowel -u-.
      
      
   4. Regularized forms ferimus, ferēns, but unregularized athematic forms fers, fert.
4. Some notes on the personal endings:
   
   
   1. The passive endings are -r (1st sg.), -ris (or -re) (2nd sg.), -tur (3rd sg.), mur (1st pl.), -minī (2nd pl.), -ntur (3rd pl.). The endings -r and -ntur force any long vowel immediately before them to appear short; whenever -r is used in the present tense, and the vowel before it is either a stem vowel of one of the four regular conjugations or the thematic vowel, -o- (shortened version of the thematic personal ending -ō) always appears before that -r; -ris forces an -i- (short i) before it to become -e- (short e), as in regeris instead of regiris; by assimilation -ris should become -sis before -s-, as the -re becames -se before es- to form esse, and -rem becomes -sem before es- to form essem.
      
      
   2. The stem vowel of one of the four regular conjugations or the thematic vowel contracts with the -ō in the first person singular, but the corresponding form of esse is not usually *sō as it ought to be (like volō, eō, ferō, amō, regō, etc.), but rather sum, with an extra -m. This -m is a remnant of an older form of conjugation, the original athematic personal ending -mi. Most of the other verbs do not use it (so we do not write volum, eum, ferum, amum, regum). Essentially, sum is the product of shoehorning an originally athematic form into a thematic one. The thematic vowel contracted with the personal ending -ō, and this -ō before -m became -om, resulting in som. But since final -om in Classical Latin regularly becomes -um, som became sum. (*Alexander Allen says that sō, without the -m, appears on inscriptions.)
      
      
   3. The form es is for ess, comprising the athematic form es- and the personal ending -s, but -ss in the final position simplifies to -s.
      
      
   4. The third person plural form sumus should be simus according to the process of regularization, but since -i- and -u- in that particular environment could be interchanged, and the forms sum and sunt were existing at the same time, the -u- form was taken instead of -i- to match. Conseqently, in the present system, the thematic vowel appears as -u- before -m and -nt.
5. Esse has the future participle futūrus, formed by adding -tūro- to the root FU. From this form may be derived the supine stem fut- and the past participle futus. While it is true that future participles, supine stems, and past participles differ in a few verbs (e.g. mortuus, moriturus), it is the regular procedure to determine the supine stem and past participle from the future participle whenever no difference can be shown.

Forms

Indicative





Subjunctive





Notes on Individual Forms

• sor: s- (thematic form of the stem es- in the present tense) + -o- (form of the thematic vowel i/u, e/o used before the personal ending) + -ō- (indicative 1st-person personal ending for thematic forms of verb stems) + -r (passive ending); cf. feror (from fer-i/u-ō-r, fer-e/o-ō-r). In thematic present indicative forms like this, it is actually easier to think of -or as one compound personal ending of the -ō- and -r. Sor should not be sur because the -ō- before the -r never becomes -u- in thematic forms. It is not that -r is added to su- to make sur, but rather it is -or that is added to s- to make sor. We use amor, doceor, regor, feror as passive forms in the indicative present, not amar, docer, reger, ferer.
  
  
• essis: es- (athematic form of the stem es- in the present tense) + -ris (passive ending, -r- assimilated to -s- in es-).
  
  
• suminī: s- (thematic form of the stem es- in the present tense) + -u- (form of the thematic vowel i/u, e/o used instead of the regularized i for the present forms of esse before -m) + -minī (passive ending). The regularized form should be siminī, just as sumus should have been regularized to simus, but suminī takes the -u- instead of -i- for the same reason that sumus took that vowel (see above for details). The vowel that is taken before the personal ending -minī is the same as that taken before the personal endings -mus and -mur, and so the analogy works like ferimus, amāmus, docēmus, regimus, audīmus, adīmus, damus, sumus : ferimur, amāmur, docēmur, regimur, audīmur, adīmur, damur, sumur : feriminī, amāminī, docēminī, regiminī, audīminī, adīminī, daminī, N, where the N is suminī, not siminī.

And these are passive forms, not meanings, and therefore are deponent forms.