Old English "to be" was wesan, from Proto-Indo-European *h₂wes- "to live, dwell" and the source of was and were. The ODEE says "The orig. meaning is 'dwell, remain', and the use of this base is therefore appropriate to the imper[fect] (OE. wes, pl. wesaþ) and the [past]." Other forms of "to be" come from *h₁es-, which I've already written about.
PIE *bʰeuH- "to be, exist, grow" is the source of another Old English verb, bēon "to be", and which survives in be, been and being. *bʰeuH- is also the source of the Latin stem fu-, used in some conjugations of esse "to be", including the future participle futūrus - the source of future. In Greek, *bʰeuH- became φύω "to bring forth, make grow", and physics.
The origin of are is uncertain; the ODEE says "of unkn. origin", and the AHD says it's from *h₁er- "to move, set in motion". Old English had eart in the second person singular present indicative, and earon, earun, earan and aron as plural forms; it seems likely that these are from *h₁er- and are the source of are.
Romance languages developed another verb for "to be" from Latin stāre "to stand" (from *steh₂- "to stand"). So Italian and Spanish have 2 verbs each: stare and estar (from Latin stāre), and essere and ser (from Latin esse from *h₁es-). In French it seems that the two verbs were conflated into one: étais is from stāre and est, sont, serai are from esse.
5 comments:
I had assumed that "are" was essentially a version of "is" with rhotacism, much like the relationship between "was" and "were." But I don't know enough about the phonology of PIE and Proto-Germanic to know whether this really makes sense.
And I hadn't known about some French forms of être being from stare. I suppose that explains why French doesn't have that second "to be" verb like its sister languages do.
Actually, jon boy...
The paradigm of French être is also a hodgepodge brew of different verbs. Notice the 3ps il est which is from Latin est 'is' and also il fut.
Latin "esse" is a hodgepodge as well, which I sort of implied - the perfect is "fui, fuisti, fuit" etc. (from *bheuH-), and this is the source of "il fut" and Spanish and Italian "fui".
Right. It was my understanding that in most Indo-European languages (or at least a fair number of them), the "to be" verbs are full of suppletive forms from at least two or three different stems. I just didn't know that there were any reflexes of stare in the French verb être.
So, Glen, do you have any opinions on the origin of are?
Jon Boy: "So, Glen, do you have any opinions on the origin of are?"
Actually, no, because I too assumed that it was the result of Rhotacization from earlier *es-. I would like to see a semantic diagram showing me how "to move" conceivably becomes "to be" and any examples of such a semantic shift in other languages.
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