Conjugations from Classical Latin to modern Castilian

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Classical Latin conjugations: active voice

Here is, in a nutshell, how the regular three-conjugation system of modern Castilian evolved from Classical Latin:

Present Indicative

1st (-ar) conjugation: Phonologically, the transition is very straightforward: short C.L. Ŭ > o, and final T in Latin is lost. The only change is atis > aís - ades is the intermediate stage, or our missing link.

2nd (-er) conjugation: In this case, Classical Latin's second and third conjugations had to fuse. In the case of deber, however fusion is less apparent (DEBĔO does not produce the expected yod); debo is produced through analogy with RUMPO > rompo. For the remainder of the present indicative, however, endings reflect complete adhesion to expected phonological development.

-UNT > -ENT (>en) across the board.

In Old Castilian, the second person plural was - edes (e.g. debedes > debeis).

Intervocalic consonants are lost through frication:

LEGO > leo

CREDO > creo

-er verbs are not merely descendants of Classical Latin's second conjugation; e.g. veo < veyo (Old Castilian) < VIDEO.

There are one or two instances where, in a sense,  C.L. Ĕ has survived into Castilian:

'TĔNĔO > tengo

'VALĔO > valgo

In the above examples it can be argued that the yod produced by Ĕ became a velar consonant.

In Classical Latin's third conjugation, the first person singular of the present indicative ends in -IO (see tables, links at the top of this page)...

'FACERE > FACĬO

'CAPERE > 'CAPĬO

The yod was abandoned, just as was the short Ĕ of Latin's second conjugation:

'FACĬO > hago

(c.f. faccio, 'facho' - Italian; façio, fasiu - Portuguese - yod retained).

In the case of CAPĬO > quepo, the yod raises the preceding 'a' to an 'e'.

3rd (-ir) conjugation: Derived from Classical Latin's 4th conjugation (see tables).

The third person plural of C.L.'s present indicative became ENT and not IUNT in Iberian vulgar Latin before the final T was lost to produce -en in Castilian. For our purposes here, we can consider C.L.'s second person singular to follow ĪS > ĬS (it was actually developed by ĬT); otherwise -es and -e are obvious phonological progressions. -ides in Old Castilian was intermediate:

ĬTIS > ides > eis.

In the case of the first person singular, the yod generated in Classical Latin is lost through analogy with other conjugations, but the preceding vowel is raised wherever possible to form radical-changing verbs:

'VĔSTĬO > visto

'VĔNĬO > vengo (c.f. tengo)

'SALĬO > salgo (c.f. valgo)

Imperfect Indicative

The first conjugation is phonologically very straightforward, but in the first and second persons plural an analogical stress shift is found throughout most of Iberia:

amabámus > amábamos

amabátis > amábais

There is no stress shift, however in Gallego. Nor in Italian:

amavámo

amaváte

The second person Castilian plural -aves did not become -ais universally until the seventeenth century.

Classical Latin's second and third person imperfect indicatives are behave in the same way:

-ea emerges because intervocalic B in Latin is weak, and ea > ia where the first vowel is raised in hiatus (c.f. VĬA > [βea] > vía).

As for Classical Latin's fourth conjugation, the analogical form ĪBAM < IEBAM existed even in Latin itself, and can be found in the works of Ovid, for example. The transition to ía in Castilian is obvious enough; there is no raising in hiatus here - ĪBA > ía in just one, straightforward move. In Aragonese, however, the B survived:

IRE > ĪBAM > iba

Also, meter: meteba, escribir: escribiba.

In Old Castilian, the pattern was actually somewhat different: although we have -ía for the first person singular, the rest of the tense runs, -iés, -ié/í (thirteenth-century variant), iémos, iédis, ién. Although there´s no actual written accent, stress on the e is produced by analogy with ie diphthongs, generally.

ĔRA(M) > era with no diphthongisation in Castilian, but we find yera in both Aragonese and Leonese.

VĬDĒRE > veer > ver: veía actually makes sense if we look at the intermediate stage here, but we do find vía in poetry, dialect and popular usage.

Latin Perfect > Castilian Preterite

The 'pasado indefinido' exists alongside the 'pretérito' in Castilian, which became the perfect tense elsewhere. Italian's 'pasato definito' does the same job.

In Castilian, Latin's VI in AVISTI(S)/IVISTI(S) is discarded initially, and the rest follows through analogy:

AMAI, AMAMUS became amé, amamos in later Latin­; ASTI > aste and the third person singular -ó ending in Castilian evolved via Latin´s AMAV(I)T. AMARUNT > amaron. Old Castilian, however, produced divergent forms through analogy with the first person singular: the -é was influential enough to give rise to -este, -esti and -est, all alternatives for modern Castilian's -aste in the first conjugation second person singular (ameste, amesti, amest). We find also -emos (e.g. amemos) to denote the past tense of modern popular speech, dialect and Old Castilian alike.

Latin's second and third conjugations coalesced to form, in Western Iberia and other parts of Romania, its own, independent preterite based on e, but in Castilian we have (e.g.) rompí, rompiste, rompió, again through analogy.

As far as Latin´s fourth conjugation is concerned, all the intervocalic Vs disappeared, but ĪVIT > IVT (IUT) > ió, by analogy with endings of the first conjugation; U opened to o and was accompanied by a stress-shift. Divergent Old Castilian forms such as -ieste(s) and -iemos rather than -imos have survived in dialect, which in the latter case is quite confusing, since it is also the form for Castilian's imperfect.