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En réponse à Mangiat <mangiat@hidden.email>: > > That's the development I suggested (see my previous postings). The > form > ESSRE (<'ESSERE) is not so unlikely: think about battre, vivre, prendre: > the > final -re is a contraction of VL unstressed -ERE. The _t_ in the root > of > French e^tre is probably an intrusion: the cluster /sr/ was (and is) > not > allowed, the consonant _t_ plays the same role _b_ plays in chambre > from > CAMRA<CAMERA. > Of course it's not unlikely. It's just intriguing, and the picture is not clear enough to know for sure. > > Beware Italian has _essere_ as infinitive, but _stato_ and _stante_ as > participles (_ente_ exists, but it's a learned word used in philosophy > to > translate Latin _ens_ or Greek _o:n_). Lombard _vess_ but _staa_; > Ligurian > _esse_ but _stæto_ [stE:tu]. > In those cases it's quite clear :)) . The problem with French is that the infinitive 'estre' was already established by the time of the first written documents that we have, and -ant and -é were already productive suffixes for *all* verbs (supplanting other forms in other conjugations). So the form 'estant' could be directly coming from the verb STARE just like it could be a back formation from the infinitive 'estre', and there's no way to say which one is more likely even by comparing with other Romance languages, since back formations were extremely common in Old French. Christophe. http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.