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En réponse à cartacus <cartacus@hidden.email>: > > OK, after looking at it I don't have much more to say. According to > the book > > the picture is too blurred to give a secure answer. To get to > |estre| (the Old > > French form), you have to suppose a form *ESSRE instead of *ESSERE, > something > > not impossible but intriguing. Moreover, the participles |estant| > and |esté| > > cannot even be surely said to come from STARE. They could very well > be a > > creation from the new infinitive |estre|. So basically without a > time machine > > we'll never know :)) . But indeed, STARE at that time had given the > verb > > |ester| (which died out a little later), so a single origin from it > is nearly > > out of the question. > Wow! This is IIRC a post of mine which is at least one year old!!! There's no such thing like a dead thread it seems ;))) . > Apparently, the French infinitive does come from essere via: essere > > essre* > estre** > e^tre) > And the first step is the strangest :)) . > > However, e'tant and e'te' did come from stare's forms. > > (this is according to Larousse Nouveau Dictionnaire Etymologique) > The point is that we cannot be sure, since whether they came from STARE or from the new infinitive "estre", they would have had the same form anyway. Anyone who says that it definitely comes from STARE is lying (even if it's Larousse :)) ), since we can never know for sure (Old French at that time did make new participles from new infinitives all the time). In case anyone wondered, yes I'm back from my few days in France :)) . Christophe. http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.