Romance Verbs - Semantic Changes

Semantic Changes

In spite of the remarkable continuity of form, several Latin tenses have changed meaning, especially subjunctives.

• The supine became a past participle in all Romance languages.
• The pluperfect indicative became a conditional in Catalan and Sicilian, and an imperfect subjunctive in Spanish.
• The pluperfect subjunctive developed into an imperfect subjunctive in all languages except Romansh, where it became a conditional, and Romanian, where it became a pluperfect indicative.
• The perfect subjunctive became a future subjunctive in Old Spanish, Portuguese, and Galician.

The Latin imperfect subjunctive underwent a change in syntactic status, becoming a personal infinitive in Portuguese and Galician. An alternative hypothesis traces the personal infinitive back to the Latin infinitive, not to a conjugated verb form.