Romance verbs are the most inflected part of speech in the language family. In the transition from Latin to the Romance languages, verbs went through many phonological, syntactic, and semantic changes. Most of the distinctions present in classical Latin continued to be made, but synthetic forms were often replaced with more analytic ones. Other verb forms changed meaning, and new forms also appeared.
Overview
The following tables present a comparison of the conjugation of the regular verb amare "to love" in Classical Latin, and Vulgar Latin (reconstructed as Proto-Italo-Western Romance, with stress marked), and nine modern Romance languages. The conjugations below were given from their respective Wiktionary pages.
Because the verb "to love" in Romanian is , of which goes back to Proto-Slavic origin and it is in 4th conjugation; while in Romansh is avair gugent which composed from the irregular verb , the conjugations in Romanian and Romansh only give the endings.
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{ { efn|name=eight|Fell into disuse in modern Portuguese, now found only in literary texts. Nowadays largely replaced by the compound forms tinha amado" or havia amado (had loved).}}
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Note that the Vulgar Latin reconstructions are believed to have regularized word stress within each tense (except the present and imperative tenses). Word-final probably converged on . Many verb forms undergoes elisions, like the indicative pluperfect amāveram > *amára and the subjunctive imperfect amāvissem > *amásse.
The verb "to love" in Old French , the early form of modern French is rather irregular but still follows its regular sound changes, with having aim- in stressed forms (namely the singular and third person plural of indicative and subjunctive present tenses, and the second person singular imperative), and the stem changes again to ain- before -s and -t in subjunctive present. In Catalan, the verb amar has replaced by synonymous , the former usually used only in poetic contexts.
Vulgar Latin
In this section, "Vulgar Latin" is actually reconstructed as reconstructed Proto-Italo-Western Romance, most notably the shift from Classical Latin -i- and -u- to -e- /e/ and -o- /o/, as opposed to inherited /ɛ/ and /ɔ/ respectively. The developments include: The -v- of the perfect tenses were dropped or elided, but sometimes become /u/ after vowels. The past participle were sometimes sporadically rounded to *-ū-, this situation is preserved in French. The "unstressed" indicative imperfect is very likely from shortened *-bămus, *-bătis, yielding to the stress on the third-from-last syllable (amābāmus), as opposed to Classical Latin stress on the second-from-last syllable (amābāmus). Languages which retains this irregular stress were the languages of Iberia, Sicilian, and French. Romance metaphony. In forms containing -ī next to mid-open vowels, especially in preterite forms were heightened.
In the Proto-Romance grammatical tradition, the second and third conjugation are known as third conjugation, similarly to French.
First conjugation
Verbs in the first conjugation are in -āre (*-áre), later evolved to -are in Italian, -ar in most Romance languages and -er in French.
Second conjugation
Verbs in the second conjugation are in -ēre (*-ére), later evolved to -ere in Italian, -er in most Romance languages and -oir in French (no "regular" -oir verbs). Another infinitive -ere has merged into this paradigm.
Third conjugation
Verbs in the third conjugation are in -ere (*-ere, caused stress in previous syllable), later merged with -ere (*-ere, causes stress in antepenultimate syllable), but -re in French and Catalan. The suffix -re in French are in the third group, also known as irregular verbs.
The -iō variant (*-io in Vulgar Latin) now defunct, later merged with the second conjugation; the paradigm now only exists in some descendants of the verb faciō.
Fourth conjugation
Verbs in the fourth conjugation are in -īre (*-íre), later evolved to -ire in Italian, and -ir in most Romance languages. This conjugation type are infixed with once-inchoative -īsc- → *-ísc- in some languages, but its placement varies.
In Italian, Catalan, and Romanian, the infix -isc-; -esc-, -eix- (Catalan), and -ăsc- (Romanian) is placed on once-stressed indicative and subjunctive present forms (the first-, second-, third-singular and third plural present tenses), and stressed imperatives. In French, the infix -iss- is placed on all indicative present forms, the indicative imperfect, the subjunctive present, and plural imperatives.