944 ronnie ferguson
and tenses, e.g., el va ~ i va “he/they go(es),” el parlava ~ i parlava “he/
they were speaking.” Very striking, too, are Venetian inverted interroga-
tive forms with the subject pronoun post-positioned, e.g., vustu (“do you
want?”), sastu (“do you know?”), gastu (“do you have?”). nowadays such
inversion is confined to the familiar tu form and to selected verbs in the
present; formerly it applied to all verbs, tenses, and persons. Venetian sub-
ject-pronoun patterns are distinctive and contrast with italian, as can be
seen on the present tense of the verb magnar “to eat,” with bracketed pro-
noun forms only used for emphasis: 1. (mi) magno, 2. (ti) ti magni, 3. (lu)
el magna, (ela) la magna, 4. (noialtri) magnemo [MidV (nu) magnemo],
- (voialtri) magné [MidV (vu) magné], 6. (lori) i magna, (lore) le magna.
this contrasts with the simpler italian system, which has no obligatory
subject pronouns and where there is no separate feminine plural form.
On some second-conjugation verbs, Venetian has a unique past-participle
ending in -esto, e.g., Ven. volesto vs ital. voluto “wanted”; Ven. podesto vs
ital. potuto “was able”; Ven. piovesto vs ital. piovuto “rained.”
Venetian structures changed little between 1400 and 1797, and indeed
into ModV. in phonology the affirmation of sibilants over affricates,
mentioned above, was the most notable development. From Beorio’s
remarks38 we can deduce that sibilant innovation was a class variant,
present in speech in our period but not recorded. Similarly, the so-called
l evanescente,39 found only in Venetian and omnipresent in ModV and CV,
must have been present, although unrecorded, toward the latter end of
the MidV period. grammatically, the most remarkable feature of MidV is
the affirmation of xe “he/she/it is” for the third persons singular and plu-
ral of the verb esser “to be.” initially, xe (also spelled se [← si è < sic est])
appeared in late eV as a variant of the è (< est), which was the original
morph and which still survives on the Veneto mainland. notable, too, was
the survival in MidV of two Venetian conditional forms in -ia and -ave,
e.g., voria ~ vorave “i would like,” reduced in ModV and CV to voria (ital.
vorrei). the past historic tense was lost in MidV, replaced in all contexts
by the present perfect.
38 Boerio, Dizionario, pp. 11–12.
39 in ModV and CV, initial or intervocalic /l/ is dropped before a front vowel; otherwise
it is articulated as a laxed spirant, e.g., luna [juna] “moon,” limon [imoŋ], “lemon,” gondola
[gondoja], calle [kae] “street.”