The history of the anomalous verb ser, from Latin to Portuguese

Abstract

This article aims to examine the history of the anomalous verb ser in order to describe and explain its abundant inflectional irregularities, pointing out the changes it has undergone since Latin until Portuguese and seeking, as far as possible, the causes of each diachronic phenomenon. The research itself is based on the collection, presentation and inductive interpretation of the linguistic data provided by the Corpus Informatizado do Português Medieval (CIPM), which reports occurrences of the verb ser in all tenses and verbal aspects, as well as on prominent works on Historical Linguistics, Historical Grammar and Philology. Unlike the belief that linguistic anomalies are arbitrary creations of grammarians or any other individual, the irregularities of the verb ser arose spontaneously during the formation of the Portuguese language and were passed on by speakers from generation to generation. To be precise, it inherited many irregularities already fixed in the Latin verb esse, which later merged with another verb, sedēre, in a process called supplementation, giving rise to very different roots throughout its conjugation, as in: sou, seja, era, fui, serei, etc.