So this converse/conversate discussion reminded me of something I dimly remember being taught when I studied Latin as a teenager four decades ago. I’ve tried googling to confirm it but failed (because I don’t quite know what I’m looking to confirm, especially in regard to technical terms). Plus I got a bare pass grade at Latin A-level so my understanding of what I was being told may have been dimmer than my memory…
The gist of it is this: that late latin had a fvckton of newer verbs, 1st conjugation neologisms, which either completely supplanted their classical latin equivalents – or offered subtle but useful variants in meaning.
(“Classical” latin roughly meaning the latin of the republic through to the first few caesars, “late” meaning the latin of the expanded decadent empire — late weird caesars, constantinople in the driving seat, confused dark ages nonsense generally. 1st conjugation is already the most common form — amo, amare, amavi, amatus — with implication that these neologisms arrived in the easiest and most regular column bcz they were a bit cheesy and vulgar and inauthentic…)
Anyway I can’t find confirmation of this as such — anyone who knows more plz to chime in and correct! But I am interested that something similar seems to be happening in 19th-20th C English, either independently, or (imo more likely) as nudged by buried implications in the inherited latin roots and relations.
EXAMPLE ONE (illustrative):
Cano, “I sing”, versus Canto, also “I sing”.
The first is a third conjugation verb, old and simple and solid (it turns up in the very first line of Virgil’s Aeneid) and yet also (inevitably) irregular lol: cano, canere, cecini, cantatum — with participles cantatus, cantata, cantatum.
The second is a 1st conjugation verb. I don’t know if it’s technically late (i.e. I don’t know when it was first recorded in a written document), but it seems largely to be backformed from cano’s participle form: canto, cantare, cantavi, cantatum — with (identical) participles cantatus, cantata, cantatum.
The key point is that that meaning has shifted, or coagulated if you like, round a sense of ritual and social repetition: to sing, to play (roles/music), to recite, to praise, to celebrate, to forewarn, to enchant, to bewitch…
EXAMPLE TWO (directly involved with the converse/conversate thing):
Converto, “I turn”, versus Conversor, “I associate with”.
The first is a third conjugation verb, old and simple and solid, meaning to turn around. It shares a root (verto) with many many different types of noun and verb in Latin and English (inc.verse, reverse, convert, advert and so on): converto, convertere, converti, conversum — with participles conversus, conversa, conversum.
The second is a 1st conjugation deponent* verb, clearly built out of elaborated elements of the first: conversor, conversari, conversatus sum – with participles conversatus, conversata, conversatum. It means to consort/associate (with), to be a constant visitor, to conduct oneself, to behave/act
NOTE: A deponent verb is one that has active forms but doesn’t use them (deponere: “to give up”). Though such verbs occur in passive voice they are translated in active voice. Thus conversor translates not as “I am consorted with” but as “I consort with” (note super-subtle distinction anyway, then switched all around).
CONCLUSION: the move from converse (as in “the suspects were conversing quietly in the corner”) to conversate (“let’s you and me conversate, brother!” — meaning something more like “associate with one another in order cheerfully to shoot the breeze!”, with flavour both african american and distinctly, even floridly mocking of its own fanciness) does seem to me to echo some of the moves in evidence in examples one and two, from a basic, almost stripped-down meaning in classical latin to a social, semi-compulsive and exuberantly repetitive meaning in late latin. But I have no way of knowing if this echo is a matter of the various latin meanings somehow internally shaping the (far later) english usage, OR of the evolution of english simply having a broadly similar dynamic, which is to say adjustment (and backformation) in the face of not-dissimilar social pressures and handy convenience and the vulgar mocking the educated and the great…
― mark s, Friday, 31 May 2019 15:10 (seven years ago)