Modern Descendants of Latin 365
In negative statements of all the four principal Romance languages, the
object pronoun (whether direct or indirect) precedes the verb, e g
English I doa't see it
French Je ne le vois pas
Portuguese Nao o vejo
Spanish No lo veo
Italian Non lo vedo
The rules on p 156 for placing the object in a statement do not tell
us where to put it in a command (or request) on the one hand, and a
question on the other. The Romance object pronoun always comes
after the imperative verb, if the imperative is affirmative, but before
the verb if a prohibition,e g French embrasse-la (kiss- her ^\ne Pembiasse
pas (don't kiss her1) The direct object is always the accusative un-
stressed form; but HI French;, moi and toi replace me and te as the
indirect object, e g donnez-moi de I9eau (give me some water)
In French and Portuguese, the hyphen indicates the intimate relation
of the unstressed form to the verb imperative, as in the following
examples, which illustrate agglutination ct two pronoun objects (me-o
= mo) in Portuguese
de-me um Itvro — give me a book.
dŁ-mo o serihor = give it (to) me (Sir)
It is customary to write the Spanish and Italian imperative, infinitive
and participles without a gap between it and the object, e g .
ENGLISH SPANISH ITALIAN
show me muestrame mostrami
/ warn to speak to him quiero hablarle voglio parlargh
Fusion of verb to its pronoun object goes further in Italian* (a) the
infinitive (e g parlare) drops the final E as in the last example, (&) the
infinitive drops -RE if it ends in -RRE (e g condurre) as in condurlo = to
direct him, (c) there is doubling of the initial consonant of the pronoun if
the imperative ends in a vowel with an accent, e g dammi = give me,
dillo = say it With con (with) the stressed Italian pronouns me3 te,, se
fuse to form meco (with me), teco (with thee),, seco (with him or with her)
The three Spanish stressed pronouns mi, ft, s/, get glued to con to form
conmtgo, contigO) consigo Agglutination goes farther in Portuguese With
com we have cornigOs contigo^ consigo^ cormosco^ convosco (with me, with
thee, etc ) Similarly the unstressed Portuguese me> te> Ihe, glue on to
the direct object of the third peison to form mo-ma-mos-ma±> to} etc, and
Iho, etc, e g •
Da-tos = he gives them to you (thee).