Aspects of the conditional in the Livro dos Oficios: what values does a nonexistent tense in Latin convey?

Abstract

It is known that the conditional does not exist in Latin, which marks otherwise the values this paradigm usually encodes. Thus, its use during the Middles Ages repre-sents a Romance innovation. Bearing this in mind, in this article we intend to compare the conditional occurrences in the Livro dos Oficios and the forms and constructions translated from the Latin work De officiis by Cicero, so as to investigate whether the values conveyed by the conditional are identical to those which the paradigm translates nowadays (such as temporal value, the expression of condition and modal values pertaining to the expression of possibility, doubt, etc.).