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Table of Contents
Verb forms in various languages and in DZ Interset
This is not a complete list of verbal tenses found in all languages. It focuses on tenses that are expressed synthetically, i.e. using affixes in one word (as opposed to analytical expression, using combination of a main verb and an auxiliary verb). Morphological / part-of-speech tags usually only need to distinguish synthetical verb forms.
- infinitive
- finite verb
- indicative
- future
- present
- past
- aorist
- imperfect
- perfect
- pluperfect
- imperative
- subjunctive
- jussive
- participle
- present
- past
- passive
- transgressive
- gerund
- supine
Arabic | imperfect verb, perfect verb; mood: indicative, subjunctive, subjunctive/jussive; voice: passive; infinitive |
Bulgarian | nonpersonal verb (has 3rd person only), perfective vs. imperfective verb, auxiliary verb; transitive vs. intransitive verb; mood: indicative, imperative, subjunctive; tense: present, past, aorist, imperfect; participle, transgressive; voice: active, passive |
Czech | infinitive, indicative (present, future), imperative, subjunctive, active past participle, passive participle |
Danish | main verb, medial verb (deponent, reciprocal), mood: gerund, imperative, indicative, infinitive, participle; tense: past, present; voice: active, passive |
English | modal verb, main verb; base form (infinitive but without “to”), gerund/present participle, past participle, non 3rd person singular present, 3rd person singular present |
German | auxiliary verb, modal verb, main verb; finite (indicative), imperative, infinitive, infinitive with “zu”, perfect participle |
Portuguese | infinitive, indicative, imperative, subjunctive, conditional, present, past, pluperfect |
Swedish | indicative, imperative, subjunctive, infinitive; present, past, supine; active, passive |
Infinitive
Usually considered base form of the verb, appears in dictionaries. In text it appears as part of analytical verb forms and as argument of other words:
- future tense: bude dělat, er wird kommen
- argument of modal verb: musí dělat, er muss machen, he must do
- argument of some other verbs, subordinating conjunctions etc.: potřebuje odejít, er kommt um das zu beenden, he let us to do it, his intention to finish this
In some languages infinitive is marked by verb affixes:
- Czech infinitive ends in -t, -ti, -ct, -ci: dělat, dělati, říct, říci
- German infinitive ends in -en: machen, sagen
In some languages, the morpheme marking infinitive is separate word (English to). In English, the base form of the verb is not (full) infinitive. It becomes infinitive when combined with the infinitive mark (to do, to say). Without the mark, it can be used (in English) as imperative.
Both approaches can be combined. Although infinitives are recognizable by the -en suffix in German, the infinitive mark zu is used with infinitives in some contexts. Depending on the verb, zu is either a separate word, or a morpheme inserted between the verb prefix and stem (zu beenden vs. anzupassen).
- English infinitive mark is to
- German infinitive mark is zu
- Danish infinitive mark is at
- Swedish infinitive mark is att
In DZ Interset, infinitive is decoded as verbform = inf
. This value is set even for the English base verb form, although it is not certain whether the form is used as infinitive, or imperative. Mood, tense and voice are usually empty. Czech infinitives set the feature negativeness
. Portuguese infinitives can be mildly conjugated. I think I may have seen active/passive infinitives but I am not sure where.
Finite
Finite verb forms are those most frequently used. They are classified according to mood
: the most ordinary mood is indicative, most languages also have imperative, some also have subjunctive and jussive.
Opposed to finite verbs are non-finite verb forms, namely infinitive, supine, participle, transgressive and gerund.
In DZ Interset, finite verb form is decoded as verbform = fin
.
Indicative
Verbs in indicative mood merely indicate that someone performs / has performed / will perform the action of the verb. Opposed to indicative is imperative (the verb orders the listener to perform the action) and various conditional constructions (the action would be performed if…)
There is a multitude of indicative verb forms, classified according to tense (present, past, future etc.) and voice (active or passive). Present active forms are the default. They are usually the simplest, formed synthetically. Other tenses and voices are formed synthetically or analytically, depending on language.
In DZ Interset, indicative is decoded as mood = ind
. This is also the default mood value for finite verb forms. (For non-finite verb forms, default mood is empty.)
Present
Verbs in present tense indicate an action that is taking place at the time of speaking, or in a general timespan (“usually”). They are usually formed synthetically, and take different forms according to person
and number
, possibly also gender
. If two verbs use different morphemes to express the same combination of person, number, gender etc., they are assigned to different conjugation classes. Example: Czech verb nést:
Person | Number | |
Singular | Plural | |
1st | nesu | neseme |
2nd | neseš | nesete |
3rd | nese | nesou |
In DZ Interset, present tense is decoded as tense = pres
.
Czech verbs are divided lexically to perfective and imperfective. Present tense forms of perfective verbs are in fact forms of future tense. If the physical tagset encodes these forms as present, they will be decoded into Interset as tense = pres
. However, if the physical tagset contains the information that these are semantically future forms, it will be decoded as tense = fut
.
The English progressive present tense (he is doing) is formed analytically by the simple present form of the auxiliary verb to be and the present participle (gerund) of the main verb. There is thus no Interset feature value for this tense. See participle and gerund.
Past
Simple past indicates action that took place in past. Some languages (e.g. Czech) have only this one past tense. Others have more refined tense system that allow to express whether the action has been completed (perfect) or not (imperfect), whether it was running while something else was being done etc. In Czech however, the perfect/imperfect aspect is lexically inherent, so that past perfect is replaced by simple past tense of a perfective verb.
Czech past tense is formed by past participle of the main verb and (in 1st and 2nd person only) present form of the auxiliary verb být. The participle is decoded with tense = past
.
Person | Number | |
Singular | Plural | |
1st | nesl jsem | nesli jsme |
2nd | nesl jsi | nesli jste |
3rd | nesl | nesli |
German imperfect past tense (Präteritum) is formed synthetically. Perfect past tense (Perfekt) is formed analytically by present form of the auxiliary verb haben and past participle of the main verb. Pluperfect past tense (Plusquamperfekt) is formed analytically by imperfect past form of the auxiliary verb haben or sein and past participle of the main verb. The imperfect past forms and the participle are decoded with tense = past
.
Person | Imperfect | Perfect | Pluperfect | |||
Singular | Plural | Singular | Plural | Singular | Plural | |
1st | ich machte | wir machten | ich habe gemacht | wir haben gemacht | ich hatte gemacht | wir hatten gemacht |
2nd | du machtest | ihr machtet | du hast gemacht | ihr habt gemacht | du hattest gemacht | ihr hattet gemacht |
3rd | er machte | sie machten | er hat gemacht | sie haben gemacht | er hatte gemacht | sie hatten gemacht |
The same holds for English:
Person | Imperfect | Perfect | Pluperfect | |||
Singular | Plural | Singular | Plural | Singular | Plural | |
1st | I did | we did | I have done | we have done | I had done | we had done |
2nd | you did | you did | you have done | you have done | you had done | you had done |
3rd | he did | they did | he has done | they have done | he had done | they had done |
In Portuguese, three of five past tenses are synthetic and two are analytic. All three are decoded as tense = past
. They have to be further distinguished by the values of subtense. Imperfeito (imperfect) is decoded as subtense = imp
. Pretérito (preterite) is decoded as ??? Mais-que-perfeito (pluperfect) is decoded as subtense = pqp
. Analytic tenses are perfeito (perfect), tenho caçado, auxiliary in present and past participle, and another form of mais-que-perfeito (pluperfect), tinha caçado, auxiliary in imperfect and past participle.
preterite = préteritum = minulý čas
imperfect = imperfektum = souminulý čas
perfect (present perfect) = perfektum = předpřítomný čas
pluperfect (past perfect) = pluskvamperfektum = předminulý čas
aorist = aorist
Person | Pretérito | Imperfeito | Mais-que-perfeito | |||
Singular | Plural | Singular | Plural | Singular | Plural | |
1st | cacei | caçámos | caçava | caçávamos | caçara | caçáramos |
2nd | caçaste | caçavas | caçaras | |||
3rd | caçou | caçaram | caçava | caçavam | caçara | caçaram |
Preterite
This is the default past tense. Grammars of some languages call it just “past” or “simple past”. Often synthetic. Simply indicates an action that took place in past. No information whether the action has been completed or whether it ran simultaneously with another action.
German example: Präteritum of singen (to sing):
Person | Number | |
Singular | Plural | |
1st | ich sang | wir sangen |
2nd | du sangst | ihr sangt |
3rd | er sang | sie sangen |
English example: past tense of to sing:
Person | Number | |
Singular | Plural | |
1st | I sang | we sang |
2nd | you sang | you sang |
3rd | he sang | they sang |
Portuguese example: pretérito of caçar:
Person | Number | |
Singular | Plural | |
1st | cacei | caçámos |
2nd | caçaste | |
3rd | caçou | caçaram |
DZ Interset decoding: tense = “past”; subtense = “”
.