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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.

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:

In some languages infinitive is marked by verb affixes:

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).

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. (The Czech past tense is a preterite by usage, although its creation bears charactersitics of a perfect, from which it has historically evolved.)

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.

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 = “”;

Aorist

The simple, aspect-neutral past tense is called aorist in some languages, e.g. in Bulgarian. So far I have not come across differences between aorist and preterite, nor have I found a tagset/language where both these tenses would co-exist. The German preterite, for instance, displays usage pattern typical to aorist, although it is not called aorist.

Bulgarian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgarian_verbs#Past_Aorist_Tense_.28Aoristus.29): Past aorist tense (Минало свършено време) expresses an action that happened at a specific time in the past. Both imperfective and perfective verbs have such tense (there is no difference in their conjugation). Although imperfective and perfective verbs are conjugated in the same way in the past aorist tense, there is difference in their meaning. Compare the sentences: Вчера четох една книга (aorist of imperfective verb) = “Yesterday, I read a book but I didn't finish it”; Вчера прочетох една книга (aorist of perfective verb) = “Yesterday, I finished reading a book/I read a whole book.” The same meaning difference holds for the preterite of Czech imperfective and perfective verbs: Včera jsem četl jednu knihu vs. Včera jsem přečetl jednu knihu.

Example: aorist forms of the Bulgarian verb чете (to read):

Person Number
Singular Plural
1st четох четохме
2nd чете четохте
3rd чете четоха

DZ Interset decoding: tense = “past”; subtense = “aor”; If we decide that aorist is the same tense as preterite we should handle them both the same way, i.e. tense = “past”; subtense = “”;.

Aorist has almost vanished from Czech. The only survivors are aorist forms of the auxiliary verb být (to be):

Person Number
Singular Plural
1st bych bychom
2nd bys byste
3rd by by

Since these forms are today used exclusively to construct analytic forms of conditional, they are decoded as conditional / subjunctive: mood = “sub”.

Imperfect

Czech term: souminulý čas. Indicates that the action was taking place at the same time as some other action in past, similarly to the English construction I was doing. The English construction is analytic, made of past (preterite) of the auxiliary to be, and of present participle (gerund) of the main verb. However, there are languages with synthetic imperfect forms.

Portuguese example: imperfeito of cantar (to sing):

Person Number
Singular Plural
1st cantava cantávamos
2nd cantavas
3rd cantava cantavam

Spanish example: imperfecto of cantar (to sing):

Person Number
Singular Plural
1st cantaba cantabamos
2nd cantabas cantábais
3rd cantaba cantaban

Bulgarian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgarian_verbs#Past_Imperfect_Tense_.28Imperfectum.29): Past Imperfect Tense (Минало несвършено време) is used to talk about a temporary situation that existed at or around a particular time in the past. It also expresses past actions that were frequent, repeated, permanent or always true. Its most common use is in story telling to provide a background to other actions which are usually expressed with verbs in the past aorist. In this use it means that the action had begun and was in progress when the other action(s) happened, we don't know whether it stopped or not.

Both imperfective and perfective verbs have past imperfect tense. They are conjugated in the same way.

Verbs form the past imperfect tense with the following endings. Example: чете (to read):

Person Number
Singular Plural
1st четях четяхме
2nd четеше четяхте
3rd четеше четяха

DZ Interset decoding: tense = “past”; subtense = “imp”;

Perfect

Czech term: předpřítomný čas. A tense (not to be confused with perfective lexical aspect in some languages) indicating an action that took place in past but its relation to the present time point (result) is stressed (typically that the action has already / has not yet been completed). It is also called present perfect, as opposed to past perfect (pluperfect) and future perfect. In English, the exact time when the action took place is unknown, so e.g. the word yesterday cannot occur in a clause headed by perfect verb form.

Perfect is usually created analytically and thus there is no feature value denoting it. Typical formation is using present tense of an auxiliary and past participle (perfect participle) of the main verb.

DZ Interset decoding: auxiliary: tense = “pres”; participle: verbform = “part”; (tense = “past”)

Example: present perfect of the English verb to do:

Person Number
Singular Plural
1st I have done we have done
2nd you have done you have done
3rd he has done they have done

Example: present perfect of the German verb machen (to do):

Person Number
Singular Plural
1st ich habe gemacht wir haben gemacht
2nd du hast gemacht ihr habt gemacht
3rd er hat gemacht sie haben gemacht

Example: present perfect (perfeito) of the Portuguese verb cantar (to sing) is formed by present indicative of the auxiliary verb ter and the past participle (participio) of the main verb:

Number Singular Plural
Person
1st tenho cantado temos cantado
2nd tens cantado
3rd tem cantado têm cantado

Example: present perfect (минало неопределено време, past indefinite tense) of the Bulgarian verb чета (to read) is formed by present indicative of the auxiliary verb съм (to be) and by past active aorist participle of the main verb:

Number Singular Plural
Gender Masculine Feminine Neuter
Person
1st чел съм чела съм чело съм чели сме
2nd чел си чела си чело си чели сте
3rd чел е чела е чело е чели са

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