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156 CHAPTER 10 103 Verb conjugation, review Although there are only three different present tense conjugations in BCS, each named by its theme vowel (a, e or i, review [13]), there are a great many more verb types. In order to predict the form of the infinitive from the form of the present tense, and vice versa, one must know which type the verb belongs to. These several types have been presented in earlier chapters (review [14, 30, 40, 52, 65, 77, 94]). The entire system may now be viewed as a whole. There are sixteen basic types, only two of which must be divided into sub-types. For each type, the defining feature is the relationship between the infinitive and the present stems. One can best learn the verb system by grasping the principle underlying it, and memorizing the forms of one representative verb (or head verb) for each type. When one learns a new verb, therefore, it is necessary only to assign it to the correct type in order to predict all its conjugational forms. It will also be much easier to learn the forms of verbal participles (to be seen in [104a, 117a]) and verbal nouns (to be seen in [108, 116]) when one is familiar with the system of verb types. 103a. Verb types The following table summarizes the sixteen verb types and suggests a head verb for each. Any one language learner may choose his or her own head verb, of course: what matters is the principle of dividing the verbal vocabulary into types and memorizing one example of each type. For each type, the following information is given: its type number, its two theme vowels (one each for present and infinitive), the 1sg. and 3pl. forms of the head verb, and comments designed to fix its salient characteristics in the learner’s mind. In subsequent grammar discussions, verb type numbers appear in italics, to remind one to refer to this chart. All verbs have a theme vowel in the present tense: it is the vowel which identifies the conjugation type (a, e or i). Most verbs also have a theme vowel in the infinitive: it is the vowel preceding the ending -ti. Four types, however, lack a theme vowel in the infinitive. Two of these (types 13-14) have the infinitive ending -ti, and the other two (types 15-16) have the infinitive ending -ći. Type 8 is characterized by the presence of suffixes: it adds the suffix -uj before the present theme vowel, and adds one of two suffixes before the infinitive theme vowel, -ov in type 8a and -iv in type 8b. The same relationship is seen in type 9, where the present theme vowel is preceded by -j and the infinitive theme vowel by -v. Type 7 is characterized by the presence of the consonant n before both present and infinitive theme vowels. Several types are characterized by the fact of shifts in the verb stem itself. In types 5 and 15a the stem-final consonant of the infinitive softens in the present tense. An additional consonant is added to the present tense stem in types 6, 11 and 15b, and an additional vowel is added to the present stem in type 10. The stem-final consonant of the present stem is lost (or altered) be- CHAPTER 10 157 fore the infinitive ending in types 13-16, and the stem-final consonant of the infinitive stem is lost before the infinitive ending in type 6. Some verbs of type 15b have an alternate infinitive formed by adding -nuti to the present stem. A few verbs do not fit precisely into the above schema, but must rather be described as combinations of more than one type. First, the verbs pasti and sesti / sjesti (type 13) add n to the present stem after the manner of type 15b (review [94e] and see [120, 153r]). Second, two verbs have infinitives in -eti / -ijeti. One has a present tense like type 11 – umreti / umrijeti “die”, 1sg. umrem (see [153m]), and the other has a present tense like type 14 – doneti / donijeti “bring”, 1sg. donesem (review [77b] and see [153q]). Third, one verb (stati) has a present tense like type 7 but an infinitive like type 10 (review [94e] and see [153g]). Fourth, the 1sg. of moći is -u without consonant softening (review [14f]). Finally, one must learn as separate verbs the present tense forms of biti (review [7b, 52c] and see [153u]) and hteti...

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