Affixes of lexical class

[smrk]

In Croatian all infinitives end with -ti or -ći.

I thought Croatian avoided the infinitive and used da + present tense. Or is that just a Serbian thing?

Anyway, it can't be all that uncommon to have certain classes of words having similar endings in similar situations (i.e., verbs used as infinitive, adjectives in the nominative feminine plural, etc), particularly in synthetic languages. I was under the impression that it's sort of characteristic of isolating languages that you can't tell what part of speech a word is just from looking at it by itself.

[Selinki]

In estonian 1st infinitives end with -MA
In russian infinitives end with -ть

[Xonen]

In russian infinitives end with -ть

...except when they don't, like with the verbs мочь and идти.

Also, could everyone just stop listing infinitive endings here? I'm pretty sure we've already established that that isn't what this thread is about. (If someone wants to start a new thread specifically for the purpose of collecting infinitival endings from the world's languages, I suppose that's allowed. I wouldn't expect it to gain any huge popularity, though. )

[Click]

smrk wrote: In Croatian all infinitives end with -ti or -ći. I thought Croatian avoided the infinitive and used da + present tense. Or is that just a Serbian thing? Anyway, it can't be all that uncommon to have certain classes of words having similar endings in similar situations (i.e., verbs used as infinitive, adjectives in the nominative feminine plural, etc), particularly in synthetic languages. I was under the impression that it's sort of characteristic of isolating languages that you can't tell what part of speech a word is just from looking at it by itself.

Yes it is a Serbian thing.

[smrk]

Interesting. A lot of what I know about Croatian comes from my girlfriend's mother, who is Croatian, but apparently the language she speaks has a lot of features that are more typical of Serbian. I'm not sure if this is because of her regional dialect or because she hasn't lived there since the seventies and, from what I've heard, "Serbianisms" or at least features that were considered Serbian were encouraged in the standard language back then, whereas they're discouraged now. Both, probably.

[Ear of the Sphinx]

Interesting. A lot of what I know about Croatian comes from my girlfriend's mother, who is Croatian, but apparently the language she speaks has a lot of features that are more typical of Serbian. I'm not sure if this is because of her regional dialect or because she hasn't lived there since the seventies and, from what I've heard, "Serbianisms" or at least features that were considered Serbian were encouraged in the standard language back then, whereas they're discouraged now. Both, probably.

By Croatian do you mean Chakavian or Kajkavian, and by Serbian do you mean Shtokavian or what else?

[Aleco]

?

All active verbs end in -u and adjectival verbs end in -i (Chinese loans not included).

[Xonen]

?

All active verbs end in -u and adjectival verbs end in -i (Chinese loans not included).

Again, only in the citation forms, though.

[Stammalor]

All present tense verbs in swedish and in an [R], and most often also [A] or <E> + [R].

Most adverbs that isn't conjugated for someting end in a -<T>

[zelos]

I would add that most swedish verbs end in -a when its in infinitive form.
Sjunga => Sjunger
Spela => Spelar

Typicly an -a can be added to the end to make it a verb from other word classes.

Gå and a few other more common verbs are of course exceptional as we can expect

[Systemzwang]

I would add that most swedish verbs end in -a when its in infinitive form.
Sjunga => Sjunger
Spela => Spelar

Typicly an -a can be added to the end to make it a verb from other word classes.

Gå and a few other more common verbs are of course exceptional as we can expect

And only a minority of dialects keep that morpheme. As I already showcased, my dialect of Swedish has pretty much infinitives ending in every phoneme except /h/

[Aevas]

I would add that most swedish verbs end in -a when its in infinitive form.
Sjunga => Sjunger
Spela => Spelar

Typicly an -a can be added to the end to make it a verb from other word classes.

Gå and a few other more common verbs are of course exceptional as we can expect

They follow another rule, namely that verbs with monosyllabic stems ending in a vowel take -Ø in the infinitive cf. tro, gå, se, bli, fly, etc.

[Prinsessa]

Not for derived verbs, though. The noun spö yields spöa, not spö.

Also, no, not all present tense forms end in -r; vet, kan, skall, vill, et cetera... Also, present tense subjunctive forms, that are thus still present, usually take -e.

[Systemzwang]

Not for derived verbs, though. The noun spö yields spöa, not spö.

Also, no, not all present tense forms end in -r; vet, kan, skall, vill, et cetera... Also, present tense subjunctive forms, that are thus still present, usually take -e.

How many people still use present tense subjunctive except maybe vore and hade?

[Prinsessa]

Not for derived verbs, though. The noun spö yields spöa, not spö.

Also, no, not all present tense forms end in -r; vet, kan, skall, vill, et cetera... Also, present tense subjunctive forms, that are thus still present, usually take -e.

How many people still use present tense subjunctive except maybe vore and hade?

Does it matter? The handful of ones that are in common use still count. No matter how you wish to analyse them mood-wise, they're still present tense forms ending in -e rather than -r.

I do know people who like to use subjunctives of any verbs if it works out, though, but this is of course out of personal choice (one of them writes lots of poems, for example, and has gotten the practice from there) and not by native instinct to do so. It's sad.

[Omzinesý]

How is the Swedish sunjunctive formed?
They don't teach is in Finnish schools.
Apparently with -e?

[Prinsessa]

How is the Swedish sunjunctive formed?
They don't teach is in Finnish schools.
Apparently with -e?

I suppose you can say that the rule for weak verbs is usually for the present to take the infinitive root and for the past tense to be the same as in the indicative. For strong verbs, the past tense takes the supine root and replaces the suffix with -e.

So the subjunctive present of weak verbs such as hoppa and bränna are hoppe and bränne in analogy with their infinitives. These have the same subjunctive past as the indicative past.

However, the subjunctive past of a strong verb such as finna becomes funne, in analogy with the supine funnit (suffix -it). The present subjunctive is just finne, though, with the infinitive root, just like for the weak verbs.