In the previous chapter you got an overview of Latin's entire verb system, including the characteristics of verbs (person, number, tense, mood, voice), the concept of verbal aspect (continuous or completed), the way verbs are classified into conjugations (first through fourth), and how each verb has a set of principal parts that provides raw materials for constructing any form you might require or encounter. Before we begin building imperfect and perfect tense forms, let's tear a verb apart to see where all those elements you just read about appear.

Most English verb forms must be cobbled together by lining up several words; for example, “they used to be told.” Latin verbs, on the other hand, manage to convey the same information, but in a compact manner that requires only one word. For instance, the Latin version of the example used previously would be dīcē bantur. The word dīcē bantur can be cut up into three sections: a verb stem, a tense indicator, and a personal ending.

Verb Stems

The verb stem is the basic foundation onto which you attach the tense indicator. The stem carries the meaning of a verb, of course, but it also tells you which aspect you are working with. The stem used to show a verb in the continuous aspect (i.e., present system) is made from the second principle part (i.e., the infinitive) minus the infinitive ending (e.g., -ā re, -ē re, etc.) or at least the final -re. The continuous aspect stem for the verb dī cō, dī cere, dī xī, dictum (“to say, tell”), then, would be dī cē-. If you want the stem for the completed aspect (i.e., perfect system) of this same verb, then you would need to jump to the third principal part and drop the final -ī.

For the verb dī cō it would be dī x-. It still means the same thing. Only the aspect has changed.

Tense Indicators

The traditional term “tense indicator” is somewhat misleading. It is true that it does indicate tense, but it also indicates mood (indicative, subjunctive, or imperative). The tense indicator shows up either as an extra syllable added to the verb stem, or, in present system tenses, as a slight change in the vowel at the end of the verb stem. For the verb that we have been using as an example, the tense indicator is -ba-, which tells you that the tense is imperfect and the mood is indicative.

Personal Endings

Now that you know where verb stems come from and what tense indicators are, it is time to finish our verb off with an ending. Perhaps the most important of all the elements of a Latin verb are the personal endings. If you recall the five characteristics of verbs discussed in Chapter 3 (person, number, tense, mood, and voice), you might think that personal endings have to do with “person.” You are correct, but they also tell you number (singular or plural) and voice (active or passive). In the case of our example verb dīcē bantur, the personal ending -ntur says that the verb is third person, plural, and in the passive voice. Personal endings are real workhorses!

Active and passive voice each have their own set of personal endings. You will learn about passive voice in a later chapter. For the time being, we will work only with active voice. Here is what active personal endings look like:

Table 4-1 Personal Endings for Active Voice

Another way to look at personal endings is to think that they do the same work pronouns do in English, so you could “translate” the above chart like this:

Table 4-2 Meanings for Personal Endings

The imperfect tense, for example, is built by taking the present stem of a verb, adding the tense indicator for the imperfect tense, then tacking on a personal ending. If you dissect the third person plural of the verb dabant, for instance, you can see how the verb is assembled:

The Latin verb is a neat little package that reads in the opposite direction from English: It gives the meaning, then indicates the tense, then says who was doing it. The personal ending caps the verb off with a built-in subject.

Here is a complete conjugation of the verb dō in imperfect tense:

Table 4-3 Conjugation of the Verb dō,dare, dedi, datum in Imperfect Tense

TABLE 4-4 will introduce you to some of the verbs that you will learn more about in the rest of this chapter.

Table 4-4 Vocabulary

Recognizing Conjugations

Look at each verb in the vocabulary list in TABLE 4-4. Indicate the conjugation (first, second, third, third -iō, or fourth) each verb belongs to. Check your answers in the back of the book.