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German verbs are conjugated depending on their use: as in English, they are modified depending on the persons (identity) and number of the subject of a sentence, as well as depending on the tense and mood. The citation form of German verbs is the infinitive form, which generally consists of the bare form of the verb with -(e)n added to the end ...
The Germanic verb system carried two innovations over the previous Proto-Indo-European verb system: . Simplification to two tenses: present (also conveying future meaning) and past (sometimes called "preterite" and conveying the meaning of all of the following English forms: "I did, I have done, I had done, I was doing, I have been doing, I had been doing").
There are six tenses in German: the present and past are conjugated, and there are four compound tenses. There are two categories of verbs in German: weak and strong. Some grammars use the term mixed verbs to refer to weak verbs with irregularities. For a historical perspective on German verbs, see Germanic weak verb and Germanic strong verb.
In the Germanic languages, weak verbs are by far the largest group of verbs, and are therefore often regarded as the norm (the regular verbs).They are distinguished from the Germanic strong verbs by the fact that their past tense form is marked by an inflection containing a /t/, /d/, or /ð/ sound (as in English I walk~I walked) rather than by changing the verb's root vowel (as in English I ...
Principal part 1 was the present tense, part 2 was the past singular indicative, part 3 was the remainder of the past tense, and part 4 was the past participle. If the vowel of part 1 contained - e -, it became - i - when the following ending began with - i - through i-mutation ; this occurred in the 2nd and 3rd person singular forms, and the ...
Three compound tenses – the compound past, future, and conditional – are semantically identical with the corresponding simple tenses. The compound past tense consists of ha (the present tense of haber 'to have') plus the past participle. Le imperio ha cadite. = Le imperio cadeva. 'The empire fell.' The compound future tense is constructed ...
The verb tijgen has a class 2 past tense and participle when it means 'to pull'. The verb spugen can also be declined with a class 2 past tense and participle. Class 3. Class 3a and 3b have generalised part 3 to part 2, eliminating the -a-from this class. Some 3b verbs have a past in -ie-like class 7: helpen – hielp – geholpen. This can be ...
The past tense referred to past events, and used the secondary eventive endings. Perfective verbs always used the secondary endings, but did not necessarily have a past-tense meaning. The secondary endings were, strictly speaking, tenseless, even in imperfective verbs.