In the last chapter, you learned how to form present tense verbs. To review:
1. The first principle part is the 1st person singular.
2. The stem of the verb is found by removing re from the second principle part.
3. The other forms are formed by adding the following endings to the stem:
|
|
Singular |
Plural |
|
1st person |
ō or m* |
mus |
|
2nd person |
s |
tis |
|
3rd person |
t |
nt |
* For now, we will only be using the ō ending for 1st person.
The rules you learned last chapter work for verbs whose second principle parts end in āre or ēre. We call verbs that end in āre first conjugation verbs, and verbs that end in ēre second conjugation verbs. A conjugation is a group of verbs that has the same set of forms.
But some verbs belong to different conjugations and follow a different set of rules. For example, in this chapter’s vocabulary you will see:
dormiō dormīre – to sleep
legō legere – to read
scribō scribere – to write
And last chapter you saw:
dicō dicere – to say
Verbs whose second principle parts end in ere belong to the 3rd conjugation, and those ending in īre belong to the 4th conjugation.
|
|
ending of 2nd principle part |
|
1st conjugation |
-āre |
|
2nd conjugation |
-ēre |
|
3rd conjugation |
-ere |
|
4th conjugation |
-īre |
For verbs in the 3rd and 4th conjugations, we find the stem by removing the ō from the first principle part. The we add particular vowels to the stem before we add the endings. For most of the forms, we add i. For the third plural, we add u. (Remember, the whole first principle part is the 1st person singular.)
scribō scribere
stem: scrib
|
|
Singular |
Plural |
|
1st person |
scribō I write |
scribimus we write |
|
2nd person |
scribis you write |
scribitis y’all write |
|
3rd person |
scribit he, she, it writes |
scribunt they write |
If the stem ends in i, we don’t add a second i. But we still add the u.
dormiō dormīre
stem: dormi
|
|
Singular |
Plural |
|
1st person |
dormiō I sleep |
dormimus we sleep |
|
2nd person |
dormis you sleep |
dormitis y’all sleep |
|
3rd person |
dormit he, she, it sleeps |
dormiunt they sleep |