VERB: verb
Description
Verbs typically inflect for tense and mood. Verbs signal events and actions. Verbs can constitute a minimal predicate in a clause, and govern the number and types of other constituents which may occur in the clause.
Welsh is a VSO language, thus the verb comes first.
There are four moods: indicative, imperative, conditional and subjunctive. Tenses include simple past, past habitual and future. Together with the auxiliary bod and a prepositions/adjective many compound tenses can be formed
There is an impersonal verb form, which most closely correlates to the English passive. However it is not technically a passive form as the subject is “understood” and the nominal argument is an object
Examples
- Bwytdd o fara “he ate bread”
- Canaf i “I will sing”
- Rydw i’n bwyta bara “I am eating bread”
- Rydw i wedi bwyta bara “I have eaten bread”
- Rydw i wedi bod yn bwyta “I have been eating”
- Rydw i newydd fwyta bara “I have just eaten bread”
- Rydw i ar fwyta bara “I am just about to eat bread”
- Roedd o’n bwyta “he was eating”
- Bydd o’n bwyta “he will be eating”
For more information on tense and aspect in Welsh: Heinecke, Johannes: Temporal Deixis in Welsh and Breton. Heidelberg: Winter 1999.
VERB in other languages: [bej] [bg] [bm] [cs] [cy] [da] [el] [en] [es] [ess] [et] [eu] [fi] [fro] [fr] [ga] [grc] [hu] [hy] [it] [ja] [ka] [kk] [kpv] [ky] [myv] [no] [pcm] [pt] [qpm] [ru] [sl] [sv] [tr] [tt] [uk] [u] [urj] [yue] [zh]