VerbForm: form of verb or deverbative
| Values: | Conv | Fin | Gdv | Ger | Inf | Part | Sup | Vnoun |
Even though the name of the feature seems to suggest that it is used
exclusively with verbs, it is not the case. Some verb
forms in some languages actually form a gray zone between verbs and
other parts of speech (nouns, adjectives
and adverbs). For instance, participles may be either
classified as verbs or as adjectives, depending on language and
context. In both cases VerbForm=Part may be used to separate them
from other verb forms or other types of adjectives.
Fin: finite verb
Rule of thumb: if it has non-empty Mood, it is finite. But beware that some tagsets conflate verb forms and moods into one feature.
Examples
- [en] I do, he does
Inf: infinitive
Infinitive is the citation form of verbs in many languages. Unlike in English, it often has morphological form that is distinct from the finite forms. Infinitives may be used together with auxiliaries to form periphrastic tenses (e.g. future tense [cs] budu sedět v letadle “I will sit in a plane”), they appear as arguments of modal verbs etc. In some languages, e.g. in Hindi, they behave similarly to nouns and are used as such (similar to the gerund in English). Nevertheless, this observation is not universal and, e.g. in Slavic languages, infinitives are quite distinct from verbal nouns.
Examples
- [de] ich muss gehen “I must go”
- [pt] eu preciso ir “I must go”
Sup: supine
Supine is a rare verb form. It survives in some Slavic languages (Slovenian) and is used instead of infinitive as the argument of motion verbs (old [cs] jdu spat lit. I-go sleep).
A form called “supine” also exists in Swedish where it is a special form of the participle, used to form the composite past form of a verb. It is used after the auxiliary verb ha (to have) but not after vara (to be):
Examples
- [sv] Simple past: I ate (the) dinner = Jag åt maten (using preterite)
- [sv] Composite past: I have eaten (the) dinner = Jag har ätit maten (using supine)
- [sv] Past participle common: (The) dinner is eaten = Maten är äten (using past participle)
- [sv] Past participle neuter: (The) apple is eaten = Äpplet är ätet
- [sv] Past participle plural: (The) apples are eaten = Äpplena är ätna
Part: participle, verbal adjective
Participle is a non-finite verb form that shares properties of verbs and adjectives. Its usage varies across languages. It may be used to form various periphrastic verb forms such as complex tenses and passives; it may be also used purely adjectively.
Other features may help to distinguish past/present participles (English), active/passive participles (Czech), imperfect/perfect participles (Hindi) etc.
Examples
- [en] he could have been prepared if he had forseen it; I will be driving home.
Conv: converb, transgressive, adverbial participle, verbal adverb
The converb, also called adverbial participle or transgressive, is a non-finite verb form that shares properties of verbs and adverbs. It appears e.g. in Slavic and Indo-Aryan languages.
Note that this value was called Trans in UD v1 and it has been renamed Conv
in UD v2.
Examples
- [cs] zírali na mne, pevně svírajíce své zbraně “they stared at me while gripping their guns firmly”; udělavši večeři, zavolala rodinu ke stolu “having prepared the dinner, she called her family to the table”
Gdv: gerundive
Used in Latin and Ancient Greek. Not to confuse with gerund.
Examples
- [la] puer laudandus est “the boy should be praised”
Ger: gerund
Using VerbForm=Ger is discouraged and alternatives should be considered first
because the term gerund is rather confusing: the English gerund is a verbal
noun or a converb, and it shares the morphological form with present participle
(which may mean that the tagset will not distinguish it from the participle);
the gerundio in Spanish and other Romance languages shows some similarities
with present participles and with converbs, but not with verbal nouns; likewise,
some Slavists use the English term gerund to denote converbs (adverbial
participles), which should be labeled VerbForm=Conv; and UD version 1
recommended (inspired by English) to use it for verbal nouns, which in UD v2
should use VerbForm=Vnoun.
However, the feature is still available in UDv2 and can be used if the alternatives do not seem acceptable. The feature may be removed in future versions but comprehensive investigation has to be done first.
Examples
- [en] I look forward to seeing you; he turns a blind eye to my being late
Vnoun: verbal noun, masdar
Verbal nouns other than infinitives. Also called masdars by some authors, e.g. Haspelmath, 1995.
While in some languages verbal noun and infinitive may be two labels for the same category (and then the language-specific documentation must specify which label should be used), in other languages these categories are distinct. For example, most Slavic languages have infinitive as a specific, uninflected form of the verb, and they also have derived verbal nouns, which behave much like ordinary nouns, have a noun-like distribution (different from infinitives), and inflect for case and number.
Examples
- [cs] dělání “doing”
References
- Haspelmath, Martin. 1995. The converb as a cross-linguistically valid category. Converbs in Cross-Linguistic Perspective: Structure and Meaning of Adverbial Verb Forms – Adverbial Participles, Gerunds –, edited by Martin Haspelmath and Ekkehard König, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, Empirical Approaches to Language Typology, 1–56.
VerbForm in other languages: [ab] [abq] [akk] [bej] [bg] [bm] [cs] [cu] [cy] [el] [eme] [en] [es] [fi] [fr] [ga] [gub] [gun] [hbo] [hu] [hy] [it] [ka] [kpv] [ky] [la] [mdf] [myv] [orv] [pcm] [qpm] [ru] [sl] [sv] [tr] [tt] [u] [uk] [urj] [xcl]