VERB: verb
Definition
A verb is a member of the syntactic class of words that typically signal events and actions, can constitute a minimal predicate in a clause, and govern the number and types of other constituents which may occur in the clause.
Note that the VERB tag covers main verbs (content verbs)
and modal verbs
but it does not cover auxiliary verbs and copulas, for which there is
the AUX tag. (Czech modal verbs are not considered auxiliary.)
See the description of AUX for more information on the borderline
between VERB and AUX.
Czech verbs can take the following morphological forms:
- Infinitive (this is the citation form)
- Finite verb (indicative and imperative forms; conditional is constructed periphrastically)
- Active past participle (used to construct past and conditional)
- Converb (also called transgressive, adverbial participle or gerund)
There are participial forms that are tagged as adjectives (ADJ) rather than verbs. See below for examples.
A verbal noun can be derived productively from almost every verb
(e.g. dělat “to do” → dělání “doing”).
While in other languages a corresponding form may be called gerund and tagged VERB,
in Czech it is tagged NOUN. It has always the neuter cs-feat/Gender
and it inflects for cs-feat/Number and cs-feat/Case.
Examples
- nést “to carry”
- nesu, neseš, nese, neseme, nesete, nesou “I carry, you carry, he/she/it carries, we carry, you carry, they carry”
- nes, nesme, neste “carry” (imperative in different persons and numbers)
- nesl, nesla, neslo, nesli, nesly “carried” (past participle in different genders and numbers)
- nesa, nesouc, nesouce “carrying” (present converb in different genders and numbers)
Border cases
Passive participles lie on the border between verbs and adjectives.
Since release 2.0, both short and long forms are tagged ADJ, although
they may have verbal features in addition to the adjectival ones.
For example:
- Short: nesen, nesena, neseno, neseni, neseny “carried”
- Long: nesený, nesená, nesené, nesení, nesené “carried”
Their meaning is almost identical but the usage slightly varies. Both groups can be used in nominal predication with copula. Only the short forms can be used to form the passive voice (but it may be sometimes difficult to distinguish from copula constructions, see AUX). On the other hand, the long forms inflect for case and thus can modify nouns. (Occasionally even the short form may inflect for case but it is extremely rare in the modern language. Example: nesenu is the short form of feminine singular accusative. The corresponding long form is nesenou.)
There is an analogy with some adjectives that preserved so called nominal (short) forms. And these adjectives are not derived from verbs. Example:
- Short (nominal) forms: stár, stára, stáro “old”
- Default long (pronominal) forms: starý, stará, staré “old”
The nominal forms are used in predication, the standard forms both in predication and to modify nouns.
References
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] [xcl] [yue] [zh]