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In the languages I know, verbal tense, number, gender, etc. is applied after the word stem. Is there any language where verb conjugation morphologically affects the beginning of a word and not the end of it?

Natalie Clarius
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Pablo
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8 Answers8

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Look into the Bantu languages, such as Swahili. Tense, aspect, and subject agreement are all marked at the beginning of the verb.

Draconis
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Since Bantu has been mentioned, I won't mention it again, much. I'll mention Athabaskan, Ket (not Athabaskan but probably related), Semitic, Berber, Coptic, Bongo, Krongo, Nilotic, Nyulnyul, Gooniyandi, Tiwi, Lenakel, Camsá, Cayuvava, Seri, Nahuatl, Lakota. You can get more examples here. That said, if you mean "only prefixing, with no suffixing at all", then that may be hard to find. The situation in Bantu is that tense-aspect-mood-polarity and sometimes subject number are marked suffixally, and tense-aspect-mood-polarity and subject are more marked (more distinctions are made) prefixally. In Semitic, subject can be marked in part prefixally (in the imperfective), but also suffixally. Athabaskan languages are mostly prefixing, but I don't think any are completely devoid of suffixes.

user6726
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The Tupi family of languages does person and number agreement with bound verbal prefixes. Major Tupian languages include Guaraní, spoken in Paraguay; Nheengatu, spoken by a minority of Amazonian Brazilians; a number of endangered native Brazilian languages, and Old Tupi which is a substrate language of Brazilian Portuguese.

Old Tupi examples follow. I'll separate the morphemes by hyphens:

  • ixé a-só "I go"
  • endé ere-só "You (sing.) go"
  • a'é o-só "He/she/it/they go"
  • îandé ia-só "We (inclusive) go"
  • oré oro-só "We (exclusive) go"
  • peẽ pe-só "You (pl.) go"

Compare:

  • ixé a-nhe’eng "I talk"
  • endé ere-nhe’eng "You (sing.) talk"
  • a'é o-nhe’eng "He/she/it/they talk"
  • îandé ia-nhe’eng "We (inclusive) talk"
  • oré oro-nhe’eng "We (exclusive) talk"
  • peẽ pe-nhe’eng "You (pl.) talk"

The rest of the verbal morphology uses both bound prefixes (ta-pe-só "you may go") and suffixes (xe-só-reme "if I go"). It also features a form of noun incorporation; the direct object, or a pronoun agreeing with it, must be tacked on before the verb as follows:

  • ixé a-kunumĩ-epîák I 1s-boy-see = "I see the boy"
  • ixé kunumĩ a-i-epiâk I boy 1s-3s-see = "I see the boy".
melissa_boiko
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Hebrew has verb inflections at the beginning, middle, and ends of verbs. For a simple example, first person simple future tense prepends an aleph at the beginning of the verb, while past tense has a suffix.

There are more complex examples -- the three letter root "fold" gets a prefix and becomes the four letter root "duplicate".

Wikipedia has many more detailed examples.

Miztli
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arp
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In Slavic languages, verbs have perfective/imperfective aspects, a core grammatical feature, and it's usually done via prefixing.

For example, in Russian: delat "to do", sdelat "to have done"; kormit "to feed", pokormit "to have fed"; gotovit "cook", prigotovit "to have cooked". Basically almost every verb comes in such pairs.

Constantine Geist
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  • We don't really take it as inflexion of one verb but as different verbs. German fahren and abfahren are different verbs and jet and odjet are different too and happen to have different aspect due to the ab/od. Aus/vy has the same effect graben/ausgraben and kopat/vykopat and many other similarities. It is not conjugation of one verb. (Both examples have imperfective variants by adding a suffix: odjíždět and vykopávat. Translation to German remains the same.) – Vladimir F Героям слава Apr 15 '17 at 20:50
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    If I want to take "I was cooking it" (imperfective) and change it grammatically to have a perfective aspect ("I have cooked it"), I have no other choice as to add prefix pri- (gotovil => prigotovil). I cannot use the verb "gotovit" in perfective sense with suffixes alone -- and this is true for many verbs. To me, it means that it's not just pairs of different verbs. Sure, prefixing is not the only way, some verbs get away with suffixing. I'm not sure if German is related here at all, because I can apply all sorts of tenses to both graben/ausgraben. – Constantine Geist Apr 15 '17 at 21:10
  • Note also 1) in pairs such as ja gotovil "i was cooking" vs. ja prigotovil "I have cooked" the only marker to tell the difference between the aspects is the prefix 2) it's grammatically obligatory to assign perfectiveness to verbs. So, such prefixes are pretty much part of the grammar (not vocabulary). They aren't "officially" considered part of inflection because our tradition stems from Latin/Greek grammars which do not have such distinction. – Constantine Geist Apr 15 '17 at 21:20
  • The problem is that 1) you don't normally have simple pairs but more verbs in the group, 2) the verbs can change their aspects through language history, 3) there are verbs with both aspects. So yes it is part of grammar, no it is not conjugation, it is a category describing separate verbs. – Vladimir F Героям слава Apr 15 '17 at 21:47
  • most verbs have default prefixes to go from perf.=>imperf. and back; it's the verbs of motion (separate verb category with their own pecularities) which usually have abundance of prefixes because you need to specify the direction; verbs like "see", "cook", "read" usually have one simple pair for the default meanings 2) "legit" endings can change their meaning with time, too, such as -ama/-ima from dual taking over -im(i)/-ich in plural in several Slavic languages 3) there are endings with several grammatical meanings, too, such as -u/-e expressing both dative/locative in several languages
    • – Constantine Geist Apr 15 '17 at 23:53
  • Also I don't see how having several verb forms in a group contradicts anything. Yes, I can choose between several prefixes to express a more subtle meaning: for example, za- is perfective in general and enchoative in particular. Although for some verbs prefixes are set in stone, in general, at least in Russian, prefixes such as za- or po- (together with suffix -yva-) are so productive they're very close to being part of conjugation in that, I can add za-/po- etc. ad hoc to any random word (including made up ones), and everyone will correctly infer the aspects without consulting a dictionary – Constantine Geist Apr 16 '17 at 00:12
  • Wll, that's I don't knoe about Russian, but in Czech I haven't heard of such concept. It is your personal invention. They are always taken as separate words, in dictionaries for example. That was the point of the parallel with German. You make a kalk to a prexed German verb and magically it is conjugation? No, it isn't. And even if the prefixes have a perfective function, with a right suffix the verb will be imperfective again. – Vladimir F Героям слава Apr 16 '17 at 12:51
  • As I said above, you can't express certain grammatical functions without switching between verbs. German here is unrelated because their prefixed forms are completely independent and can be used in all tenses. Can we talk about suppletivism here? The roots are same, they express the same action in different aspects, but, as you said, the verbs are technically different. It reminds me of Ancient Greek verb, where different verb forms of the "same" verb etymologically are actually different related verbs. For example, thnesko "I die" is technically a different verb from ethanon "I died" – Constantine Geist Apr 18 '17 at 22:08