Re: conjugation patterns in Spanish


"Alexei A. Frounze" <alexfru@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:497us1FnardcU2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Alexei A. Frounze wrote:
Hi!

I've been recommended to ask more scientific language related
questions here.

Here's the first one...

We all know that there exist several different conjugation patterns
for regular and irregular verbs in Spanish. Interestingly enough, the
irregular verbs also exhibit quite a regularity in the way they're
conjugated, it's just that there're more patterns for irregular than
for the regular and the irregular ones are used less often. However,
there exist a number of verbs which are very irregular in nature and
are conjugated individually (e.g. haber, ir, etc).
I'm kind of struggling to learn the conjugation and I want to do that
well for which I need complete understanding of the conjugation with
all its rules, exceptions and patterns. And I also want to make a
tool for conjucation of a given infinitive. Yes, I know there're a
number of such tools available but they mostly work as a database --
they contain several hundred or a few thousand of fully conjugated
verbs entered once from a book. Definitely, I'm not gonna learn that
many verbs nor do I want to repeat that gigantic work of taking verbs
from the book and I don't really want to take the database from one
of the existing conjugators. What I want to do is to find out *all* the
conjugation patterns and
individually conjugated verbs so that I could minimize the effort in
learning conjugation and making a conjugator (the size reduction
would also be nice). I have a few books explaining the conjugation,
but neither of them is complete nor entirely correct, yet there're
rare verbs which seem to match a certain pattern but they're
conjugated differently (e.g. hervir, servir), which is probably a
sign of individual conjugation. The approach I'm thinking of is like
this:
1. in a very small database of individually conjugated verbs look up
the given verb and if it's there, conjugate it appropriately (or take
the precomposed conjugation form from that same database). If the
verb isn't there, continue:
2. in another database find out which pattern the verb matches, and if
there's such a pattern, conjugate the verb appropriately. If there's
no pattern match, continue:
3. conjugate the verb as regular verb
So, has anyone studied the verb conjugation patterns in Spanish and
if so, are the results of the study available anywhere to use them
when making a formal conjugator like outlined above?

I really think that one of the biggest problems of the language
studies is the incompleteness of information and even occasional
(often unintentional) misinformation. That puts the students into a
position where they do know some rules, some exceptions, but that's a
very small fraction of what they will really need in practice and
when they face the reality, they find out that they weren't taught
something or something was inappropriately simplified or extended and
can't be applied just like that, it needs correction, which is
generally bad (and IMO the worst thing one may need correct in the
language is the pronunciation).
Any help?

TIA,
Alex

Here's the bad thing I've discovered after hours of studying the verb
conjugation patterns in Spanish...

There're a number of verbs which change their e to ie under the stress,
examples:

pensar
negar
enterrar, cerrar
confesar
dispertar
manifestar
entender

I was trying to find patterns which would tell me if I need to make that
change from e to ie.
At first I tried taking as pattern the part of word starting at the vowel
in the next to last syllable, e.g. ensar, egar, etc and see if I can make
a decision based on that.
To make sure I was doing the right thing I then tried to find regular
verbs or those that would match the same patterns but as regular verbs
would not the change from e to ie, and I found plenty of such verbs, and
here are some of them:

dispensar
llegar
esperar
expresar
acertar
contestar, prestar
vender, aprender, comprender

One interesting pair is pensar and dispensar. First verb is irregular,
second verb is regular yet they have exactly the same pattern, including
the consonant before ensar.

Negar and llegar could probably be explained this way: n can be softened
(by changing the e following it to ie), while ll can't because it's
already soft (compared to l).

Enterrar/cerrar vs esperar... Following the logic from the previous pair
here, in all verbs the consonant before e could be softened (I know that
there're words and conjugations where it happens), but this happens only
in some verbs, not all where possible.

Confesar vs expresar -- same thing, however, I would probably be less
willing to soften r than f. Maybe at this point I should start including
into the pattern the sequence of consonants that comes before the vowel in
the next to last syllable, e.g. nfesar vs sperar. I haven't tried that
yet.

Dispertar vs acertar -- same thing. But if I were to take as patterns
spertar and certar, I'd arrive at conclusion that p in sp+e may or may not
get soften -- just compare dispertar and esperar from the previous pair.
This makes it odd.

Manifestar vs contestar/prestar -- f in festar is OK to soften and t in
ntestar is also OK (example: entender), but I'd probably not do that for r
in prestar.

Finally, entender vs vender/aprender/comprender... t in ntender gets
softened and v in vender could be softened too (example: venir), but
again, I'd probably not soften r in prender and mprender.

So, these findings render simple pattern-based decision making if not just
complicated (taking bigger portions of verbs as patterns) then impossible.

What do you think?

You're over-complicating things.

Most verbs obey the standard sound-changes:

/ie/ in stressed syllables comes from proto-western-Romance /E/ which comes
from Latin /e/.
/e/ in stressed syllables comes from PWR /e/ which comes from Latin /i/ or
/e:/.

Examples:
niego, from Latin nego:
peso, from Latin pe:nso:
veo, from Latin video:
llego, from Latin plico:

But, there are quite a few exceptions. Mostly, they once did the right
thing, but switched during the course of their history.

Examples:
pienso, used to be penso, from Latin pe:nso:
presto, used to be priesto, from Latin praesto:
llevo, used to be lievo, from latin levo: (/li/ > /ll/ is irregular)

John.


.

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  • conjugation patterns in Spanish
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