Re: conjugation patterns in Spanish


"Alexei A. Frounze" <alexfru@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:499pksFn32rkU2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
John Atkinson wrote:
"Alexei A. Frounze" <alexfru@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
...
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)

This is interesting John. But I don't know Latin. And I'm not sure how
that
missing knowledge could apply it to my problem with Spanish. I would not
be
able to do a 1 to 1 mapping between Latin and Spanish, would I? That means
instead of adding certainty, I'd adding uncertainty, which is no good. :(

Yes, and this objection is equally valid for native speakers of Spanish.
Spanish kids aren't born knowing Latin. But somehow they manage to learn
the four hundred or so verbs that have /ie/ or /ue/ when the root is
stressed and /e/ or /o/ when the ending is stressed. Or, if they
internalise this as a general rule, they have to learn the hundreds of verbs
which are exceptions to the rule, the ones which don't diphthongise /e/ or
/o/ when the root is stressed.

This doesn't faze Spanish kids at all, but it does worry linguists who study
language acquisition, who like to think that kids devise internal grammars
which consist mostly of rules, with a comparatively small number of
exceptions (irregularities) which mostly apply to the commonest words and
can be listed individually in the grammar. The idea of several hundred
irregular verbs in a language is not easy to fit into the way they postulate
children's internal grammar-forming devices should work.

Anyway, if the many experts who've agonised over this problem can't find a
way out, I don't like your chances. Sorry, you'll just have to learn which
group each verb belongs to, one at a time.

John.


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: conjugation patterns in Spanish
    ... There're a number of verbs which change their e to ie under the ... enterrar, cerrar ... I was trying to find patterns which would tell me if I need to make ... comes from Latin /e/. ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: conjugation patterns in Spanish
    ... We all know that there exist several different conjugation patterns ... for regular and irregular verbs in Spanish. ... for the regular and the irregular ones are used less often. ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: conjugation patterns in Spanish
    ... We all know that there exist several different conjugation patterns ... for regular and irregular verbs in Spanish. ... for the regular and the irregular ones are used less often. ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: conjugation patterns in Spanish
    ... Or, if they internalise this as a general rule, they have to learn the hundreds of verbs which are exceptions to the rule, the ones which don't diphthongise /e/ or /o/ when the root is stressed. ... This doesn't faze Spanish kids at all, but it does worry linguists who study language acquisition, who like to think that kids devise internal grammars which consist mostly of rules, with a comparatively small number of exceptions which mostly apply to the commonest words and can be listed individually in the grammar. ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: "Its me"
    ... >> The subject-object model, ... > Modern English and its ancestors, and there's no reason to think they ... > were borrowed from Latin or anywhere else. ... So there's no reason for a rule about a whole class of verbs. ...
    (alt.usage.english)