Catalan verbs

This article discusses the conjugation of verbs in a number of varieties of Catalan-Valencian, including Old Catalan. Each verbal form is accompanied by its phonetic transcription. Widely used dialectal forms are included, even if they are not considered standard in either of the written norms: those of the Institut d'Estudis Catalans and the Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua. Other dialectal forms exist, including those characteristic of minor dialects such as Ribagorçan and Algherese and transitional forms of major dialects.

Verb system in context

The Catalan verb system has grammatical categories similar to those of neighbouring Romance languages such as Spanish, Occitan, French, and Italian. The formal similarities with Occitan are most noticeable. There is a visible divergence between Catalan and Occitan in Catalan second-person plural endings: -au, -eu, -iu, instead of the Occitan -atz, -etz, -itz.
One feature of Catalan is the periphrastic preterite tense for referring to the remote past, which is constructed with characteristic present-tense forms of the verb anar and the infinitive of a verb. This tense, rare in Romance languages and shared only with some Gascon and Aragonese dialects, seems to have existed in Catalan since at least the 13th century.
The simple preterite indicative, descending from the Latin perfect indicative, is primarily used in contemporary written Catalan. Although it has been largely replaced by the periphrastic preterite in the spoken language, the simple preterite indicative is still used in dialects such as central Valencian and the Catalan spoken on Ibiza.
Another difference between contemporary and Old Catalan is the shift in simple preterite indicative endings from an etymological to an analogous pattern in third-person plural: from the Old Catalan -é, -ast, -à, -am, -às, and -aren to the contemporary -í, -ares, -à, -àrem, -àreu, and -aren. This change occurred between the 13th and 15th centuries.

Forms

Finite

The table below summarises the inflected forms.
Finite Catalan verbs have an imperfective or perfective aspect.
Regular Catalan verbs have the following imperfective tenses:

Simple present, e.g. parlo
Imperfect preterite, e.g. parlava
Simple future, e.g. parlaré
Simple conditional, e.g. parlaria
Subjunctive simple present, e.g. parli
Subjunctive simple preterite, e.g. parlés

Tenses in the subjunctive mood usually imply dependence on a subordinate clause and might express uncertainty or supposition.
Regular Catalan verbs have the following perfective tenses, which correspond with those above:

Indefinite preterite , e.g. he parlat
Pluperfect , e.g. havia parlat
Future perfect, e.g. hauré parlat
Past conditional, e.g. hauria parlat
Subjunctive preterite perfect, e.g. hagi parlat
Subjunctive pluperfect, e.g. hagués parlat

The perfective tense in the indicative mood has two remote-past forms, analogous to the English simple past. The more common is the periphrastic preterite, a compound tense formed with conjugations of a special present indicative of anar followed by the infinitive of the conjugated verb. This special form of anar always uses the stem va- and can also use the affix -re- when the regular preterite suffix corresponding to the desired person has it. As a consequence of always using va-, vau/''vàreu and vam/vàrem are used to form the periphrastic past, instead of aneu and anem. The periphrastic preterite may also be used in the subjunctive mood, but this only occurs as a literary tense and sporadically in any case; instead, the simple past subjunctive is normally used. The normative Central Catalan and Valencian forms of anar used to form this tense are outlined in the table below.
The other tense expressing the remote past is the simple preterite, now used almost exclusively in writing: parlí, parlares.
The imperative present, with two forms, exists outside the imperfective–perfective contrast: one for second-person singular and the other for second-person plural. For other persons, the subjunctive present is used: parli!, parlem!, parlin!. The imperative is used for positive commands; negative commands use the present subjunctive preceded by no: no parlis! , no parlem!, no parleu! .
The differences in meaning and usage distribution of the Catalan recent past and remote past are similar to those of the British English present perfect and simple past. Using the recent past implies that the action was performed sometime in the past, completed during the period of speech and its effects are still present; the remote past implies that action was performed in the past and its effects are no longer present.
In conditional clauses, verb tenses are used in these pairs:

Subordinate clause with subjunctive perfect preterite and main clause with perfect conditional to express a condition which did not happen: si hagués arribat abans, l'hauria trobat a casa
Subordinate clause with subjunctive imperfect preterite and main clause with simple conditional to express an unreal condition in the present or the future: si l'estimés no se n'aniria
Subordinate clause with indicative present and main clause with simple future to express a possible condition in the present or the future: si fas bondat, anirem al parc

Other tense combinations are also possible: si heu vist el que ha passat, ens ho heu d'explicar. Temporary and relative subordinate clauses are formed in the future tense: quan vindràs, en parlarem, els qui vindran d'hora podran seure ; though, in the contemporary language, the present subjunctive is used as well, quan vinguis..., els qui vinguin...''.

Non-finite

Catalan verbs have three non-finite forms: an infinitive, a gerund, and a past participle.

	Simple	Composite
Infinitive	cantar	haver cantat
Gerund	cantant	havent cantat
Participle	cantat	—

The infinitive is used with present-indicative forms of anar to form the periphrastic preterite: vaig parlar. A gerund, which is unvarying, functions as an adverb; it is used to form non-finite adjunct adverbial clauses of time or manner, roughly corresponding to the present participle in English.
The past participle, a verbal adjective, may inflect for gender and number in certain constructions. It is used with the auxiliary haver to form the perfect of the simple tenses: simple present parlo and present perfect he parlat. In the compound perfect tenses of transitive verbs, a past participle may inflect to match gender and number of the object.
In Old Catalan and some modern varieties the compound perfect tenses of intransitive verbs can also be formed with the auxiliary ser and the past participle, inflected for gender and number of the subject: som arribats ; the typical contemporary construction is hem arribat, with an invariable participle. This construction remains in only a few vestigial forms: és mort/és morta.

Periphrastic finite

Infinitives can be used to make the periphrastic near future with the present of anar plus the preposition a : vaig a parlar. This near future is used less often than it is in Spanish or French, because it may be confused with the Catalan periphrastic past. Infinitives can also be used to make periphrastic forms with a range of modal verbs: puc parlar, he/haig de parlar, necessito parlar, vull parlar, solia parlar. Gerunds can be used to make periphrastic forms analogous to continuous tenses in English: estic parlant, estava parlant, estaré parlant. Past participles are also used with the auxiliary ser to form the passive forms for all active tenses of transitive verbs: active present veig in relation to passive present sóc vist, recent past he vist in relation to passive recent past he estat vist.
Catalan uses the passive voice less often than English does because it has syntactic alternatives; instead of la vaca ha estat vista, other constructions could be used such as changing word order and using a redundant weak pronoun to mark object case: la vaca, l'han vista ; using the third-person reflexive weak pronoun es ; using the pronoun hom, one or someone, or using an elliptic plural subject.

First-conjugation (-ar) verbs

About 86 percent of Catalan verbs belong to this group. Examples include estimar, esperar, menjar and pensar. This is the only open verb class; new verbs incorporated into the language are likely to follow this conjugation model. The only irregular verbs in this class are the idiosyncratic anar and estar, which often act as auxiliary verbs.

''parlar'' ("to speak")

Second-conjugation (-re, -er) verbs

This is the third-largest group of verbs in Catalan, encompassing about four percent of the verbs in the dictionary. It includes most of the irregular verbs, the most-frequently-used: ser, haver, fer, veure, poder, voler, caldre, dir and dur.
In verbs whose infinitive ends in -re, the letter before -re is always a plosive or a diphthong consonantal u. Examples include beure, caure, coure, deure, fotre, jeure, perdre, rebre, rompre, valdre, vendre, and viure.
The final consonantal u in infinitive roots of this verb class is a characteristic Catalan evolution of several consonantal clusters from Vulgar Latin: CÁDERE > *cad're > caure, DÉBERE > *dev're > deure, VÍVERE > *viv're > viure, CÓQUERE > *cog're > coure. The clusters -ldr-, -ndr- in infinitive roots of this verb class have an epenthetic d as the result of the evolution of consonantal clusters from Vulgar Latin: VÁLERE > val're > valdre, VÉNDERE > *ven're > vendre. If the root consonant in the infinitive is b, the third-person singular indicative present will be spelt with a p; rebre becomes rep.
Some verbs in this group have a suppletive root with a velar augment in some forms, most frequently past participle, first person of indicative present, and all forms of indicative preterite, subjunctive present and subjunctive preterite: valdre gives valgut, valc, valguí, valgui, valgués; voler gives volgut, vull or vullc, volguí, vulgui, volgués.

''batre'' ("to beat", "to shake")

Third-conjugation (-ir) verbs

This is the second-largest group of regular verbs in the Catalan language. Most regular verbs in the group are inchoative, deriving from the Latin inchoative suffix -ESC-. The varied suffixes, depending on tense and dialect, which carry the stress, is added to the root in the imperative second-person singular and the first-, second- and third-person singular and third-person plural of the indicative and subjunctive present: servir gives the imperative second-person singular serveix!, third-person singular indicative present serveix and the third-person singular subjunctive present serveixi.

Two-stemmed inchoatives: ''servir'' ("to serve")

These verbs have basic and extended stems, used in particular tenses. Examples of inchoative verbs include patir and partir, which give the third-person singular indicative present of pateix and parteix respectively.

One-stemmed: ''dormir'' ("to sleep")

Examples of non-inchoative verbs include fugir and morir, which give third-person singular indicative presents of fuig and mor respectively.

Irregular verbs

''ser'' or ''ésser'' ("to be")

This auxiliary verb presents several different roots: s-, ess-, er-, sig-, and for-, foss, fu-.

''haver'' ("to have")

This auxiliary verb has several different roots: h-, hav- and hag- . There are more dialectal forms with a velar augment based on the root hag-.

''anar'' ("to go")

Anar has two roots: ana-, ani- and va-, vag- . The present of anar is used as an auxiliary verb to form the periphrastic preterite with the infinitive of the verb being conjugated. The forms of anar as an auxiliary verb are slightly different from the normal present tense. The first- and second-person plural forms are different; the auxiliary verb forms are vam and vau, and the full verb forms are anem and aneu.

''fer'' ("to do")

This irregular verb presents several different roots: fe-, fa-, fac- . There are more dialectal forms based on the root fag-, similar to haver.

''dir'' ("to say")

This irregular verb presents several different roots: di-, diu-, dei-, dig-, dic- . There are more dialectal forms with a velar augment based on the root dig-, especially in the Balearic dialects.

''dur'' ("to take/get")

This irregular verb has several different roots: du-, dui-, dug-, duc- . There are more dialectal forms with a velar augment based on the root dug-, especially in the Balearic dialects.

Online Catalan verb conjugators

. CatalanDictionary.org
- verbix.com
- verbs.cat