Hindustani verbs-Cedar Herald Index

Hindustani (Hindi and Urdu) verbs conjugate according to mood, tense, person and number. Hindustani inflection is markedly simpler in comparison to Sanskrit, from which Hindustani has inherited its verbal conjugation system (through Prakrit). Aspect-marking participles in Hindustani mark the aspect. Gender is not distinct in the present tense of the indicative mood, but all the participle forms agree with the gender and number of the subject. Verbs agree with the gender of the subject or the object depending on whether the subject pronoun is in the dative or ergative case (agrees with the object) or the nominative case (agrees with the subject).

Overview

Verbs

In Hindustani, all verbs have a base form called the infinitive which is marked by the -nā ending of verbs. Some of the most common verbs are: honā (to be), karnā (to do), rahnā (to stay), calnā (to walk), bolnā (to speak).

Hindustani verbs

Complex verbs

Hindustani is extremely rich in complex verbs formed by the combinations of noun/adjective and a verb. Complex verbs are of two types: transitive and intransitive.

Hindustani verbs

The transitive verbs are obtained by combining nouns/adjectives with verbs such as karnā 'to do', lenā 'to take', denā 'to give', jītnā 'to win' etc. The intransitive verbs are formed with the help of verbs such as honā 'to be/happen', lagnā 'to feel', ānā 'to come' etc.

Hindustani verbs

Complex verbs (Complex predicates) are of the following three combinations:

Noun + Verb

Adjective + Verb

Verb + Verb

where the noun, adjective or the first verb contributes the semantic content and the verb or second verb accounts for the syntactic information of the construction. Noun/adjective and verb combinations are termed conjunct verbs, as in (1) and (2) in the examples below, whereas the combinations of two verbs are called compound verbs, as in the example (3) below:

In the above examples, there are verbal constructions which can be grouped into two categories of complex verbs, namely, conjunct verbs and compound verbs. (1) and (2) are examples of conjunct verbs since in (1) we find a noun kām 'work' and a perfective form of the verb karnā, 'do' whereas in (2) the verbal predicate exhibits a complex construction made of two elements, namely an adjective sāf 'clean' plus a verb karnā, 'do'. The example in (3), on the other hand, is considered a compound verb since the predicate exhibits two or more than two verbal elements, bōl 'tell' and diyā 'gave' (a form of dēnā 'give').

Aspects

There are three primary grammatical aspects: habitual aspect, perfective aspect and progressive aspect. Periphrastic verb forms consist of two elements, the first of these two elements is the aspect marker and the second element is the tense-mood marker. The three aspects are formed from their participle forms being used with the copula verb (honā "to be"). However, the primary participles which mark the aspects can be modified periphrastically by adding auxiliary participles constructed from auxiliary verbs such as rahnā (to stay/remain), ānā (to come), jānā (to go) after the primary participle to add a nuance to the aspect.

Habitual aspect

The habitual aspect is marked using the habitual participle, which is constructed by taking the verb root and suffixing -tā to it. It declines according to gender and number of the subject asː -tā, -te, -tī, -tī̃ for masculine singular, masculine plural, feminine singular, feminine plural, respectively.

Perfective aspect

The perfective aspect is marked using the perfective participle, which is constructed by taking the verb root and suffixing -ā to it. If the verb root ends in a vowel, then -yā is suffixed to the verb root instead. It declines according to gender and number of the subject asː -(y)ā, -(y)e, -(y)ī, -(y)ī̃ for masculine singular, masculine plural, feminine singular, feminine plural, respectively.

Progressive aspect

Hindustani has distinct constructions to convey progressive and continuous actions. Progressive actions are marked through the progressive aspect participle rahā used along with the verb root, while the continuous action is conveyed through the perfective adjectival participle, which is a combination of the verb's perfective participle and the perfective participle of the verb honā (to be), which is huā. The verbs in the examples 1a and 2a below are in the progressive aspect while in 1b and 2b the verbs are in their perfective adjectival participle form.