Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2023 March 26

= March 26 =

Latin conjugation question
I am currently on chapter 4: The Imperfect and Perfect Tenses of The Everything Learning Latin Boo k by Richard E. Prior. On pages 32 to 34, it talks about how to assemble an indicative active form of a verb in the imperfect tense, taking the continuous aspect root plus the tense indicator ba plus the personal ending. Page 34 shows a table of the imperfect conjugation for the verb dō (infinite dare, continuous stem da-).

First person singular: dabam.

First person plural: dabāmus.

Second person singular: dabās.

Second person plural: dabātis.

Third person singular: dabat.

Third person plural: dabant.

Why do three of these lengthen the A of the imperfect tense indicator ba? Primal Groudon (talk) 01:31, 26 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Actually a long vowel has been shortened in several contexts (before a consonant cluster, before a word-final stop, etc). You can see much the same in the present indicative of a normal 1st conjugation verb (amo, amas, amat, amamus, amatis, amant), except there's no final -m environment there... AnonMoos (talk) 04:55, 26 March 2023 (UTC)