Polish Verb Conjugations

[ROBERT A ROTHSTEIN]

        I prefer to present the non-past (imperfective present/
perfective future) forms of Polish verbs in terms of what happens
to the stem rather than what vowel appears before the endings.
(The numbering of conjugations is not so important.)  For illustrative
purposes, consider four verbs with the root consonant _s_:

           1)   ka,sac':  ka,sam / ka,sasz /...
           2)   nosic':   nosze, / nosisz /...
           3)   pisac':   pisze, / piszesz /...
           4)   pas'c':   pase, /  pasiesz /....

In conjugation 1, there is no consonant change.  It's only in this group,
moreover, that the vowel -a- and the 1st sg. ending -m occur.  (The type
represented by _umiec'_ is a small subset of this conjugation.)

        Conjugation 2 has the same consonant in most of the present
tense as in the infinitive, but the 1st sg. and 3rd pl. (potentially)
have a different consonant.  The word "potentially" is needed for cases like
                lubic':   lubie, / lubisz /...
(which result from the fact that _b_ is related only to _bi_, unlike
_s_, which is related both to _sz_ and _si_.)

        Conjugation 3 has the same consonant throughout the present tense,
one that is different from the consonant of the infinitive.  (Verbs with
infinitives in -owac'/-ywac'/-iwac' are a subtype.)

        Conjugation 4 has the "orginal" (or "underlying") consonant in
1st sg. and 3rd pl. and a different consonant in the other four forms.

        One could (and should) of course be more precise about the
relationships between the consonants involved, but I've intentionally
avoided specific terminology and details here.

        I don't have statistics handy about the distribution of verbs
among the various types, but conjugations 1 and 2 probably include
the largest numbers of verbs, although 3 and 4 include many common
verbs (and their prefixed derivatives), and 3 includes masses of
derived imperfectives (in the -ywac'/-iwac') subtype.

        Note that, not surprisingly, the same approach could be taken
to Russian conjugation (1:  kusat'; 2: nosit'; 3: pisat'; 4: pasti), as
long as one remembers that the consonant alternation in conjugation 4
(what Jakobson called "transitive softening" as opposed to the "substi-
tutive softening" of conjugations 2 and 3) is less obvious since it
doesn't affect the spelling.

                                Bob Rothstein