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Imperfect endings for the verb veto

Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2007 8:37 am
by Thomas3333333
Hi,

I discovered that veto (to forbid) is an irregular verb with the 2nd principal part being vetare and the perfect tense vetui.

Can anyone tell me what the imperfect endings would be?

Thankyou.

Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2007 1:55 pm
by Gonzalo
You can form the rest of the perfect conjugation in this manner: vetui, vetuisti, vetuit, vetuimus, vetuistis & vetuerunt (less frequent, archaic form, the 3rd plural person with the ending in -ere).

I don´t know which other parts of the verb you would need to know in order to have knowledge of the rest.

Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2007 6:19 pm
by modus.irrealis
Except for the really irregular verbs (sum, eo, volo, etc. and their compounds), all the forms based on the first two principal parts are formed regularly -- it's one of the nice things about Latin. So in this case, the imperfect would be:

vetabam, vetabas, vetabat, vetabamus, vetabatis, vetabant

So the irregularity, if you want to call it that, is just that the third (and fourth) principal parts are formed in an unexpected way. But once you know the principal parts, everything else is regular.

Posted: Fri Oct 26, 2007 6:02 am
by Thomas3333333
Given that the present infinitive is vetare, is it still proper to call it a first conjugation verb despite it being an irregular one.

Thanks.

Posted: Fri Oct 26, 2007 3:09 pm
by modus.irrealis
First conjugation just refers to the first two principal parts, so that's why veto and sto and so on are considered first conjugation verbs. It's just that the (vast) majority of first conjugation verbs form their perfect in the same way, but that doesn't seem to be the case with the other conjugations.