Patterns of Principal Parts of Verbs (LLPSI)

[boomt]

Wherever I can, I try to learn a rule rather than memorize individual instances. Now that I am trying to memorize the principal parts of verbs, it's a bit of a struggle. The formation of perfect active and past participle stems for conjugation I verbs are regular with few exceptions. But it seems like the "regular" stems introduced in LLPSI Chapter 21 for the other conjugations apply in less than 1/3 of the situations. I figured out that "cs" -> "x" (dīcere) and "ui" -> "v", and I know I have to flag the verbs with reduplication. But is there a list of "rules" that can address more patterns? Iʻm trying to compile my own, but it seems that someone in the past 1000 years has probably already done this.

[Hylander]

There are patterns in the formation of the verbal stems -- for the most part, the "irregularities" are only apparent. You can work through the discussion in Gildersleeve & Lodge's Latin Grammar beginning at sec. 132, p. 91 et seq., unfortunately not available in Perseus, but available on line here:

https://archive.org/details/gildersleev ... ew=theater

The discussion in Allen & Greenough beginning with sec. 209, p. 121, is not as thorough or illuminating:

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/tex ... 99.04.0001.

These sections can be supplemented with some low-level phonological rules:

Gildersleeve & Lodge, sec. 8, p. 3 (vowels) and sec. 9, p. 5:

https://archive.org/details/gildersleev ... ew=theater

Allen & Greenough sec. 4, p. 8:

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/tex ... 99.04.0001

The rules on consonant changes are particularly important, because the suffixes -vi or -si for the perfect and -tum for the past participle, are added directly to a stem ending in a consonant in many cases. This is almost universally the case in the third conjugation, which usually doesn't add a vowel to the root to form a stem (such as -a, -e or -i, in the case of the first, second and fourth conjugations, respectively). The contact between two consonants typically results in devoicing if the root ends in a voiced consonant, and in a change of a dental root-ending consonant to -s- (and then the change of -tum to -sum). This sounds very complicated, but if you spend just a little time with these rules, you may find them less difficult than at first blush.

These rules are complicated, and they're not taught at the beginning level because it's probably easier just to memorize principal parts by rote. But if you work your way through the rules, even without fully committing them to memory, you may find that you're able to recognize the patterns and you'll have an easier time memorizing the principal parts.

I hope this isn't too confusing to help.

[boomt]

Thank you for your detailed response! Even a few rules that cover a number of cases will reduce the memory burden.