Talk:Principal parts

message: The article currently states that principal parts only apply to verbs. But they can (and do) apply to nouns or adjectives as well in many languages. In Latin for example, nouns and adjectives are generally given with two principal parts: nominative and genitive singular. CodeCat (talk) 18:39, 1 April 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Latin Nouns: correct regarding nominative and genitive singular. Adjectives: incorrect in the first and second declensions where they are generally given as the masculine, feminine and neuter forms, respectively, of the Nominative singular. Ex. Verus, vera, verum or, more simply: verus, -a, -um. Sometimes the comparative and superlative forms are also given in an entry.
The pedagogy behind only applying the term "Principal Parts" to verbs has been adequately addressed supra, I think. You want to memorize the aspects of a word that will allow you to apply paradigms of conjugation or declension. The conjugation of verbs and the deriving of the verbal forms (participles, gerunds) is a bit more complex than with the declensions of nouns and adjectives. Thus, the learning of each verb involves memorizing four words. When you have to know four separate forms for each new word, as with Latin verbs, instead of two or three as with the nouns and some adjectives, the grammarians are compelled to come up with a term emphasizing why it is necessary to memorize them. - "Principal Parts" serves that purpose well indeed! Myersdtm (talk) 03:50, 21 December 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nouns? 

message: Could the person who wrote the section on Ganda please have another look? The following sentence seems problematic: "For example, the verb okwogera 'to speak' has the principal parts yogera–njogera–yogedde." My problem is that you use a citation form "okwogera" which then is not one of the principal parts. I am not aware of any language where the citation form is not the first of the principal parts. If there is some reason why this language is different there, that should be explained, but I am guessing that there is just a mistake here. --Doric Loon (talk) 05:47, 3 January 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ganda 

message: What does 3S mean? I cannot find anywhere in this article (or of other articles) that says. tahc chat 02:12, 27 December 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  3S  

message: I don't understand why somebody has added a section on French here. As far as I am aware, nobody teaches French verbs using principal parts. Please remember, this article is ONLY about principal parts as a language-teaching approach. There are other articles for analyses of French verbs. I may be missing something, so I will wait and see if anyone can provide a source for a textbook that really does teach French this way, but if none is provided I will delete that section. Doric Loon (talk) 11:23, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: I would like to keep the French section as I find it helpful. I don't think the concept "principal parts" should be limited to language teaching. It seems a useful concept in linguistics. MaigoAkisame (talk) 07:42, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  French 

message: "Principal part" is a "concept" that can be singular. I think there is no reason to use its plural form as "Principal parts". Thanks, Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 06:58, 27 March 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: @Hooman Mallahzadeh Hi. It was me who first named this article. The reason for the plural is that they only exist in groups. If all forms of a verb can be deduced from the dictionary form, the concept of principal parts is not invoked, so it only comes to the fore when there are two or more of them. But I am aware that normally Wikipedia article titles are in the singular, and I am open to discussing a change. Doric Loon (talk) 12:29, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

text: Incidentally, the article space Principal part is already in use for the mathematical concept. We would need to move that to Principal part (maths), move the current article to Principal part (grammar) and create a new disambig page at Principal part. Do we really want to do this? Is there anyone else reading here who has a view on that? Doric Loon (talk) 12:36, 28 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Changing the title of article to singular form