Talk:Latin conjugation

message: It would be nice to have a more complete description of the standard conjugations
here.  --Tb 05:45 15 Jul 2003 (UTC)
:Note that the similarity between English is and Latin est is not a mere coincidence, but rather one of the consequences of them having a distant common ancestor
Are you sure about that ? Their common ancestor is quite distant (3000-4000 years) and most often used words change very fast. --Taw
:Look in any etymological dictionary and you will see that it is correct. There are many other examples of Latin words which still resemble their English cognates (mater & mother, or sex & six, for example). Some words don't change much even over such long periods of time. --Zundark, 2001 Dec 6
: That's right. The most commonly used words are actually the least likely to change, because they are used so often that changes to them can cause catastrophic misunderstandings. It's thought that the Northwest Caucasian languages diverged from the Indo-European languages about 10,000 to 12,000 years ago, and Ubykh (Northwest Caucasian) and English (Indo-European) still share a couple of cognates, notably t'qw'a, two. To use another example: It's not likely that the word can't (I know, originally two words, but now it's basically just one word) would begin to be pronounced with the short vowel of duck, even though that phonetic change is very slight. I won't explain why; the page would get pulled down. :S thefamouseccles 00:52 13 Oct 2003 (UTC)
:: The closest relations in English (not counting direct borrowings) are borrowings from Old French, I'm pretty sure. By the way, why is there a stub message in here? The article is way too long to be a stub, I think. - Gwalla 22:47, May 11, 2004 (UTC)
:::My 2 cents re common words. It is the most common words that change the most. Just look at the verb 'to be' in Latin, French, Spanish, and Italian. Then look at another less frequently used word like 'city', for example: city, cite', ciudad (dad in Spanish is the same as 'ty' in English), citta. If you don't like that try, felicity, felicite', felicidad. They are a lot easier to pick out as the same words than I am, ego sum, je suis, yo soy, and io sono. Pronouns and commonly used adverbs and conjunctions seem to change faster than anything. Father and mother are special words, which is why they don't change as much but still they change more than less used words. NB This is a purely subjective comment based on personal experience with language and not meant to be in any way definitive or quotable.
::::It is certainly true that the forms of 'to be' are irregular; but that's because these are all Indo-European languages, not because 'to be' is a common verb.  The etymologies are perfectly clear, in fact, and happen often because a phonological change forces disambiguation and then forms are borrowed from other related verbs.  For example, why is "eres" there?  soy, es, somos, son, these are all regular formations from the old athematic pattern.  Well, Spanish turned Latin's T ending on 3rd person verbs into D, and then later dropped it, so you get "tenet" -> "tened" -> "tiened" -> "tiene".  (The E -> IE change is a regular palatalizing rule in Spanish.)  But est doesn't have a vowel before the T (because it's the athematic pattern) so it became just "es" right away with no stop at "esd".  Latin's "es" (2nd person) would then get confused.  So people simply borrowed the Latin future "eras" to serve, and eventually that became regular, under the form "eres".
This page is one the one hand very long and complex because of the tables and because it bizarrely includes the entire text of its former stub article at the end, and on the other hand seriously incomplete because it's missing three conjugations and discussion of irregular verbs.  I've sliced out the stub text that was duplicated in the tables, but it is likely that this will need to be separated out into separate pages for each of the different conjugations, with brief descriptions and a link to each from this page. - courier
How could we seperate the page, and which verbs do we need to conjugate?  - ChristopherWillis
I think that individual pages for each case would work the best. Postscript2010 02:20, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: [Untitled]

message: Similar conjugation tables can be found at Latin grammar. Shouldn't we (re)move one of these? I have changed the tables, but feel free to revert if the linear format is better. Googlpl 22:02, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Duplicates

message: I've just replaced the old table with a very ugly table generated in Excel on the principle that it's better to be accurate than to look nice. If anyone can improve either table it would be really good. I'll try to but I've not got much time and this isn't exactly something I know much about. Once we have an attractive and accurate standard we need to start moving the other conjugations over to the tabulated style. I've also removed lots of duplicated information. I'd like to remove the word "radical" - I've only ever seen it for "root" in things written in French and things translated from foreign languages so I don't think it's standard but perhaps I'm wrong - can anyone elaborate?--Lo2u 20:45, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: This page

message: I am making new tables for the conjugations. Previously, I had used different tables from this topic. Now, I have borrowed and altered the tables from the Spanish conjugation topic.
Also, will someone please remove the irregular verbs here, and create another topic titled Irregular Latin Verbs so that he put them there. Thanks.
--Blurrzuki 20:53, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: New Tables

message: Really? As a novice, IMMHO, "amandi" means "of loving", and so "portandi" would mean "of carrying" or so. -- Leendert Meyer, 23:39 13 august 2006 (CEST)
:Fixed. Stupid of me... Amāre and portāre tend to be the friendliest verbs, and I had confused the two throughout editing. I just didn't catch that one. Thanks for bringest this to attention. —Blurrzuki t - c 21:36, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Portandī can mean "of loving."

message: There are some mistakes in the fourth conjugation that I would like to correct, but I don't know how to generate a macron (long vowel mark) in Wikipedia.  Can anyone tell me how?
*Below the editing text box, you can find a large group of characters that you can input into the text box by clicking on them.—Blurrzuki t - c 23:46, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Fourth Conjugation

message: Notice that the second person singular for portāre and terrēre are portāberis and terrēbiris instead of the supposed portābiris and terrēberis. The former inflections are used to ease pronunciation.
Reconcile this with the table? —66.251.24.86 02:08, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Future tense

message: Some keeps stating that infinitive, supine, participle, gerund and gerundive aren't moods. Well they are!!! There called non-finite moods. My mother tongue is Dutch and in Dutch one says that amare, amari, amaturus esse, amatum iri, amavisse and amatus esse are Onbepaalde wijzen; with the word wijs meaning mood; you can't even say what these forms are without using the word mood, so not calling them moods in English doesn't make sense at all. 
86.39.64.75 16:06, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Don't compare Latin to Dutch. Just because some words are similar, doesn't mean they are.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.214.168.133 (talk) 20:36, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

text: Compare Wikipedia's grammatical mood article: "Currently identified moods include conditional, imperative, indicative, injunctive, negative, optative, potential, subjunctive, and more. Infinitive is a category apart from all these finite forms, and so are gerunds and participles." Or Bradley's Arnold: Latin Prose Composition: "The functions of the Latin moods are as follows:— The Indicative.... The Imperative.... The Subjunctive....". AJD 16:29, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

text: I guess you should probably say "onbepaalde wijs" if you want Dutch speakers to understand you. But you should probably not say "indefinite mood" if you want English speakers to understand you. This is English Wikipedia, so we have to try to use accepted English terminology (not translated from Dutch, or even from Latin). Unfortunately, there are different terminological traditions in Latin grammar for English speakers. See AJD's references above, for example, but then Allen & Greenough include the infinitive as a fourth mood, while the four participles, the gerund, and the supine are called "Noun and Adjective Forms" of the verb. Keep in mind that this grammar is over 100 years old and probably does not reflect current standard terminology. If it turns out that there is no consensus in reliable modern sources, then I think we should continue to call the non-finite forms "forms". (Note that there is consensus for calling tenses "tenses" and voices "voices", and the indicative, subjunctive, and imperative are definitely "moods" — the idea is to use a more neutral term in obviously controversial cases.) CapnPrep 21:33, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: [edit conflict] I initially got confused when I was commenting on anonymous user's previous statement. As is witnessed by three extensive (German) grammars that I randomly picked from the shelves here, Latin is supposed to have only three moods: indicative, subjunctive and imperative. However, the infinitive could arguably be called a mood if its Latin name, modus infinitivus, is used as a standard (hence my confusion). See also  and . Apart from that, at least one Dutch school grammar actually lists the infinitive under "modi" in its introductory section. Be that as it may, the supine, participle etc. are definitely not "moods". Iblardi 21:48, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I just found an English Latin grammar on my shelf (Gildersleeve and Lodge, unfortunately also over 100 years old). They also say three moods, and then "Outside of the Finite Verb, and akin to the noun, are the verbal forms called Infinitive, Supine, Participle, Gerund" (§112.5). CapnPrep 22:17, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

text: In English, grammar books often make a distinction between 'mood' and 'mode', both of which are 'modus' in Latin and a single word in Dutch, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese. In English, 'mood' is often restricted to interpersonal stuff such as indicative vs imperative (which is what is common in English) and 'mode' is restricted to implied logical relations such as infinitive, subjunctive and the like (all of those oddities in foreign languages). It is a quite useful distinction, but it must fit the adopted theory for it to make sense. In a wikipedia article, I would prefer to adopt an explicit theory in English and use what the author said in the book. Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 07:43, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
thread_title: Moods

message: Where did y'all learn Latin? Infinitive is definitely a mood:
*Infinitive mood
*Supine mood
*Gerund mood - not so much
Rwflammang (talk) 16:46, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: In English, grammar books often make a distinction between 'mood' and 'mode', both of which are 'modus' in Latin and a single word in Dutch, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese. In English, 'mood' is often restricted to interpersonal stuff such as indicative vs imperative (which is what is common in English) and 'mode' is restricted to implied logical relations such as infinitive, subjunctive and the like (all of those oddities in foreign languages). It is a quite useful distinction, but it must fit the adopted theory for it to make sense. In a wikipedia article, I would prefer to adopt an explicit theory in English and use what the author said in the book. Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 07:43, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
thread_title: Latin moods per Google

message: The following paragraph from the section on gerunds seems a bit harsh on the Romans:
::The preposition ad can be used with a gerund in the accusative singular case to indicate purpose. For example, ad oppugnandum is translated as "to attack". However, when an object is introduced, Romans usually converted the gerund to a gerundive, agreeing with the accusative object. For example, "to attack the enemy" would become ad hostes oppugnandos, which, while technically grammatically wrong, was the normal way of using this construction. The gerundive is said to be "attracted" into the case of the noun, and occurred because Romans (mistakenly) thought that the gerund(ive) and the object should be in the same case.
It seems rather odd to claim that the native writers of a language were "technically grammatically wrong" when they were using the "normal way of using the construction," and also that they "mistakenly" believed in some sort of word agreement that we modern non-native writers find weird.  This smacks of an overreaching grammatical prescriptivism that is perhaps more insidious when English is trying map itself onto Latin than the traditional kind where grammarians tried (and still try) to map Latin onto English.  It's sort of like having a Latin writer (one of the few left) in the 21st century write, "Americans often split up verb forms.  For example, 'to go boldly' would become 'to boldly go,' which, while technically grammatically wrong, was a normal way of using this construction.  The infinitive is said to be 'split' into two parts, and occurred because Americans (mistakenly) thought that the infinitive verb form actually was composed of two separable English words."  Even though infinitives have been split in English since the earliest years when "to" became the sign of the infinitive in English, people are still trying to argue that the usage is simply wrong.  (I personally think that split infinitives are often imprecise, and I avoid them in formal writing, but trying to say that they are "wrong" ignores the way the English language has worked for hundreds of years.)
Perhaps the split infinitive question is a pet peeve among some people, so that may not be the best example.  Perhaps it would be better to compare it to a Latin writer complaining about the lack of proper uses of the subjunctive mood in English.
In any case, I've known about this form for a long time, and I've often heard it referred to as though it were some weird grammatical anomaly.  Even good grammar books sometimes like to pretend that it was some weird aberration of educated classical writers, while somehow the grammatically "purer" gerund construction eked its way through among the common people, in speech, and ultimately in vulgar Latin to emerge as gerund+object constructions in Romance languages.  Unfortunately for this argument, there seems to be scant evidence of preferred gerund+object constructions in archaic Latin, and a number of usage scholars have argued that the gerundive is an older construction in general (and that the confusion existed when people started trying to substitute gerunds for gerundives, and not the reverse).
The thing is -- this usage is not "technically grammatical wrong" nor is the gerundive agreement "mistaken," since this is the preferred use of the gerundive.  It's only grammatically "wrong" in any sense if English speakers mistakenly believe that the gerundive is some sort of future passive participle... which it isn't.  That's why it's called a _gerundive_ and not a participle.  This usage is one of the primary reasons that gerundives exist, and it's a usage specific to this verb form in Latin, so how can it be "wrong" or "mistaken"?  If anything, textual evidence seems to indicate that the use of the gerund in such constructions is the aberration -- only used in certain cases to create a certain kind of clarity -- and the fact that the gerund+object form appears to be closer to how we understand English grammar certainly doesn't mean that the native writers of Latin misunderstood the forms of their own language.  24.91.135.21 (talk) 17:16, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: "than he is" what? "Better than he is good"? You know, "him" looks more like an object either of the relation word "than" ("than him", "to him", "at him", "see him") or of the whole construction "better than" (like "you outperform him"). So, hard to say which is less logical! To me, a non-native speaker, it looks like the version where "him" is an object is slightly more logical and easier to use and comprehend, but the version where "he" is a second subject can also be substantiated and explained. - 89.110.13.246 (talk) 08:56, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

text: "I must say that you make many good points, but I think I would disagree with the Romans. My reasoning is thus: there is no clear, absolutely grammatically supported reason for a change from gerund to gerundive once an object is introduced that I have seen in my research." – What you said is contradictory. Romans said "putō", "putās", "putat" (I/you/he thinks) because there was a thinking subject and they said "pluit" (it rains) because there was no subject. Similarly, they said "ad cēnam parandam", "ad cibum parandum", "ad prandium parandum" (to prepare dinner, meal, lunch) because there was an object and they said "ad cenandum" (to dine) because there was none. So the sentence "there is no... reason for a change from gerund to gerundive once an object is introduced" is quite weird. The reason for the change is the introduction of the object. Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 07:35, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
thread_title: Gerund/gerundive English-language bias

message: The opening definition for this article has:
"Conjugation is the creation of derived forms of a verb from one basic form."
Although I appreciate that a verb like amō forms all its principal parts (amō, amāre, amāvī, amātum) from one basic root (i.e., AM-), it's confusing to state that we can derive the whole conjugation from one basic form.  When conjugating any verb in Latin we look to several forms within its vocabulary to form our conjugation.  We look to the 1st principal part for the present stem, the third for the perfect active stem, and the fourth for the perfect passive--to name a few.  In fact, it is impossible to conjugate ferō from a one basic form (since its principal parts are irregular and not derived from a single root) and yet we speak of conjugating ferō and the verb "to be".  We could change the sentence to read "Conjugation is the creation of derived forms of a verb from it's basic forms" and that would work, but the student is going to have to immediately come to grips with the concept of principal parts anyway so why not use the term?   
Therefore, I'm suggesting changing to:
Conjugation is the creation of derived forms of a verb from it's basic forms or principal parts.
Also, I will to set the term principal parts to point to the article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal_parts
Mlloyd57 (talk) 13:52, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Conjugation derived from one form

message: Just to clear up any possible confusion: The edit in question changed ĭ (i with breve) to ī (i with macron). The macron indicates a long vowel, while the breve is to explicitly indicate a short vowel. Since the passage referred to the class of third conjugation verbs with a stem ending in short i (like capio), the i with breve is the correct letter, not i with macron. Arnsholt (talk) 22:03, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Undid revision 264174032 

message: Is the explanation of its meaning correct?  I think that gerundivum in Latin always means or implies some sort of obligation. Please correct me if I am wrong.Svato (talk) 04:17, 20 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gerundivum 

message: The convention in Latin and Greek grammar, at least in the grammars I've seen, is to phrase combinations of tense and mood as tense-mood (present subjunctive) rather than as mood-tense (subjunctive present). Is there a specific reason why the article doesn't use the more common word order? — Eru·tuon 21:50, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: There is a reason. The most general notion is mood (imperative vs indicative) because only indications can have primary tense (primary = relative to the time of interaction). For instance, there is no opposition between 'past indicative' and 'past imperative'. In turn, we tend to ommit some words when specifying mood. For instance, instead of 'injunctive indicative' for free indications and 'injunctive imperative' for free imperations, we say only 'indicative' and 'imperative'; and instead of 'conjunctive' for bound representations, we say rather 'subjunctive' in English. The notion of mood coming before tense is, however, an improvement. Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 15:20, 28 May 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why mood-tense rather than tense-mood? 

message: Under gerundive, it says "The gerundive is the passive equivalent of the gerund, and much more common in Latin. It is a first and second declension adjective, and means, “(the verb) being done”." Is this in any way true? All the examples (both here and at the gerundive article) indicate that it's a kind of participle rather than a passive gerund, and means "that ought to have (the verb) done to it". Victor Yus (talk) 07:14, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Gerundive

message: I'm sure sum/esse/fui/futurus and fero/ferre/tuli/latus are suppletive. Please add a note for that. Hill Crest's WikiLaser! (BOOM!)  15:25, 5 July 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, done. 4pq1injbok (talk) 12:30, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suppletive verbs? 

message: In re the section titled ‘Irregular future active participles’, looking at the table I should think this section should be called ‘Irregular supines’.
Also, it would be nice to know how old the various verb forms are (approximately) and how they came about. Some are really old (I once read that the præsens forms may derive from PIE suffices) while others to me resemble contractions with esse and I would assume them more recent. But my guesses are just that. Is anything known about this?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.139.81.0 (talk) 23:53, 26 July 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Two things 

message: I think this page would greatly benefit from a section or sub-page on the etymology of the various forms.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.139.81.0 (talk) 19:32, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed.  I have Sihler's Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin and would theoretically be in a position to do this, but oh! for the spare time. 4pq1injbok (talk) 12:54, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Etymology 

message: According to Gildersleeve and Lodge, 3rd ed. (1903), §33 Remark 3, and Allen and Greenough (1903), §49a, the locative singular of second declension nouns ends in -ī (and not -ō). Even en.wiktionary.org says so: wiktionary:Appendix:Latin second declension. This means that the locative case of the gerund should end in -ī. — Leendert Meyer 2001:838:305:0:0:0:0:3 (talk)   — Preceding undated comment added 12:39, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Locative case of the gerund 

message: The text says the 2nd person plural imperative future I passive voice doesn't exist ("The second person plural is absent here").
* Some grammars from the 17th until the 19th century do mention such a form, e.g. laudaminor which in John Milton's grammar is translated as "be ye prais'd" or "be ye praised" (depends on the edition).
* Another grammar (C. G. Zumpt, Lateinische Grammatik) says there is no 2nd person plural imperative future I passive voice, too, but it also states that the indicative future I is used instead. So it gives further information. In the grammar it is also stated that there is the 2nd and 3rd person singular hortamino, veremino besides hortator, veretor, and according to the author the pural forms in -minor were guessed after seeing the singular forms in -mino.
* In another book it is mentioned that amaminor is an old form of amamini and that amaminor became restricted to the imperative while amamini became the indicative future I passive voice.
So there should be some further explanations or annotations in the article.
-84.161.13.210 (talk) 23:10, 2 October 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: There are many infrequent imperative inflections and among them this one you are talking about: "atque opperīminō!" (and [you two] wait [inside]!). There is no easy way to introduce these verbs because they are quite rare and poorly studied. Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 22:47, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Latin conjugation#Future imperative]] 

message: C. G. Zumpt mentions some older forms, e.g. ladarier as infinitive present instead of laudari. He also states that this form was still used by poets in the classical time. In his dictionary, Karl Ernst Georges mentions those forms too and states they're paragogic. Those forms should be mentioned too, especially when they were still used in Classical Latin. -84.161.13.210 (talk) 23:10, 2 October 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  old forms, e.g. [[Latin conjugation#Infinitives]] 

message: In the overview table (the big one), shouldn't it be laudaveramus for 1st person plural Pluperfect act ind.? Now it's laudavimus, which is perfect tense, isn't it?  TUBS (talk) 09:37, 5 February 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Fixed. Burzuchius (talk) 14:38, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

text: Fixed. Burzuchius (talk) 15:32, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

text: Fixed. Burzuchius (talk) 13:57, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

text: Fixed. 5.18.174.106 (talk) 13:08, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

text: "Capta eramus" sounds really weird. What neuter beings would make a statement in the 1st person plural pluperfect tense? Kanjuzi (talk) 04:13, 13 September 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Is it necessary that every cell of an inflection table makes sense? Or is the goal of the table to teach an inflection game? Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 23:03, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

text: Well, I do think the table should contain forms which a reader is likely to see. Since this is only Wikipedia, not a very advanced and detailed grammar, it does not seem necessary to include forms which do not occur in major writers. Kanjuzi (talk) 17:03, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Laudare Pluperfect 

message: Why verbs are divided in -āre, -ēre, -ĕre and -īre? Were originally verbs in -āre transitive, in -īre intransitive and so on?--Manfariel (talk) 01:26, 19 May 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: That's a very interesting question. -ā- verbs are usually transitive, -ē- verbs are often (but not always) intransitive. The choice between -io/-ere and -io/-īre largely depends on the length of the first ayllable: capere, facere, conspicere, iacere, fodere etc, but audīre, pūnīre, custōdīre, vincīre (venīre and impedīre are exceptions). Kanjuzi (talk) 18:39, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

text: Actually, the focus was most of the time in the indicative present active 2nd person endings "-ās, -ēs, is, īs". It was quite recently that the verbs were regrouped according to the last vowel of infinitive verbs. This only happened once it became common to classify the vocabulary items of neo-latin languages in this way. I have old dictionaries where this is not the case. However, in both cases, there are four endings for five conjugations. Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 23:12, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  sense of endings 

message: I believe these terms are used incorrectly in the article as it now stands. The Present and Future tenses in Latin can have a perfective meaning, as understood in modern linguistics. It would be better to adopt another term, such as "present system" tenses for example. Kanjuzi (talk) 12:51, 12 February 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Hallo @Kanjuzi, whichever tense term we use for the stems will be wrong from the perspective of modern linguistics. Both the opposition between "perfect" vs "imperfect" and that between "past" vs "present" vs "future" are not realised systematically by the stem. Yes, "putābam" usually represents "present in past" and the "putā" stem realises a secondary present tense; and yes, "putāveram" usually represents "past in past" and the "putāv" stem realises a secondary past tense. However, this secondary tense system only occurs for some verbs with those stems, not for all. For instance, "putāvī" usually represents a "past" event ("I thought"), rarely a "past in present" ("I've thought"); and "putō" almost always represents a "present" event ("I think"), not a "present in present" ("[while] I am thinking"). The only way to avoid this kind of problem is to give names that are taken from the words themselves, like "ō"-aspect stems for "put"/"puta"/"putā", "ī"-aspect stem for "putāv" and "ū"-aspect stem for "putāt". This is what I do when I write academic papers on this topic. If you want a reference, I can give one to you. Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 15:38, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

text: @Kanjuzi "This is what I do when I write academic papers on this topic. If you want a reference, I can give one to you." - I did not say that I give names to aspects in wikipedia articles. I do this in academic papers on this topic (see tense/mode and agreement sections of this paper). Using formative suffixes as classes is a common practice in morphology. For instance, we talk about the 'bā'-affix or the 'bā'-paradigm instead of saying 'imperfect' when we want to discuss the evolving meaning of that affix (see example paper). Otherwise, the term 'imperfect' prevents a discussion about when an 'imperfect' meaning became prevalent and why it did. The point of my comment was another one. I wanted to say that the term 'present system' is as bad as the current term because 'present' is not what these verbs systematically mean. For instance, "putābam" in the sense of "I used to think" does not represent a 'present' event in any way, but it does so in the sense of "I was thinking on you when he entered the room". The term 'īnfectum system', as you suggest, is less bad because less people read a meaning into that term. However, this term also becomes problamatic as soon as we talk about "īnfectum" ("not done") as a meaning. In other words, which names are good or bad depends on what are the other terms we need for the argumentation and what are the other uses of that term in common language. Good terms do not cause confusion in either way. Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 11:41, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Perfective vs. Imperfective 

message: Why include an example like  'These arms were very easy to praise' instead of a real one from a Latin author? Not only does the supine  not occur in any author, but the meaning of the sentence itself is so absurd and improbable that it could only belong in a school book. Is this article about the real Latin language as used by Latin authors, or the artificial made-up Latin of school books? Kanjuzi (talk) 04:50, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Absurd Latin 

message: In the Regular conjugations section, one set of verbs is used (amo, video, duco, capio, audio), while in the Non-finite forms section, another set of verbs is used (laudo, terreo, peto, capio, audio).
I'm assuming the verbs are currently different because rewriting an entire section would be more trouble than it's worth, but is there a reason two different sets were originally chosen? --Guypeter4 (talk) 13:39, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: That's very true, it's inconsistent. The article is incompletely revised. But which verbs to use? In the tables, amo is certainly more convenient than laudo, since laudo takes up more space. Video is perhaps not a good choice, since although it's very common, in the passive it changes its meaning to "seem". Terreo is OK but again it's a bit long; perhaps we should use moneo. Peto is not a very good choice since the perfect tense petivi is not typical of 3rd conjugation verbs; also the meaning in English is harder to grasp than duco. Kennedy uses rego for the 3rd conjugation, but "rectus est" in Latin authors doesn't usually mean "he was ruled" but "it is straight". "Ductus est" is very common, much more common than "petitus est", as well as easy to understand. Kanjuzi (talk) 18:18, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

text: The most frequent verbs for each conjugation during Nero's rule are: putō, videō, audiō, capiō, dīcō. I did this statistics when writing the grammar book I am trying to publish. Since I do not intend that such tables have only attested verbs (I want to teach the inflections, not the meaning, with them), I found this set to be a good option. Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 23:25, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Inconsistent example verbs