Slovene verbs


This article describes the conjugation and use of verbs in Slovene. Further information about the grammar of the Slovene language can be found in the article Slovene grammar.

Grammatical categories

In Slovene, there are four tenses:
  1. The present tense, which considers events that are occurring.
  2. The past or preterite tense, which considers events that occurred in the past.
  3. The pluperfect tense, which considers events that occurred before a given event already in the past. It is rare in normal use.
  4. The future tense, which considers events that will occur.
There are 3 verb moods:
  1. Indicative mood, which is used to state a fact or opinion.
  2. Imperative mood, which is used to give commands.
  3. Conditional mood, which is used to state possibilities or wishes, for example, If only I knew that....
In addition, there are several non-finite forms:
  1. An infinitive in -ti and a supine in -t.
  2. Two present active participles, in -č and in -e, indicating ongoing action.
  3. Two past active participles, in -l and in -ši, indicating a past or completed action.
  4. A past passive participle in -n or -t, indicating an action having been performed on something.
Only the present indicative, the imperative and the non-finite forms are formed synthetically, by changing the form of the verb directly. All other forms are periphrastic, and are formed using auxiliary verbs or other additional words.
As in all Slavic languages, Slovene verbs are classified based on their aspect:
  1. Perfective verbs, which represent a completed action.
  2. Imperfective verbs, which represent an ongoing action.
Each verb is either perfective or imperfective, and most verbs occur in pairs to express the same meaning with different aspects. For example, the concept of jumping is expressed in the 2 different aspects is skákati, which has an imperfective aspect and can roughly be translated as to be jumping , and skočíti, which has a perfective aspect and can roughly be translated as to jump . While each aspect is represented by a full verb with its own distinct conjugation, certain combinations are not or rarely used in one aspect or the other. For example, imperfective verbs generally lack a past passive participle, while perfective verbs have no present participles. Additionally, the present tense has 2 different meanings depending on the aspect of a verb. For imperfective verbs, it has present meaning, while for perfective verbs, it has a future meaning expressing a desire to carry out the action. For example, To kravo prodam "I want to sell the cow".
As well, verbs can be classified based on their transitivity and aspect. Many verbs in Slovene can be both transitive and intransitive depending on their use in a sentence. However, all reflexive verbs, which are marked by the participle se, are intransitive.

Conjugation

All conjugated forms of Slovene verbs can be derived from one of two verb stems. The present stem forms the base for all forms of the present indicative and the imperative, as well as the present participles. The infinitive stem forms the infinitive, supine and past participles.
The Slovene verb can be classified into several different conjugation patterns. The following table lists the basic patterns, but note that individual verbs may be irregular and have unpredictable changes. The "present" column shows the ending of the first person singular present indicative. Letters that belong to the present or infinitive stem are shown in bold.
PresentInfinitiveExamplesNotes
-em-ti, -či
-ati		 "carry", "say"
"read", "grind"		Basic stems ending in a consonant. There are many irregularities in this group. The final consonant may be altered by some endings, in particular the infinitive, or it may switch places with the preceding vowel.
-jem-ti
-jati		 "beat", "hear"
"give"		Basic stems ending in a vowel or certain consonants.
-jem-ati "draw", "take"An extra -j- appears in the present tense, which can affect the final consonant of the stem.
-ujem-ovati
-evati		 "buy"
"pay"		The verbs ending in -evati always have stems ending in -č-, -š-, -ž- or -j-.
-am-ati "do, make"These verbs originally had longer stems, in -aje-, in which the -j- was lost and the vowels contracted. The -j- remains in the imperative and present participles.
-em-eti "understand"
-im-iti
-eti
-ati		 "think"
"see"
"hear"		The verbs ending in -ati always have stems ending in -č-, -š-, -ž- or -j-.
-nem-niti "lift, raise"

Present indicative

These following endings are added to the present stem of a verb, to form the present indicative.
SingularDualPlural
First person-m-va-mo
Second person-š-ta-te
Third person--ta-jo

The extra -e- is added to the endings when the verb stem ends in a consonant. This -e- causes changes to stems ending in -k- or -g- ; these become -č- and -ž- before the present tense endings.
In some consonant stem verbs, an older, shorter form of the third person plural ending exists, which is just -o instead of -ejo. Similarly, in verbs with present stems in -i-, the ending -ijo has a shorter alternative form -e.

Imperative mood

The imperative mood is used to give commands, and only exists in the present tense. There are no forms for the first person singular or the third person of any number.
The following endings are added to the present stem of a verb, to form the present indicative.
SingularDualPlural
First person-iva-imo
Second person-i-ita-ite

If the present stem ends in -a-, the initial -i- of the ending changes to a -j-. Present stems ending with other vowels drop their final vowel. The endings also cause changes to stems ending in -k- or -g- ; these become -c- and -z- respectively before the imperative endings.
An additional kind of imperative, which may be called the optative or hortative, is formed by using the particle naj with the present indicative. This acts as a substitute for the imperative in the third person as well.

Non-finite forms

Infinitive and supine

There are 2 verbal nouns: the infinitive and the supine.
The infinitive is the basic verb form found in dictionaries, and ends in -ti. When the infinitive ending is attached to a stem ending in a consonant, that consonant may change, as follows:
The supine is formed by dropping the last -i of the infinitive. It is used after verbs that designate motion. For example, the supine would be used in the following sentences, :
There are two present active participles, which are used with imperfective verbs. They correspond to the English participle in -ing, and indicate ongoing or current action.
The first is an adjectival participle. It is formed by adding -eč to verbs with present stem in -i- or -e-, -joč to verbs with present stem in -a-, and -oč to all other verbs. It declines as a regular soft adjective.
Examples:
The second is an adverbial participle. It was originally the nominative singular of the first participle, which had an irregular form. It is formed by removing -č from the first participle and changing -o to -e. For verbs in -uj-/-ovati this produces -uje, but this form is now archaic and has been replaced by -ovaje, as though it were an a-verb.
There are two kinds of past active participle, used with different functions.
The l-participle exists for all verbs, and is used mainly to form the past tense. Although it is adjectival, it exists only in the nominative case, and declines for gender and number. It is formed by adding -l to the infinitive stem. A fill vowel is inserted in the masculine singular form when attached to verbs with an infinitive stem ending in a consonant.
Examples:
The š-participle is an adverbial participle, and is rarely used in modern Slovene. It denotes completed action, and is equivalent to the English construct with having + past participle. It is formed by adding -vši to the infinitive stem. The ending is only -ši if the infinitive stem ends in a consonant.
Examples:
This participle corresponds to the English participle in -ed or -en, and is an adjective that indicates a state of having undergone an action. It exists only for transitive verbs, and almost only if they are perfective. It is formed with two possible suffixes.
-n is added to verbs with an infinitive stem in -a-. Verbs with an infinitive stem in -i- receive -jen, but the -j- may disappear and alter the preceding consonant. All other verbs have -en. However, a small number of verbs, mostly those with presents in a vowel followed by -je-, have a completely different ending -t.
Examples of this participle are:

Past indicative

The past indicative is used to indicate events that occurred in the past. Modern Slovene does not distinguish the past tense from the perfect tense ; this distinction was common in Middle Slovene when aorist served the past tense form.
It is formed with the auxiliary verb biti in the present tense, plus the l-participle of the verb. The participle must agree with the subject in number and gender. For example:
The pluperfect indicative is used to indicate an action that occurred before some other future action. It is rarely used in colloquial speech, where it is replaced by the past tense.
It is formed as though it were the past tense of the past tense: the auxiliary verb biti in the present tense, plus the l-participle of the verb biti, plus the l-participle of the verb. The participles must agree with the subject in number and gender. For example:
The future indicative tense is used to state events that will happen in the future.
The verb biti has its own unique set of future tense forms, with the stem bo-. No other verb has a distinct form for the future tense. Instead, it is formed using biti in the future tense, plus the l-participle of the verb. The participle must agree with the subject in number and gender. For example:
The conditional mood is used to express desires, wishes, and hypothetical conditions.
The present conditional is formed using the special particle bi, plus the l'-participle of the lexical verb. The past conditional is rarely used, like the pluperfect, and is formed analogously: the particle bi, plus l-participle of the verb biti, plus the l-participle of the verb. Examples of the conditional mood are:
The passive voice is formed by using the auxiliary verb biti, plus the passive past participle of the verb. It may also be formed by turning a verb into a reflexive verb, by adding the reflexive pronoun se to the end of a verb. Except for reflexive verbs, the passive voice is rarely used. An example of the passive voice is:
However, this is more commonly stated using the active voice with an impersonal form of the third person plural :
The following table present the conjugation pattern for each of the 5 classes, as well as the irregular verbs.
  1. The participle agrees with the subject of the sentence.
Indicates that the participle agrees with the subject of the sentence.
  1. The participle agrees with the subject of the sentence.
  2. The participle agrees with the subject of the sentence.
  3. The participle agrees with the subject of the sentence.
The following is the conjugation of the athematic Slovene verbs: dati, vedeti, jesti, and biti.
  1. The participle agrees with the subject of the sentence.
  2. The participle agrees with the subject of the sentence.
  3. The participle agrees with the subject of the sentence.
In the future, there also exist forms with an inserted -de between the stem bo- and the ending. For example, bodem for bom. The negative form of the verb, to not be, is formed by attaching ni to the present indicative forms.