Talk:Principal parts

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In what languages are verbs classified by principal parts? I know that this is true of English, Latin, and Greek, but are there others? If there are no others or very few others, this page can be a description of principal parts in the languages that do use them for pedagogy, but if not, a more general description may be in order.NatusRoma 00:58, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

Hi! Well, of course, pp's are not a feature of the language per se but rather, as you say, of the teaching technique; for some languages it happens to be necessary. Thinking over the languages I have learned, it strikes me that these are necessary for the Germanic languages, for Latin, Greek and Sanskrit; and certainly I know it is necessary for Old Irish (which I never learned). I have a feeling it would apply to Slavic languages too, but you'd have to enquire elsewhere. In the romance languages, however, verbs are either irregular or else more-or-less predictable from the infinitive. Something similar applies to nouns in some languages, like Latin: you always learn the nominitive and the genitive: rex, regis = "king". From those you can deduce everything else. But yes, do pursue this and write it up! --Doric Loon 13:51, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

Would it make sense to list all of the languages whose verb forms are learned through principal parts, perhaps with a translation of each form (as in the Latin in this article) and an identification of that form (first singular, present indicative active, etc.)? Perhaps in a more coherent chart form? I think the comparison would be interesting. Also, as for Slavic languages, Russian verbs are learned through two infinitives: a perfective and an imperfective form. I've never heard them referred to as "principal parts," but I can check my grammars. Existent80 22:12, August 29, 2005 (UTC)

I think there's a more general perspective to this than just language learning. Dictionaries frequently try to give principal parts as well, not just for learners, but for speakers of non-standard varieties (although I suppose you could call that learning). And speaking as a computational morphologist, it is hard for a computer program to conjugate a verb (or decline a noun or adjective) unless it has access either to a list of principal parts, or else to a finer-than-usual breakdown into paradigm classes, or some other way to deduce the alternative stem forms. In fact, I would say that one way to conceive of the linguistic reality is to say that the mind stores principal parts (and has a kind of default such that it doesn't store principal parts for verbs where they're identical to another part).

About Spanish--one can certainly claim that there are more principal parts for some verbs than for others (or at least more non-default principal parts). The verb 'tener', for example, has quite a few (tengo, tiene, tuve, tendrá) besides the infinitive tener.

And of course it's not just verbs that can have > 1 principal parts; Doric Loon (above) mentions nouns in Latin. And with nearly 7000 languages in this world, there's no way to list all the languages that need > 1 principal part for some words. Mcswell (talk) 21:26, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

English

The entire English section should be removed. Principal parts are those specific conjugation forms from which all other forms can be derived. This concept does not apply to English, which operates exactly as the article describes French:

Not all languages have to be taught in this way. In French, for example, regular verbs can be deduced from a single form, the infinitive, and irregular verbs are too random to be systematized under fixed parts.

Additionally, unlike Latin (or even French), regular verbs only have four forms total, and other than "be" irregular verbs have five at most. To say that three or four out of four or five forms are "principal parts" is absurd. -70.181.242.20 (talk) 23:51, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

I think you are mistaken. If you are a learner of English, you memorize "sing - sang - sung". Those are not random parts, they are the three specific parts that you memorize for ALL strong verbs. From those you conjugate the rest regularly. You don't need to learn "sings" or "singing". This is exactly the same as the four parts of the Latin verb. If you look at a table of English "irregular" verbs, you will find it only has three columns. The verbs have more than three parts, but you only need to learn three, and they are the same three for every verb. English (like German and Dutch) has:

• regular verbs which you can conjugate from a single form.
• verbs that you can class as regular or irregular as you please, which you can conjugate from principal parts. Depending on how you count, there are over 100 of these.
• a small handful of verbs that are really irregular (be, have, and the modals) in which you can't predict all the parts even from principle parts.

This is different from French, which has the first and third kind, but no middle group. Remember, we are not talking about linguistic categories, here, we are talking about practicalities of language teaching. I've been teaching English as a foreign language for thirty years, and there is nothing absurd about about a strategy for "taming" irregular verbs. --Doric Loon (talk) 14:01, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

Having said that, you are right that the English section of this article has been padded out with a lot that shouldn't be there. I will try to trim it.--Doric Loon (talk) 14:09, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

Indeed I am also an English teacher and indeed verb tables with the three irregular forms have been used for centuries by teacher and student. I believe it is extreme to completely blank the rest of the English section though I have cut down on a lot of it and simplified things. Shabidoo | Talk 23:13, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

Nouns?

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)

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)

Ganda

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)

3S

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)

Caption

Person	Singular	Plural
1	I	We
2	You	You
3	He/She/It	They

1st person is the person closest to you (yourself), 2nd is the next closest (you, the person/people you are talking to) and 3rd is the most distant (he/she/it/they) who are either not present or being spoken to "in the third person". Singular is one individual, plural is more than one. Note in English there is no difference between the 2S and 2P while in most other languages there are separate pronouns. 3S (3rd person singular) is: he/she/it. Shabidoo | Talk 03:12, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

French

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)

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)

Changing the title of article to singular form

"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)

@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)

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)