Interlingua grammar
Encyclopedia
This article is an informal outline of the grammar of Interlingua
, an international auxiliary language
first publicized by IALA
. It follows the usage of the original grammar text (Gode & Blair, 1951), which is accepted today but regarded as conservative.
The grammar of Interlingua is based largely on that of the Romance languages
, but simplified, primarily under the influence of English
. However, all of the control languages, including German
and Russian
, were consulted in developing the grammar. Grammatical features absent from any of the control languages were dropped. For example, there is neither adjectival agreement
(Spanish
/Portuguese
gatos negros 'black cats'), since this feature is absent in English, nor continuous verb tenses
(English I am reading), since they are absent in French
.
There is no systemic marking for parts of speech. For example, nouns do not have to end in any particular letter. Typically, however, adjectives end in -e or a consonant, adverbs end in -mente or -o, while nouns end in -a, -e, -o or a consonant. Finite verb
s virtually always end in -a, -e, or -i, while infinitive
s add -r: scribe, 'write', 'writes'; scriber, 'to write'.
is le and indefinite article is un. They are invariable and are used roughly as in English. A le and de le can optionally be fused
into al and del respectively.
s inflect for number only. Plural
nouns take -s after a vowel, -es after a consonant (but final -c changes to -ches to preserve the [k] sound of c).
Interlingua has no grammatical gender
. Animate nouns are sex-neutral, unless they refer specifically to a male or a female. Thus, jornalista 'journalist' and scientista 'scientist' are sex-neutral, while rege 'king' and regina 'queen' are sex-specific. Explicit feminine forms can be created by substituting final -a for a final -o or -e or by adding the suffix -essa.
These colour the regular forms as masculine when they appear in the same context.
An adjective never has to agree with the noun it modifies, but adjectives may be pluralized when there is no explicit noun to modify.
Comparative degree is expressed by plus or minus preceding the adjective and superlative degree by le plus or le minus.
The suffix -issime may be used to express the absolute superlative degree.
The adjectives bon 'good', mal 'bad', magne 'great', and parve 'small' have optional irregular forms for the comparative and superlative.
A few common adverbs have optional short forms in -o.
Like adjectives, adverbs use plus and minus to express the comparative and le plus and le minus to express the superlative.
The adverbs equivalent to bon, 'good' and mal, 'bad' have optional irregular forms.
Personal pronoun
s inflect for number
, case
, and (in the third person) gender.
One could also assert the existence of a separate prepositional case
, since third-person pronouns use the longer forms ille, illes etc. after a preposition in place of the expected le, les etc.
Many users follow the European custom of using the plural forms vos etc. rather than tu etc. in formal situations.
Illes can be used as a sex-neutral pronoun, like English 'they'. Illas may be used for entirely female groups.
On is a nominative pronoun used when the identity of the subject is vague. The English translation is often 'one', 'you', or 'they'. It is sometimes equivalent to an English passive voice
construction. The oblique form is uno.
The main demonstratives are the adjective iste, 'this' and the corresponding pronouns iste (masculine), ista (feminine), and isto (neuter), which may be pluralized. They are used more widely than English 'this/these', often encroaching on the territory of English 'that/those'. Where the subject of a sentence has two plausible antecedents, iste (or one of its derivatives) refers to the second one.
The demonstrative of remoteness is ille 'that'. The corresponding pronouns ille, illa, illo and their plurals are identical with the third-person personal pronouns, though they are normally accentuated in speech.
For inanimates, que covers both the nominative and oblique cases.
Cuje 'whose' is the genitive case for both animates and inanimates.
All the above may be replaced by the relative adjective forms le qual (singular) and le quales (plural).
The relative pronouns also serve as interrogative pronouns (see Questions).
The verb system is a simplified version of the systems found in English and the Romance languages. There is no imperfective aspect
, as in Romance, no perfect as in English, and no continuous aspect, as in English and some Romance languages. Except (optionally) for esser 'to be', there are no personal inflections, and the indicative also covers the subjunctive
and imperative
moods. Three common verbs (esse, habe and vade) usually take short forms in the present tense
(es, ha and va respectively), and a few optional irregular
verbs are available.
For convenience' sake, this section often uses the term tense
to also cover mood
and aspect
, though this is not strict grammatical terminology.
The table at the right shows the main verb forms, with examples for -ar, -er and -ir verbs (based on parlar 'to speak', vider 'to see', and audir 'to hear').
The simple past, future, and conditional tenses correspond to semantically identical compound tenses (composed of auxiliary verbs plus infinitives or past participles). These in turn furnish patterns for building more-complex tenses such as the future perfect
.
verbs always end in -ar, -er, or -ir. They cover the functions of both the infinitive and the gerund
in English and can be pluralized where it makes sense.
Infinitives are also used in some compound tenses (see below).
: the present
, past
, future
, and conditional.
is effectively the present tense form plus -nte. Verbs in -ir take -iente rather than *-inte (nutrir 'to feed' → nutriente 'feeding'). It functions as an adjective or as the verb in a participial phrase.
The past participle can be constructed by adding -te to the present tense form, except that -er verbs go to -ite rather than *-ete (eder 'to edit' → edite 'edited'). It is used as an adjective and to form various compound tenses.
The fourth basic compound tense is the passive, formed from es (the present tense of esser 'to be') plus the past participle.
A wide variety of complex tenses can be created following the above patterns, by replacing ha, va, and es with other forms of haber, vader, and esser. Examples:
The infinitive can serve as another, stylistically more impersonal, imperative form.
A less urgent version of imperative, the cohortative, employs a present-tense verb within a "that" ("que") clause and may be used with the first and third person as well as the second. The alternative vamos 'let's' (or 'let's go') is available for the second-person plural, but deprecated by some authorities.
Sia is the imperative and subjunctive form of esser 'to be'. The regular form esse may also be used.
Other irregular forms are available, but official Interlingua publications (and the majority of users) have always favoured the regular forms. These optional irregular forms are known as collaterals.
A significant minority of users employ certain collateral forms of esser 'to be': son (present plural), era (past), sera (future), and serea (conditional), instead of es, esseva, essera, and esserea.
The forms io so 'I am' and nos somos 'we are' also exist but are rarely used.
mutate when attached to certain suffixes. For example, agente, agentia, actrice, activista, reagente, reaction are all derivatives of ager 'to act', but some use the primary stem ag- while othes use the secondary stem act-. There are hundreds of such verbs, especially in international scientific vocabulary
.
This raises a logical issue. Adding -e to one of these secondary stems produces an adjective that is structurally and semantically equivalent to the past participle of the same verb. Experte, for example, is related to experir 'to experience', which has the past participle experite. Yet, semantically, there is little difference between un experte carpentero 'an expert carpenter' and un experite carpentero 'an experienced carpenter'. Effectively, experte = experite. Furthermore, one can form a word like le experito 'the experienced one' as a quasi-synonym of le experto 'the expert'.
This process can be reversed. That is, can one substitute experte for experite in compound tenses (and other second-stem adjectives for other past participles).
The original Interlingua grammar (Gode & Blair, 1951) permitted this usage, and illustrated it in one experimental text. A minority of Interlinguists employ the irregular roots, at least occasionally, more often with recognizable forms like scripte (for scribite 'written') than opaque ones like fisse (for findite 'split'). The practice is controversial. Deprecators suggest that they complicate the active use of Interlingua and may confuse beginners. Proponents argue that by using the irregular participles, students of Interlingua become more aware of the connections between words like agente and actor, consequentia and consecutive, and so on. A compromise position holds that the irregular forms may be useful in some educational contexts (e.g., when using Interlingua to teach international scientific vocabulary or as an intermediate step in the study of Romance languages), but not in general communication.
A similar issue concerns the present participles of caper 'to take', facer 'to make', saper 'to know', and all verbs ending in -ciper, -ficer, and -jicer. The regular forms are facente, sapente, etc., but the "preferred forms", according to the original grammar, are faciente, sapiente, etc.
Today, most users employ the regular forms in spontaneous usage. Forms like sufficiente are often used as adjectives, under the influence of similar forms in the source languages.
in Interlingua is subject–verb–object, though this may be relaxed where the sense is clear.
Pronouns, however, tend to follow the Romance pattern subject–object–verb, except for infinitives and imperatives, where the object follows the verb.
When two pronouns, one a direct and one an indirect object, occur with the same verb, the indirect object comes first.
The position of adverbs and adverbial phrases is similar to English.
Interlingua
Interlingua is an international auxiliary language , developed between 1937 and 1951 by the International Auxiliary Language Association...
, an international auxiliary language
International auxiliary language
An international auxiliary language or interlanguage is a language meant for communication between people from different nations who do not share a common native language...
first publicized by IALA
International Auxiliary Language Association
The International Auxiliary Language Association was founded in 1924 to "promote widespread study, discussion and publicity of all questions involved in the establishment of an auxiliary language, together with research and experiment that may hasten such establishment in an intelligent manner and...
. It follows the usage of the original grammar text (Gode & Blair, 1951), which is accepted today but regarded as conservative.
The grammar of Interlingua is based largely on that of the Romance languages
Romance languages
The Romance languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family, more precisely of the Italic languages subfamily, comprising all the languages that descend from Vulgar Latin, the language of ancient Rome...
, but simplified, primarily under the influence of English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
. However, all of the control languages, including German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
and Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
, were consulted in developing the grammar. Grammatical features absent from any of the control languages were dropped. For example, there is neither adjectival agreement
Agreement (linguistics)
In languages, agreement or concord is a form of cross-reference between different parts of a sentence or phrase. Agreement happens when a word changes form depending on the other words to which it relates....
(Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
/Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
gatos negros 'black cats'), since this feature is absent in English, nor continuous verb tenses
Continuous and progressive aspects
The continuous and progressive aspects are grammatical aspects that express incomplete action in progress at a specific time: they are non-habitual, imperfective aspects. It is a verb category with two principal meaning components: duration and incompletion...
(English I am reading), since they are absent in French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
.
There is no systemic marking for parts of speech. For example, nouns do not have to end in any particular letter. Typically, however, adjectives end in -e or a consonant, adverbs end in -mente or -o, while nouns end in -a, -e, -o or a consonant. Finite verb
Finite verb
A finite verb is a verb that is inflected for person and for tense according to the rules and categories of the languages in which it occurs. Finite verbs can form independent clauses, which can stand on their own as complete sentences....
s virtually always end in -a, -e, or -i, while infinitive
Infinitive
In grammar, infinitive is the name for certain verb forms that exist in many languages. In the usual description of English, the infinitive of a verb is its basic form with or without the particle to: therefore, do and to do, be and to be, and so on are infinitives...
s add -r: scribe, 'write', 'writes'; scriber, 'to write'.
Articles
The definite articleDefinite Article
Definite Article is the title of British comedian Eddie Izzard's 1996 performance released on VHS. It was recorded on different nights at the Shaftesbury Theatre...
is le and indefinite article is un. They are invariable and are used roughly as in English. A le and de le can optionally be fused
Contraction (grammar)
A contraction is a shortened version of the written and spoken forms of a word, syllable, or word group, created by omission of internal letters....
into al and del respectively.
Nouns
NounNoun
In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...
s inflect for number only. Plural
Plural
In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one...
nouns take -s after a vowel, -es after a consonant (but final -c changes to -ches to preserve the [k] sound of c).
- catto 'cat' → cattos 'cats'
- can 'dog' → canes 'dogs'
- roc 'rook' [chess] → roches 'rooks'
Interlingua has no grammatical gender
Grammatical gender
Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...
. Animate nouns are sex-neutral, unless they refer specifically to a male or a female. Thus, jornalista 'journalist' and scientista 'scientist' are sex-neutral, while rege 'king' and regina 'queen' are sex-specific. Explicit feminine forms can be created by substituting final -a for a final -o or -e or by adding the suffix -essa.
- puero 'boy' → puera 'girl'
- tigre 'tiger' → tigressa 'female tiger'
These colour the regular forms as masculine when they appear in the same context.
Adjectives
Adjectives may precede or follow the noun they modify. As a matter of style, short adjectives tend to precede, long adjectives tend to follow. Numerals always precede the noun.- belle oculos or oculos belle 'beautiful eyes'
- un bon idea, un idea ingeniose 'a good idea, an ingenious idea'
An adjective never has to agree with the noun it modifies, but adjectives may be pluralized when there is no explicit noun to modify.
- le parve infantes 'the little children'; but le parves 'the little ones'
Comparative degree is expressed by plus or minus preceding the adjective and superlative degree by le plus or le minus.
- un plus feroce leon 'a fiercer lion'
- un traino minus rapide 'a less speedy train'
- le plus alte arbore 'the tallest tree'
- le solution le minus costose 'the least costly solution'.
The suffix -issime may be used to express the absolute superlative degree.
- un aventura excellentissime 'a most excellent adventure'
The adjectives bon 'good', mal 'bad', magne 'great', and parve 'small' have optional irregular forms for the comparative and superlative.
bon → plus bon → le plus bon | or | bon → melior → optime | ||
mal → plus mal → le plus mal | or | mal → pejor → pessime | ||
magne → plus magne → le plus magne | or | magne → major → maxime | ||
parve → plus parve → le plus parve | or | parve → minor → minime | ||
Adverbs
There are two types of adverbs, primary and secondary. Primary adverbs are a closed class of grammatical operators, such as quasi, 'almost'; jam, 'already'; and totevia, 'anyway'. Secondary adverbs are an open class derived from corresponding adjectives by adding the suffix -mente (-amente after final -c).- felice 'happy' → felicemente 'happily'
- magic 'magical' → magicamente 'magically'
A few common adverbs have optional short forms in -o.
- sol 'alone' → solo or solmente 'only'
Like adjectives, adverbs use plus and minus to express the comparative and le plus and le minus to express the superlative.
- Illa canta plus bellemente que illa parla 'She sings more beautifully than she speaks'
- Le gepardo curre le plus rapide de omne animales 'The cheetah runs the fastest of all animals'
The adverbs equivalent to bon, 'good' and mal, 'bad' have optional irregular forms.
bonmente → plus bonmente → le plus bonmente | or | ben → plus ben → le plus ben | or | ben → melio → optimo | ||||
malmente → plus malmente→ le plus malmente | or | mal → plus mal → le plus mal | or | mal → pejo → pessimo | ||||
Personal pronouns
Personal pronouns – singular | ||||||
Person | Gender | Nom. | Pre. | Obl. | Refl. | Genitive |
First | – | io | me | mi, mie | ||
Second | – | tu | te | tu, tue | ||
Third | masc. | ille | le | se | su, sue | |
fem. | illa | la | ||||
neut. | illo | lo | ||||
Personal pronouns – plural | ||||||
Person | Gender | Nom. | Pre. | Obl. | Refl. | Genitive |
First | – | nos | nostre | |||
Second | – | vos | vostre | |||
Third | masc. | illes | les | se | lor, lore | |
fem. | illas | las | ||||
neut. | illos | los | ||||
Personal pronoun
Personal pronoun
Personal pronouns are pronouns used as substitutes for proper or common nouns. All known languages contain personal pronouns.- English personal pronouns :English in common use today has seven personal pronouns:*first-person singular...
s inflect for number
Grammatical number
In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
, case
Grammatical case
In grammar, the case of a noun or pronoun is an inflectional form that indicates its grammatical function in a phrase, clause, or sentence. For example, a pronoun may play the role of subject , of direct object , or of possessor...
, and (in the third person) gender.
- The nominative caseNominative caseThe nominative case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or the predicate noun or predicate adjective, as opposed to its object or other verb arguments...
is the default form and typically serves as the subjectSubject (grammar)The subject is one of the two main constituents of a clause, according to a tradition that can be tracked back to Aristotle and that is associated with phrase structure grammars; the other constituent is the predicate. According to another tradition, i.e...
of a verb.
-
- "Qui es ibi?" "Io." "Who's there?" "Me."
- Tu arrestava le chef de policia 'You have arrested the chief of police'
- The oblique caseOblique caseAn oblique case in linguistics is a noun case of synthetic languages that is used generally when a noun is the object of a verb or a preposition...
is used for direct objects, and may also be used for indirect objects. (Alternatively, indirect objects are expressed through a, 'to' plus a pronoun.)
-
- Le caffe es excellente: proba lo! 'The coffee is excellent: try it!'
- Dice me le conto; dice me lo (or Dice le conto a me...) 'Tell me the story; tell it to me'
- Reflexive pronouns are used when the subject of a verb is identical with the direct or indirect object. As in the Romance languagesRomance languagesThe Romance languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family, more precisely of the Italic languages subfamily, comprising all the languages that descend from Vulgar Latin, the language of ancient Rome...
, reflexive constructions are often used where English would employ an intransitive verbIntransitive verbIn grammar, an intransitive verb is a verb that has no object. This differs from a transitive verb, which takes one or more objects. Both classes of verb are related to the concept of the transitivity of a verb....
or the passive voicePassive voicePassive voice is a grammatical voice common in many of the world's languages. Passive is used in a clause whose subject expresses the theme or patient of the main verb. That is, the subject undergoes an action or has its state changed. A sentence whose theme is marked as grammatical subject is...
.
-
- Deo adjuta les, qui se adjuta 'God helps those who help themselvesGod helps those who help themselvesThe phrase "God helps those who help themselves" is a popular motto that emphasizes the importance of self-initiative.The phrase originated in ancient Greece, occurring in approximately equivalent form as the moral to one of Aesop's Fables, Hercules and the Waggoner, and later in the great tragedy...
' - Io me sibila un melodia 'I whistle a tune to myself'
- Tu te rasava? 'Have you shaved?'
- Francese se parla in Francia 'French is spoken in France'
- Deo adjuta les, qui se adjuta 'God helps those who help themselves
- The genitive caseGenitive caseIn grammar, genitive is the grammatical case that marks a noun as modifying another noun...
indicates possession (mi auto, 'my car'). The longer forms mie, tue etc. are adjectives, used in constructions like le auto es le mie, 'the car is mine'. They can also directly modify a noun.
-
- alicun amicos mie 'some friends of mine'
- Matre mie! Es un picante bolla de carne! 'Mamma mia, that's a spicy meatball!'
One could also assert the existence of a separate prepositional case
Prepositional case
Prepositional case is a grammatical case that marks the object of a preposition. This term can be used in languages where nouns have a declensional form that appears exclusively in combination with certain prepositions...
, since third-person pronouns use the longer forms ille, illes etc. after a preposition in place of the expected le, les etc.
- Da le can a illes 'Give them the dog'
Many users follow the European custom of using the plural forms vos etc. rather than tu etc. in formal situations.
- Esque vos passava un viage placente, Seniora Chan? 'Did you have a pleasant trip, Mrs. Chan?'
- Aperi vostre valise, Senior. 'Open your suitcase, Sir.'
Illes can be used as a sex-neutral pronoun, like English 'they'. Illas may be used for entirely female groups.
Impersonal pronouns
Il is an impersonal nominative pronoun used in constructions like il pluve, 'it's raining'. It can also serve as a placeholder when the true subject is a clause occurring later in the sentence. It may be omitted where the sense is clear.- Il deveni tarde 'It's getting late'
- Il es ver que nos expende multe moneta 'It's true that we're spending a lot of money'
- Es bon que vos veni ora 'It's good that you come now'
On is a nominative pronoun used when the identity of the subject is vague. The English translation is often 'one', 'you', or 'they'. It is sometimes equivalent to an English passive voice
Passive voice
Passive voice is a grammatical voice common in many of the world's languages. Passive is used in a clause whose subject expresses the theme or patient of the main verb. That is, the subject undergoes an action or has its state changed. A sentence whose theme is marked as grammatical subject is...
construction. The oblique form is uno.
- On non vide tal cosas actualmente 'One doesn't see such things these days'
- On sape nunquam lo que evenira 'You never know what will happen'
- On construe un nove linea de metro al centro urban 'They're building a new subway line to downtown'
- On collige le recyclabiles omne venerdi 'Recyclables are picked up every Friday'
- Tal pensatas afflige uno in le profundo del depression 'Such thoughts afflict one in the depths of depression'
Demonstratives
Demonstratives | ||||
Role | Number | Gender | Proximate | Remote |
Adjective | – | – | iste | ille |
Pronoun | Sing. | masc. | iste | (ille) |
fem. | ista | (illa) | ||
neut. | isto | (illo) | ||
Plur. | masc. | istes | (illes) | |
fem. | istas | (illas) | ||
neut. | istos | (illos) | ||
The main demonstratives are the adjective iste, 'this' and the corresponding pronouns iste (masculine), ista (feminine), and isto (neuter), which may be pluralized. They are used more widely than English 'this/these', often encroaching on the territory of English 'that/those'. Where the subject of a sentence has two plausible antecedents, iste (or one of its derivatives) refers to the second one.
- Iste vino es pessime 'This wine is terrible'
- Isto es un bon idea 'That's a good idea'
- Janet accompaniava su soror al galleria... 'Janet accompanied her sister to the gallery...'
- (a) Illa es un artista notabile 'She [Janet] is a well-known artist'
- (b) Ista es un artista notabile 'She [Janet's sister] is a well-known artist'
The demonstrative of remoteness is ille 'that'. The corresponding pronouns ille, illa, illo and their plurals are identical with the third-person personal pronouns, though they are normally accentuated in speech.
- Io cognosce ille viro; ille se appella Smith 'I know that man; his name is Smith'
- Illo es un obra magnific
' That is a magnificent work'
Relative and interrogative pronouns
The relative pronouns for animates are qui (nominative case and after prepositions) and que (oblique case).- Nos vole un contabile qui sape contar 'We want an accountant who knows how to count'
- Nos vole un contabile super qui nos pote contar We want an accountant who we can count on' (an accountant on whom we can count)
- Nos vole un contabile que le policia non perseque 'We want an accountant whom the police are not pursuing'
For inanimates, que covers both the nominative and oblique cases.
- Il ha duo sortas de inventiones: illos que on discoperi e illos que discoperi uno 'There are two types of inventions: those that you discover and those that discover you'
Cuje 'whose' is the genitive case for both animates and inanimates.
- un autor cuje libros se vende in milliones 'an author whose books sell in the millions'
- un insula cuje mysterios resta irresolvite 'an island whose mysteries remain unsolved'
All the above may be replaced by the relative adjective forms le qual (singular) and le quales (plural).
- Mi scriptorio esseva in disordine – le qual, nota ben, es su stato normal 'My desk was in a mess – which, mind you, is its usual state'
- Duo cosinos remote, del quales io sape nihil, veni visitar 'Two distant cousins, of whom I know nothing, are coming to visit
The relative pronouns also serve as interrogative pronouns (see Questions).
Verbs
Main verb forms | |||||
Tense | Ending | -ar verbs | -er verbs | -ir verbs | |
Infinitive | -r | parlar | vider | audir | |
Present | – | parla | vide | audi | |
Past* | -va | parlava | videva | audiva | |
Future* | -ra | parlara | videra | audira | |
Conditional* | -rea | parlarea | viderea | audirea | |
Present participle | -(e)nte | parlante | vidente | audiente | |
Past participle | -te | parlate | vidite | audite | |
*For alternative, compound forms, see Compound tenses. | |||||
The verb system is a simplified version of the systems found in English and the Romance languages. There is no imperfective aspect
Imperfective aspect
The imperfective is a grammatical aspect used to describe a situation viewed with internal structure, such as ongoing, habitual, repeated, and similar semantic roles, whether that situation occurs in the past, present, or future...
, as in Romance, no perfect as in English, and no continuous aspect, as in English and some Romance languages. Except (optionally) for esser 'to be', there are no personal inflections, and the indicative also covers the subjunctive
Subjunctive mood
In grammar, the subjunctive mood is a verb mood typically used in subordinate clauses to express various states of irreality such as wish, emotion, possibility, judgment, opinion, necessity, or action that has not yet occurred....
and imperative
Imperative mood
The imperative mood expresses commands or requests as a grammatical mood. These commands or requests urge the audience to act a certain way. It also may signal a prohibition, permission, or any other kind of exhortation.- Morphology :...
moods. Three common verbs (esse, habe and vade) usually take short forms in the present tense
Present tense
The present tense is a grammatical tense that locates a situation or event in present time. This linguistic definition refers to a concept that indicates a feature of the meaning of a verb...
(es, ha and va respectively), and a few optional irregular
Irregular
Something that is irregular does not follow the expected pattern. The term is used in many different fields, with quite different meanings.-Canon Law:...
verbs are available.
For convenience' sake, this section often uses the term tense
Grammatical tense
A tense is a grammatical category that locates a situation in time, to indicate when the situation takes place.Bernard Comrie, Aspect, 1976:6:...
to also cover mood
Grammatical mood
In linguistics, grammatical mood is a grammatical feature of verbs, used to signal modality. That is, it is the use of verbal inflections that allow speakers to express their attitude toward what they are saying...
and aspect
Grammatical aspect
In linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb is a grammatical category that defines the temporal flow in a given action, event, or state, from the point of view of the speaker...
, though this is not strict grammatical terminology.
The table at the right shows the main verb forms, with examples for -ar, -er and -ir verbs (based on parlar 'to speak', vider 'to see', and audir 'to hear').
The simple past, future, and conditional tenses correspond to semantically identical compound tenses (composed of auxiliary verbs plus infinitives or past participles). These in turn furnish patterns for building more-complex tenses such as the future perfect
Future tense
In grammar, a future tense is a verb form that marks the event described by the verb as not having happened yet, but expected to happen in the future , or to happen subsequent to some other event, whether that is past, present, or future .-Expressions of future tense:The concept of the future,...
.
Infinitives
InfinitiveInfinitive
In grammar, infinitive is the name for certain verb forms that exist in many languages. In the usual description of English, the infinitive of a verb is its basic form with or without the particle to: therefore, do and to do, be and to be, and so on are infinitives...
verbs always end in -ar, -er, or -ir. They cover the functions of both the infinitive and the gerund
Gerund
In linguistics* As applied to English, it refers to the usage of a verb as a noun ....
in English and can be pluralized where it makes sense.
- Cognoscer nos es amar nos 'To know us is to love us'
- Il es difficile determinar su strategia 'It's hard to figure out his strategy'
- Illes time le venir del locustas 'They fear the coming of the locusts'
- Le faceres de illa evocava un admiration general 'Her doings evoked a widespread admiration'
Infinitives are also used in some compound tenses (see below).
Simple tenses
There are four simple tensesGrammatical tense
A tense is a grammatical category that locates a situation in time, to indicate when the situation takes place.Bernard Comrie, Aspect, 1976:6:...
: the present
Present tense
The present tense is a grammatical tense that locates a situation or event in present time. This linguistic definition refers to a concept that indicates a feature of the meaning of a verb...
, past
Past tense
The past tense is a grammatical tense that places an action or situation in the past of the current moment , or prior to some specified time that may be in the speaker's past, present, or future...
, future
Future tense
In grammar, a future tense is a verb form that marks the event described by the verb as not having happened yet, but expected to happen in the future , or to happen subsequent to some other event, whether that is past, present, or future .-Expressions of future tense:The concept of the future,...
, and conditional.
- The present tense can be formed from the infinitive by removing the final -r. It covers the simple and continuous present tenses in English. The verbs esser 'to be', haber 'to have', and vader 'to go' normally take the short forms es, ha, and va rather than esse, habe, and vade.
-
- Io ama mangos; io mangia un justo ora 'I love mangoes; I'm eating one right now'
- Mi auto es vetere e ha multe defectos: naturalmente illo va mal! 'My car is old and has lots of things wrong with it: of course it runs poorly!'
- The simple past tense can be formed by adding -va to the present tense form. It covers the English simple past and past perfect, along with their continuous equivalents.
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- Io vos diceva repetitemente: le hospites jam comenciava partir quando le casa se incendiava 'I've told you again and again: the guests were already starting to leave when the house burst into flames'
- The simple future can be formed by adding -ra to the present tense form. Future tense forms are stressed on the suffix (retornara 'will return'). It covers the English simple and continuous future tenses.
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- Nos volara de hic venerdi vespere, e sabbato postmeridie nos prendera le sol al plagia in Santorini 'We'll fly out Friday evening, and by Saturday afternoon we'll be sunbathing on the beach in Santorini'
- The simple conditional consists of the present tense form plus -rea. Like the future tense, it is stressed on the suffix (preferea 'would prefer). In function it resembles the English conditional.
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- Si ille faceva un melior reclamo, ille venderea le duple 'If he did better advertising, he would sell twice as much'
Participles
The present participleParticiple
In linguistics, a participle is a word that shares some characteristics of both verbs and adjectives. It can be used in compound verb tenses or voices , or as a modifier...
is effectively the present tense form plus -nte. Verbs in -ir take -iente rather than *-inte (nutrir 'to feed' → nutriente 'feeding'). It functions as an adjective or as the verb in a participial phrase.
- un corvo parlante 'a talking crow'
- Approximante le station, io sentiva un apprehension terribile 'Approaching the station, I felt a sense of dread'
The past participle can be constructed by adding -te to the present tense form, except that -er verbs go to -ite rather than *-ete (eder 'to edit' → edite 'edited'). It is used as an adjective and to form various compound tenses.
- un conto ben contate 'a well told story'
Compound tenses
Three compound tenses – the compound past, future, and conditional – are semantically identical with the corresponding simple tenses.- The compound past tense consists of ha (the present tense of haber 'to have') plus the past participle.
-
- Le imperio ha cadite = Le imperio cadeva 'The empire fell'
- The compound future tense is constructed from va (the present tense of vader 'to go') plus the infinitive.
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- Io va retornar = Io retornara 'I shall return'
- The rarely used compound conditional tense uses the auxiliary velle plus the infinitive.
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- Io velle preferer facer lo sol = Io prefererea facer lo sol 'I'd prefer to do it alone'
The fourth basic compound tense is the passive, formed from es (the present tense of esser 'to be') plus the past participle.
- Iste salsicias es fabricate per experte salsicieros 'These sausages are made by expert sausage-makers'
A wide variety of complex tenses can be created following the above patterns, by replacing ha, va, and es with other forms of haber, vader, and esser. Examples:
- The future perfectFuture tenseIn grammar, a future tense is a verb form that marks the event described by the verb as not having happened yet, but expected to happen in the future , or to happen subsequent to some other event, whether that is past, present, or future .-Expressions of future tense:The concept of the future,...
, using habera 'will have' plus the past participle
-
- Ante Natal, tu habera finite tu cursos 'By Christmas you will have finished your courses'
- The past imperfectPast tenseThe past tense is a grammatical tense that places an action or situation in the past of the current moment , or prior to some specified time that may be in the speaker's past, present, or future...
, using vadeva 'were going' plus the infinitive
-
- Plus tarde illa vadeva scriber un romance premiate 'Later she would write a prize-winning novel'
- The passive-voice past perfectPast tenseThe past tense is a grammatical tense that places an action or situation in the past of the current moment , or prior to some specified time that may be in the speaker's past, present, or future...
, using habeva essite 'had been' plus the past participle
-
- Nostre planeta habeva essite surveliate durante multe annos 'Our planet had been watched for many years'
Other tenses
There are no distinct forms for the imperative and subjunctive tenses, except in the case of esser 'to be'. Present-tense forms normally serve both functions. For clarity's sake, a nominative pronoun may be added after the verb.- Face lo ora! 'Do it now!'
- Le imperatrice desira que ille attende su mandato 'The empress desires that he await her command'
- Va tu retro al campo; resta vos alteros hic. 'You, go back to the camp; you others, stay here.'
The infinitive can serve as another, stylistically more impersonal, imperative form.
- Cliccar hic 'Click here'
A less urgent version of imperative, the cohortative, employs a present-tense verb within a "that" ("que") clause and may be used with the first and third person as well as the second. The alternative vamos 'let's' (or 'let's go') is available for the second-person plural, but deprecated by some authorities.
- Que tu va via! 'I wish you'd go away!'
- Que illes mangia le brioche 'Let them eat cake'
- Que nos resta hic ancora un die or Vamos restar hic ancora un die 'Let's stay here one more day'
Sia is the imperative and subjunctive form of esser 'to be'. The regular form esse may also be used.
- Sia caute! 'Be careful!'
- Sia ille vive o sia ille morte... 'Be he alive or be he dead...'
- Que lor vita insimul sia felice! 'May their life together be happy!'
Irregular verbs
The only irregular verb forms employed by most users are es, ha, and va – the shortened present-tense forms of esser 'to be', haber 'to have' and vader 'to go' – plus sia, the imperative/subjunctive of esser.Other irregular forms are available, but official Interlingua publications (and the majority of users) have always favoured the regular forms. These optional irregular forms are known as collaterals.
A significant minority of users employ certain collateral forms of esser 'to be': son (present plural), era (past), sera (future), and serea (conditional), instead of es, esseva, essera, and esserea.
- Nos vancouveritas son un banda pittoresc = Nos vancouveritas es un banda pittoresc 'We Vancouverites are a colourful lot'
- Le timor era incognoscite = Le timor esseva incognoscite 'Fear was unknown'
- Que sera, sera = Que essera, essera 'What will be, will be'
- Il serea melior si nos non veniva = Il esserea melior si nos non veniva 'It would be better if we hadn't come'
The forms io so 'I am' and nos somos 'we are' also exist but are rarely used.
Double-stem verbs
The Neolatin vocabulary that underlies Interlingua includes a group of verbs whose stemsWord stem
In linguistics, a stem is a part of a word. The term is used with slightly different meanings.In one usage, a stem is a form to which affixes can be attached. Thus, in this usage, the English word friendships contains the stem friend, to which the derivational suffix -ship is attached to form a new...
mutate when attached to certain suffixes. For example, agente, agentia, actrice, activista, reagente, reaction are all derivatives of ager 'to act', but some use the primary stem ag- while othes use the secondary stem act-. There are hundreds of such verbs, especially in international scientific vocabulary
International Scientific Vocabulary
International scientific vocabulary comprises scientific and specialized words whose language of origin may or may not be certain, but which are in current use in several modern languages. The name "International Scientific Vocabulary" was first used by Philip Gove in Webster’s Third New...
.
- sentir 'to feel' (second stem: sens-) → sentimento, sensor
- repeller 'to push away' (second stem: repuls-) → repellente, repulsive
This raises a logical issue. Adding -e to one of these secondary stems produces an adjective that is structurally and semantically equivalent to the past participle of the same verb. Experte, for example, is related to experir 'to experience', which has the past participle experite. Yet, semantically, there is little difference between un experte carpentero 'an expert carpenter' and un experite carpentero 'an experienced carpenter'. Effectively, experte = experite. Furthermore, one can form a word like le experito 'the experienced one' as a quasi-synonym of le experto 'the expert'.
This process can be reversed. That is, can one substitute experte for experite in compound tenses (and other second-stem adjectives for other past participles).
- Io ha experte tal cosas antea = Io ha experite tal cosas antea 'I've experienced such things before'
- Illa ha scripte con un pluma = Illa ha scribite con un pluma 'She wrote with a quill'
The original Interlingua grammar (Gode & Blair, 1951) permitted this usage, and illustrated it in one experimental text. A minority of Interlinguists employ the irregular roots, at least occasionally, more often with recognizable forms like scripte (for scribite 'written') than opaque ones like fisse (for findite 'split'). The practice is controversial. Deprecators suggest that they complicate the active use of Interlingua and may confuse beginners. Proponents argue that by using the irregular participles, students of Interlingua become more aware of the connections between words like agente and actor, consequentia and consecutive, and so on. A compromise position holds that the irregular forms may be useful in some educational contexts (e.g., when using Interlingua to teach international scientific vocabulary or as an intermediate step in the study of Romance languages), but not in general communication.
A similar issue concerns the present participles of caper 'to take', facer 'to make', saper 'to know', and all verbs ending in -ciper, -ficer, and -jicer. The regular forms are facente, sapente, etc., but the "preferred forms", according to the original grammar, are faciente, sapiente, etc.
- un homine sapiente = un homine sapente 'a knowledgeable person'
- Recipiente le littera, ille grimassava = Recipente le littera, ille grimassava 'Receiving the letter, he grimaced'
Today, most users employ the regular forms in spontaneous usage. Forms like sufficiente are often used as adjectives, under the influence of similar forms in the source languages.
Syntax
The normal word orderWord order
In linguistics, word order typology refers to the study of the order of the syntactic constituents of a language, and how different languages can employ different orders. Correlations between orders found in different syntactic subdomains are also of interest...
in Interlingua is subject–verb–object, though this may be relaxed where the sense is clear.
- Ille reface horologios 'He fixes clocks'
- Amandolos ama io tanto, io comprava un amandoliera 'I love almonds so much, I bought an almond orchard'
Pronouns, however, tend to follow the Romance pattern subject–object–verb, except for infinitives and imperatives, where the object follows the verb.
- Ille los reface 'He fixes them'
- Nos vole obtener lo 'We want to get it'
- Jecta lo via! 'Throw it away!'
When two pronouns, one a direct and one an indirect object, occur with the same verb, the indirect object comes first.
- Io les lo inviava per avion 'I sent it to them by air'
- Io la los inviava per nave 'I sent them to her by ship'
The position of adverbs and adverbial phrases is similar to English.
Questions
Questions can be created in several ways, familiar to French speakers.- By reversing the position of the subject and verb.
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- Ha ille arrivate? 'Has he arrived?'
- Cognosce tu ben Barcelona? 'Do you know Barcelona well?'
- Te place le filmes de Quentin Tarantino? or 'Do you like the films of Quentin Tarantino?'
- By replacing the subject with an interrogative wordInterrogative wordIn linguistics, an interrogative word is a function word used for the item interrupted in an information statement. Interrogative words are sometimes called wh-words because most of English interrogative words start with wh-...
.
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- Qui ha dicite isto? 'Who said this?'
- "Que cadeva super te?" "Un incude" '"What fell on you?" "An anvil"'
- By adding the particle esque (or rarer an) to the start of the sentence.
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- Esque illa vermente lassava su fortuna a su catto? (or An illa...) 'Did she really leave her fortune to her cat?'
- By changing the intonation or adding a question mark, while keeping the normal word order
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- Tu jam ha finite tu labores? 'You finished your work yet?'