Appendix:Hindi verbs

Types
In Hindi, there are only two main verb types: regular and irregular.

Regular
Regular verbs all follow the same pattern. Most verbs are regular, the exceptions being some two-syllable words with stems ending in vowels.







Vowel shortening
Verbs with stems ending in a long ū or ī regularly shorten this vowel to u or i, respectively, when the ending begins with a vowel.



Irregular
There are two types of irregular verbs: those with a different polite second-person imperative, and the rest.

Irregular Imperative
Some words deviate from the regular polite imperative -īe, -īye, instead using jīe, jīye. In some words, the stem also changes.



Others
Some words undergo other changes. The most prominent one is, which seemingly follows no pattern, retaining the old Sanskrit and Prakrit conjugations.

Causatives
Most verbs have two causative forms, a first-level and a second-level. The first-level causative is either a transitive form of the original verb or of the form "to cause X". The second-level causative takes this one step further, having the meaning "to cause X to do Y". Here are some examples of causatives:


 * "sight"
 * "eating"
 * "erasing"
 * "eating"
 * "erasing"
 * "eating"
 * "erasing"
 * "erasing"
 * "erasing"
 * "erasing"

Origins
Some elements of the Hindi conjugation system descent from parts of the older, complicated Sanskrit conjugation system. The "enlarged form" refers to the usage of Indo-Aryan pleonastic suffixes (also called extensions), most notably Middle Indo-Aryan. These seem to have little semantic content of their own; rather, they serve to disambiguate terms that have collapsed into one following sound changes from OIA to MIA.


 * The infinitive originates from an enlarged form of the Sanskrit verbal noun in.


 * The present participle originates from an enlarged form of the Sanskrit present participle in (singular accusative ).1


 * The perfect participle originates from an enlarged form of the Sanskrit past participle in or . The linking Hindi -y- between a stem ending in a vowel and the perfect participle ending is a reflex of the Sanskrit -t-; otherwise, this -t- was lost.


 * The Hindi subjunctive, also the base of the future tense, originates from the Sanskrit indicative present.2


 * The Hindi future tense derives from the above with, a simplified form of the enlarged (whence )
 * The Hindi imperative singular (i.e. for, least respectful) derives from the Sanskrit second person singular active imperative.


 * The imperative plural (i.e. for, mid-respectful) derives from the Sanskrit second person plural active imperative.


 * The most respectful imperative (i.e. for ) derives from the Sanskrit third-person present passive form, ending in . In a handful of common words, the -y- was geminated before the Prakrit-stage, leading to -jj- in Prakrit and thus -(ī)ji(y)e in Hindi (as in or ).


 * The Sanskrit third-person imperative passive ending regularly gives, a less common imperative ending. The infinitive as an imperative is a usage seen since the Apabhramsa time.

Notes:
 * 1) The Hindi -t- cannot go back to Sanskrit intervocalic -t-, since that would have left no trace in Hindi (e.g. the perfect participle). Hence, it must go back to Sanskrit -nt- (cf., cognate to , retaining the original nasal).
 * 2) The origin of  for the first-person and third-person plural is less clear. Probably, the Apabhramsa first-person plural -ahuṁ ending was later replaced by the third-person plural ending -ahiṃ. The Apabhramsa third-person plural -ahiṁ, in turn, was formed from the third-person singular -ai on the analogy of the first-person plural -ahuṁ and first-person singular -auṁ. Hence, the Hindi forms do not originate clearly from Sanskrit  and.