Appendix:Livonian conjugation

LEL lists 61 verb conjugation types (together with three verbs that don't have an infinitive – 64.) These 61 types can then be divided in 5 "clusters." It can be said that Livonian verb conjugation is significantly more regular than its nominal declension. There are three verb conjugation templates serving the 1st, 2nd and 3rd-5th clusters respectively. Those are, and.

The clusters with an example entry are listed below:

Full conjugation example – luggõ
Shown below is the conjugation of luggõ "to read" in all tenses and moods and (almost) all combinations thereof. Most compound tenses can be realized by simply conjugating the auxiliary verb plus the participle in either singular or plural thus they are not shown in verb entries. However, there are a couple of exceptions. One of them is quotative perfect where unlike in the (genetically unrelated but areally close) Latvian language the verb remains in quotative (instead of being in a participle form as could be expected from a compound tense) and auxiliary remains in indicative. This is also shown below.

Another exception is that plural 3rd person ("they") negative mirrors plural 2nd person negative and not plural 3rd person positive although most of the literature suggests that verbs in plural negative retain plural positive endings (this is of interest since other Finnic languages have a specific short form with the negation verb in both singular and plural, Latvian influence where negation (typically for an Ide. language) is expressed simply by adding ne- to regularly conjugated verb is speculated.) Thus "they read" is ne luggõbõd, "you (pl.) read" – tēg luggõt while "they don't read" is ne äb luggõt (not ne äb luggõbõd.) This can be corroborated with examples from Livonian corpora, such as Lapst at umbizt – äb kūldõt "children are stubborn – [they] don't listen".

Mostly based on an article in Kersti Boiko's compilation Lībieši: rakstu krājums transliterating the phonetic transcription back to standard Livonian orthography, cross-referencing with. Note: inconsistencies in the former's use of the negative verb have been changed in accordance with the various examples given in the latter: tēg ät instead of tēg äd and ne izt instead of ne iz (the first case might be simply a phonetic representation of lenis.)

In compound tenses conjugated forms of the auxiliary in the first source have been changed where they don't follow the basic Livonian phonotactics to a documented form that does. Livonian phonotactics mandates one long/heavy syllable (a long vowel or a long consonant) per foot (usually 2 syllables), thus at, ātõ and attõ are valid variants (the 1st is too short to form a foot – thus exempt, the 2nd has a long vowel and the 3rd a long consonant.) Variants such as ūottõ (both a long vowel and a long consonant) that can be encountered in the first source are not in accordance with this rule and are impossible to find in Livonian corpora, they are substituted with the shortest possible documented alternative, e.g., ūot for ūottõ. Just like with noncompound tenses in negative 3rd pers. pl. the auxiliary mirrors negative 2nd. pers. and not positive 3rd pers. as evident in sentences such as tämmõn äb ūot pūdõd sūormõd (not äb at/attõ/ātõ also not äb ūottõ) – "he doesn't have clean fingers" literally "clean fingers are not to him". In plusquamperfect negative there was no need to change the 2nd pl. and 3rd pl. auxiliary since they were already given as ūot. Potential auxiliary 2nd pl. and 3rd pl. negative forms indicated in the first source as līttõ were changed to līt(õ) as previously with ūottõ – ūot.

In noncompound conditional present negative 2nd sg. the typical 2nd sg. ending wasn't indicated – sa äd lugūks instead of sa äd lugūkst, however, in conditional perfect it was present for the auxiliary – sa äd vȯlkst luggõn for this reason it was readded as sa äd lugūkst for simple present conditional negative.

In 2nd pers. pl. imperative the form indicated in LEL and LVVK (luggõgid) is given instead of the form present in Boiko's compilation (luggigid) (since ⟨õ⟩ is a schwa in an unstressed position this might be simply an error). In 1st pers. pl. imperative negative the form provided algõ mēg luggõd has been replaced with one mirroring the positive – laz mēg luggõgõd – algõd mēg luggõgõd (negation verb (algõd) has been corrected to the form it should be in jussive plural according to LVVK.)

Livonian verbs have six moods: indicative, potential (~ future perfect), conditional, imperative, debitive and quotative. (Note: what does and doesn't count as a mood depends on author, the classification mentioned, for example, leaves out jussive (it, however, can be seen as part of imperative for persons (1st and 3rd) for which imperative is not usually used, a reported request is one of jussive's main functions.)) There are two infinitives: infinitive I (with suffixes -dõ, -tõ, -õ) and infinitive II (with suffix -m). (Note: infinitive I is treated as infinitive and lemma form by most dictionaries, the so called infinitive II is classified as supine by said dictionaries unlike in Estonian where the -ma form is considered the lemma form.)

Indicative present (I read)

Indicative present negative (I don't read)

Indicative past (I read)

Indicative past negative (I didn't read)

Indicative perfect (I have read)

Indicative perfect negative (I haven't read)

Plusquamperfect (I had read)

Plusquamperfect negative (I hadn't read)

Potential (I'm going to...)

Potential negative (I'm not going to...)

Conditional (I would read)

Conditional negative (I wouldn't read)

Conditional perfect (I would have read)

Conditional perfect negative (I wouldn't have read)

Imperative ([he/she said] that I read)

Imperative negative ([he/she said] that I not read)

Debitive present (I need to read)

Debitive present negative (I don't need to read)

Debitive past (I needed to read)

Debitive past negative (I didn't need to read)

Debitive perfect (I have needed to read)

Debitive perfect negative (I have not needed to read)

Debitive plusquamperfect (I had needed to read)

Debitive plusquamperfect negative (I had not needed to read)

Quotative (I supposedly read)

Quotative negative (I supposedly don't read)

Quotative perfect (I supposedly have read)

Quotative perfect negative (I supposedly haven't read)