Proto-Indo-European verbs reflect a complex system of morphology, more complicated than the substantive, with verbs categorized according to their aspect, using multiple grammatical moods and voices, and being conjugated according to person, number and tense. In addition to finite forms thus formed, non-finite forms such as participles are also extensively used. The verbal system is clearly represented in Ancient Greek and Vedic Sanskrit, which closely correspond in nearly all aspects of their verbal systems, and are two of the most well-understood of the early daughter languages of Proto-Indo-European.
Basics The reconstruction of verb conjugation in Proto-Indo-European is controversial. The system described here is known as the "Cowgill–Rix" system, which explains fairly well the data found in most subfamilies of Indo-European. However, this reconstruction encounters significant difficulties when applied to the Anatolian and to some extent the Tocharian branch. For this reason, this system is often thought to have formed not in PIE proper, but at a later stage, after Anatolian and possibly Tocharian had split off. Even so, there is no consensus concerning what the ancestral system of verb conjugation prior to the split-off of Anatolian looked like, and which Anatolian differences are innovations vs. archaisms. The Cowgill-Rix system involves the interplay of six dimensions (number, person, voice, mood, aspect and tense) with the following variables:
Further, participles can be considered part of the verbal systems although they are not verbs themselves, and as with other PIE nouns, they can be declined across seven or eight cases, for three genders and three numbers.
Building blocks
Roots The starting point for the morphological analysis of the PIE verb is the root. PIE roots are morphemes with lexical meanings, which usually consist of a single vowel flanked by one or more consonants arranged to very specific rules.
Stems and stem formation Before the final endings—to denote number, person, etc.—can be applied, additional elements (S) may be added to the root (R). The resulting component here after any such affixion is the stem, to which the final endings (E) can then be added to obtain the conjugated forms.
r o o t + s u f f i x ⏟ s t e m + e n d i n g ⏟ w o r d {\displaystyle \underbrace {\underbrace {\mathrm {root+suffix} } _{\mathrm {stem} }+\mathrm {ending} } _{\mathrm {word} }}
Athematic and thematic stems Verbs, like nominals, made a basic distinction based on whether a short, ablauting vowel -e- or -o-, called the thematic vowel was affixed to the root before the final endings added. In the case of the thematic conjugations, some of the endings differed depending on whether this vowel was present or absent, but by and large the endings were the same for both types. The athematic system is much older and exhibits ablaut within the paradigm. In the descendant languages, athematic verbs were often extended with a thematic vowel, likely because of the complications resulting from the consonant clusters formed when the mostly consonant-initial endings were added directly onto the mostly consonant-final stems. Consequently, the athematic verbs became a non-productive relic class in the later Indo-European languages. In groups such as Germanic and Italic, the athematic verbs had almost gone entirely extinct by the time of written records, while Sanskrit and Ancient Greek preserve them more clearly.
Proposed endings At least the following sets of endings existed:
Primary ("present") endings used for: Present tense of the indicative mood of imperfective verbs. Subjunctive mood Secondary ("past" or "tenseless") endings used for: Past tense of the indicative mood of imperfective verbs. Indicative mood of perfective verbs. Optative mood Stative endings used for Indicative mood of stative verbs. Imperative endings used for Imperative mood of all verbs. Note that, from a diachronic perspective, the secondary endings were actually the more basic ones, while the primary endings were formed from them by adding a suffix, originally -i in the active voice and -r in the middle voice. The more central subfamilies of Indo-European have innovated by replacing the middle-voice -r with the -i of the active voice. Traditional accounts say that the first-person singular primary ending is the only form where athematic verbs used a different ending from thematic verbs. Newer accounts by Sihler (1995) and Ringe (2006) are similar, with the proto-forms modernized using laryngeal notation. The linguist Andrew Sihler, however, notes that many of the most archaic languages have third-person singular forms missing a t and proposes an alternative t-less thematic ending along with the standard ending. Greek and Balto-Slavic have t-less forms in thematic actives, whereas Vedic and Hittite have t-less athematic middle forms. Beekes (2011) uses the t-less forms as the starting point for a radical rethinking of the thematic endings, based primarily on Greek and Lithuanian. These proposals are still controversial, however.
Active eventive endings
Middle eventive endings
Stative endings
A second conjugation has been proposed in Jay Jasanoff's h₂e-conjugation theory. Svensson (2001) suggests *-h₂éy for the second and third dual stative endings, on the basis of evidence from Indo-Iranian, Tocharian, and Gaulish.
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