The passive only survives in the pres. and past participles; of
the finite moods there are but the ind* and opt. (almost always
used as an imperat.) left; its only old tenses are the pres. and
the aor., to which it has added an impf. of its own. There is an
inf. (in -ti, being an old dat.) and a supine in -tU, an accusative.
Of active participles there are a pres. and a past and a second
past part, used in making compound tenses. There are a solitary
perfect form, vědě: οἶ, and a solitary fut. part, byšę, gen.
byiesta: cj>v<rcov, <j>0(tovtos. The verb has two stems; from the
pres. stem is formed the ind. pres. and impf., the imperat. and
the act. and pass. pres. participles. All other forms are based
upon the infinitive stem.
Personal Endings:—
Non-Thematic.
Sing. Du. Plur.
i. -mi -vS -mil
2. -si -ta -te
3. -ti -te -eti
Thematic.
Sing. Du. Plur.
-(m) -ve -mu
-si -ta -te
-ti -te -{n)li
SECONDARY.
Sing. Du. Plur.
-(m) -ve -mii
-(s) -ta -te
-it) -te -(nl)
1st Sing. In thematic verbs the vowel + m has given a, but there has been a tendency to replace it according to the non- thematic analogy, which has necessitated changes in 1st plur.
2nd Sing, -si has given -si everywhere but in O.S.
3rd Sing, -ti has been dropped everywhere but in Russian, where the literary language has IU. The Dual only survives in Serb, Sorb, Slovene and O.S., and in these the forms are confused.
1st plur. -mii has developed alfull vowel where the 1st sing, has replaced the -m.
The secondary endings have lost their -m, -s, -t and-w/ by phonetic change.
Non-thematic presents are, jesmi, eiyui, sum; dami (redupl. for
- dadmi), SLdoivu; jami, edo; vlmi, Sanskr. vedmi, "I wit";
imdmi (new form of emo), " I have."
The aorist has no augment; it is sigmatic and non-sigmatic. The latter or 2nd aor. (cf . Horn. impf. ^kpov, $«pe) survived only in consonant stems and that in O.S. and Old Cech, pekH = 'eirtccov. It was common in the 2nd and 3rd sing, (where the -s- forms would not be clear) pece < *peke-s,*peke-t = treaces, eictcot. The sigmatic aorist very rarely and only in consonant stems in O.S. keeps its -s-, vesii <*vedsH. In stems ending in k, r or a vowel, s > ch; bychu = i(t>voa and this ch >$ before e. The ordinary later form for consonant stems inserts a vowel, vedochu. The aorist has survived in S. Slavonic and in Sorb, and is found in the older stages of the other tongues. The same languages (except Slovene) have kept the impf. which was present in Proto-Sl. but does not go back to I.E., being formed on the analogy of the aor. With the aor. has coalesced the opt. bimi, " be," used with the 2nd past part, to make a conditional. Stem of pres. part. act. ends in -nt- but the consonant decl. has become an -{o- decl., so we have vezy <I.E. *ueghonts=ix<J>v, gen. vezqlta < *vezonlja as against ixovros. Pres. part. pass, ends in -mu; it has survived more or less in Russian, elsewhere is obsolescent. Past part. act. I. is formed with I.E. -ues-; nom. sing. masc. -uos (tiSccs) gave H, vedii, having led, byvu, having been; but in fern, and oblique cases formed as from -io- stem s remained, hence Russian vedsij, byvHj. Past part. act. II. in -/- cf. Lat. bibulus from bibo, used with an auxiliary to form past and conditional. Past part. pass, in -t- or -»-; tert& = tritus. Znan% = known. I.E. future having been lost, futurity is expressed by an auxiliary badq (ero) chosta (will), &c. with the inf. or by the pres. form of the perfective veyb. The passive is expressed either by the use of the passive participles or by the reflexive se, which can refer to the 1st and 2nd persons as well as to the 3rd.
Syntactical peculiarities of the Slavonic languages that may be noted are a tendency to use the genitive instead of the accu- sative (which has often coincided in form with the nominative) in the case of living beings, masculine -0- stems, and in the plur. ; the use of the genitive for the accusative or even nominative in negative clauses; the dative absolute and the dative as subject to an infinitive; the instrumental instead of the nominative as a predicate, and in orat&o obliqua the preservation of the tense of the original statement instead of our way of throwing it into the past.
In the use of the verbs the development of " aspects " makes up for the few tenses. Actions (or states) expressed by a verbal form have a beginning, a continuance and an end. There are, however, some (momentaneous) actions whose beginning and end come together and allow no continuance. All verbs fall into two great divisions, imperfective, which express the continuance of an action, without regard to its beginning or end, and perfective, which express the points of beginning or ending. The continuance of an action may be unbroken or may consist of like acts which are repeated. So imperfective verbs are divided into durative, as nesti, " to be carrying," and iterative, as nositi, " to be wont to carry "; the repeated acts of the iterative can either be each of them momentaneous, e.g. Cech, sifileti, " to shoot," i.e. " be firing single shots," or each have some continuance, e.g. nositi above, or we can even express the occasional repetition of groups of momentaneous actions, e.g. Cech. stfilivati, " to have the habit of going out shooting."
Among perfective verbs we have (1) momentaneous, expressing action which has no continuance, kriknati, " to give a cry," sesti, " to take a seat "; (2) finitive, expressing not the continu- ance of the action, though that there has been, but its end or completion, napl&niti, "to fill to the brim"; (3) ingressive, expressing the moment of beginning an action, vuzl' ubiti, " to fall in love with."
As perfective verbs do not express continuance, an idea ' implied in the present, they cannot require a present form, so this is used for perfective futures; e.g. sedq (pres. form from perfective sfsti) = " I shall take.a seat," as opposed to imperfective badq siditi, ". I shall be sitting." If a preposition is compounded with a idurative verb as nesti, " to carry " (in general), " to be carrying," it makes it perfective, as iznesii, " to carry out " (one ; single action brought to a conclusion), so Eng. "sit" is usually imperfective, " sit down " perfective, If an iterative has a preppsition it is mostly used as a durative; iznositi can mean, "habitually to carry out" but more often = " to be carrying out," that is, it supplies the imperfective form to iznesti. The development of this system has enabled some Slavonic languages, e.g. Russian, to do with only two tenses, pres. and past, to each verb morphologically considered, per- fective and imperfective verbs supplementing each other; e.g. if .we take a Greek verb, the pres. (ind. and infin.) and imperf, correspond to the present, inf. and past of a Russian imperfective verb; the aor. indie, and inf. are represented by the perfective past and infin., which has also to do duty for the Greek perfect and plup.; the future and the future perfect in Greek dp not express the same distinctions as the imperfective future and perfective future (in form a present) in SI., the Greek giving chronological prder of action, but not giving the distinction of aspect, though the, future perfect is naturally perfective.
The. prepositions are very much like those in other I.E. lan- guages both in actual Jorms and in use.
The formation of the sentence is not naturally complicated; but SI. has in times past been largely influenced by Greek, Latin and German with their involved periods; latterly there has been a tendency to follow the simpler models of French and English. Such being the Slavonic languages as a whole and regarded in their relationship to I. E-,, they may now be considered in their relationship to each other, and some of the principal character- istics enumerated upon which their internal classification has been founded. More or less complete accounts of each language will be found.under its name.
Distinctive, Points of Different Sl. Languages.[1]—I. (ŭ, ĭ). The fate of the Proto-Sl. half vowels ic, i, still preserved in O.S., e. g. sŭnŭ, " sleep, " dtni, " day," is various; as a rule they disappear, ŭ entirely (though when final still written in R.), i leaves a trace by softening the preceding consonant. But if needed to eke out
- ↑ Bulg. = Bulgarian; Č. = Čech ; Kas. = KaSube ; Lit. R. = Little Russian; P. = Polish;- R. = Russian, i.e. Great Russian; Ser. ^ Servian; Wh. R. = White Russian.
