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Spanish also features the T–V distinction, the pronoun that the speaker uses to address the interlocutor – formally or informally [c] – leading to the increasing number of verb forms. Most verbs have regular conjugation, which can be known from their infinitive form, which may end in -ar, -er, or -ir. [11]
For other irregular verbs and their common patterns, see the article on Spanish irregular verbs. The tables include only the "simple" tenses (that is, those formed with a single word), and not the "compound" tenses (those formed with an auxiliary verb plus a non-finite form of the main verb), such as the progressive, perfect, and passive voice.
As is typical of verbs in virtually all languages, Spanish verbs express an action or a state of being of a given subject, and like verbs in most Indo-European languages, Spanish verbs undergo inflection according to the following categories: Tense: past, present, or future; Number: singular or plural; Person: first, second or third
NEG se CL puede can. 1SG pisar walk el the césped grass No se puede pisar el césped NEG CL can.1SG walk the grass "You cannot walk on the grass." Zagona also notes that, generally, oblique phrases do not allow for a double clitic, yet some verbs of motion are formed with double clitics: María María se CL fue went.away- 3SG María se fue María CL went.away-3SG "Maria went away ...
Vowel raising appears only in verbs of the third conjugation (-ir verbs), and in this group it affects dormir, morir, podrir (alternative of the more common pudrir) and nearly all verbs which have -e-as their last stem vowel (e.g. sentir, repetir); exceptions include cernir, discernir and concernir (all three diphthongizing, e-ie).
Many grammars of Spanish suggest that nouns ending in -a are feminine, [14] [15] but there is no requirement that Spanish nouns ending in -a be feminine. [10] Thus, grammars that pose such a requirement also typically include a long list of exceptions, such as el alerta 'alert', el bocata 'sandwich', el caza 'fighter plane', and many others.
In the Spanish language there are some verbs with irregular past participles. There are also verbs with both regular and irregular participles, in which the irregular form is most used as an adjective , while the regular form tends to appear after haber to form compound perfect tenses.
When the final consonants in these endings are dropped, the result is -u for both; this became -o in Spanish. However, a word like Latin iste had the neuter istud; the former became este and the latter became esto in Spanish. Another sign that Spanish once had a grammatical neuter exists in words that derive from neuter plurals.