Verbs and Tenses

[sources: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDtDetY5C8I, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1SWRN2MF2A, https://kannadakalike.org/grammar/imperative-mood, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lFzJ09FyHs]

In Kannada (and many other languages), verbs take on different forms depending on context. Changing a verb according to context is called conjugation. In Kannada, this context comprises of the tense and the subject (the subject's pronoun, to be precise).

There are 9 tenses in Kannada: {past,present,future} × {simple,continuous,perfect}. English also has 'perfect continuous' tenses. Those are mapped to 'continuous' tenses in Kannada. In Kannada, the simple present tense is also called the present habitual tense when the verb is not ಇರು (होना, to be). Other than these tenses, we also have the imperative mood.

In Kannada, each verb has multiple forms. Conjugating a verb mostly involves picking an appropriate form of the verb based on tense and adding an appropriate suffix to it based on the subject's pronoun. The most important form of a verb is the verb root. Other important forms we will see here: present relative participle, present verbal participle, past relative participle, past verbal participle, past ಅದು form.

(In addition to conjugating verbs, participles have other uses in Kannada. See 05-participles.html for details.)

In Kannada, there is a difference between the written form and the colloquial (spoken) form regarding verb conjugation. This document focuses on the written form, but I'll briefly talk about the colloquial form too. The written form is standard, whereas slight variations exist in the colloquial form.

A plus sign (+) denotes concatenation without संधि, and ⊕ denotes concatenation with संधि. A minus sign denotes removing a suffix, e.g., ಮಾಡುತ್ತಾ - ಆ = ಮಾಡುತ್ತ್.

Imperative mood (ಆಜ್ಞಾರ್ಥಕ ರೂಪ) and verb root

When we want to give a command, suggestion, or request to someone, we use the imperative mood. (If a sentence contains just a verb and nothing else, it's the imperative mood.) We will only look at the second-person imperative mood here. (For other forms of the imperative mood, see 06-moods.html.) There are two varieties: singular and plural. The plural form is sometimes used to address a single person as a way of showing respect.

Examples

Singular:

1. look - देखो - ನೋಡು
2. go - जाओ - ಹೋಗು
3. write - लिखो - ಬರೆ

Plural:

1. look - देखिए - ನೋಡಿ
2. go - जाइए - ಹೋಗಿ
3. write - लिखिए - ಬರೆಯಿರಿ

Construction rule

In Kannada, for all verbs except those in the table below, the second-person singular imperative form is the same as the verb root.

For all other verbs, this is how we derive the plural imperative form from the verb root:

1. if the verb root ends with ಉ, remove ಉ and append ಇ.
2. if the verb root with ಎ or ಇ: append ಯಿರಿ.

Verb Forms

There are two kinds of verbs: regular and irregular. Regular verbs can be conjugated by following standard rules, and all of their verb forms can be inferred from the verb root. This isn't always true for irregular verbs, so learning to conjugate them requires more effort. There are around 200 irregular verbs in Kannada, but we will only look at a few important ones here.

Here are examples of verb forms for some regular verbs. Here RP means relative participle and VP means verbal participle.

Deriving verb forms from verb roots

Rule to obtain present RP and VP from verb root (both regular and irregular verbs), based on what vowel a verb's root ends with:

Rule to obtain past RP, past VP, and past ಅದು form from verb root for regular verbs:

List of verbs

Regular verbs:

Irregular verbs:

(incomplete)

Note that for all verbs (including irregular verbs), the relative participles always end with the vowel ಅ.

Simple Tense

Examples:

1. Simple present: I see. - मैं देखता हूँ। - ನಾನು ನೋಡುತ್ತೇನೆ.
2. Simple past: I saw. - मैंने देखा। - ನಾನು ನೋಡಿದೆನು.
3. Simple future: I will see. - मैं देखूँगा। - ನಾನು ನೋಡುವೆನು.

To conjugate a verb in one of the simple tenses, we add a suffix to an appropriate verb form. Here are the two kinds of suffixes used:

Conjugation rule for all verbs other than ಇರು (both regular and irregular):

1. Simple present: present VP ⊕ present suffix.
2. Simple past: if subject is not ಅದು, use past RP ⊕ past/future suffix, otherwise use the past ಅದು form.
3. Simple future: present RP ⊕ past/future suffix.

Conjugation rule for ಇರು:

1. Simple present: past RP ⊕ present suffix.
2. Simple past: if subject is not ಅದು, use past RP ⊕ past/future suffix, otherwise use the past ಅದು form.
3. Simple future: present RP ⊕ past/future suffix when being extremely formal, present VP ⊕ present suffix otherwise.

To implement संधि, remove the vowel from the first part (participle) and then concatenate it with the second part (suffix).

Colloquializing the Simple Tense

If the verb's imperative form ends with ಎ, replace the ಎ with ಇ. This modified imperative form is used to construct other verb forms, like the RPs and VPs.

Past Tense

1. The suffix for ನಾನು is ಎ instead of ಎನು.
2. The suffix for ನಾವು is ವಿ instead of ಎವು.
3. The suffix for ಅವನು is ಅ instead of ಅನು.

Present Tense

The present VP can depend on the subject's pronoun. The table below gives the present VP construction rule for regular verbs.

Some suffixes are different:

Future Tense

Colloquially, people use the present tense conjugation of a verb to talk about events in the future (except the ಇರು verb). They provide additional context for disambiguation using words like 'today', 'soon', 'later'.

For ಇರು, the present VP is ಇರ್ತ್ತಾ / ಇರ್ತಾ instead of ಇರುತ್ತಾ.

Examples

1. I see. - मैं देखता हूँ। - ನಾನು ನೋಡ್‌ತೇನಿ.
2. It comes. - वह आता है। - ಅದು ಬರತ್ತೆ.
3. We went. - हम गए। - ನಾವು ಹೋಗಿದ್ವಿ.
4. She writes. - वह लिखती है। - ಅವಳು ಬರಿತ್ತಾಳೆ.
5. I'm here. - मैं यहाँ हूँ। - ನಾನು ಇಲ್ಲಿದ್ದೀನಿ.
6. He will be there. - वह उधर होगा। - ಅವನು ಅಲ್ಲಿರ್ತ್ತಾನೆ.

Negative Simple Tense

In the negative simple tense, the verb is conjugated as 'augmented verb root + suffix'. Suffix depends on tense only.

Examples:

1. Present: I do not see. - मैं नहीं देखता। - ನಾನು ನೋಡಲ್ಲ.
2. Past: I did not see. - मैंने नहीं देखा। - ನಾನು ನೋಡಲಿಲ್ಲ.
3. Future: I will not see. - मैं नहीं देखूँगा। - ನಾನು ನೋಡುವುದಿಲ್ಲ.

Augmentation:

1. ಉ-ending: Remove ಉ.
2. ಎ or ಇ ending: Append ಯ್.

Suffix:

1. Present: ಅಲ್ಲ.
2. Past: ಅಲಿಲ್ಲ.
3. Future: ಉವುದಿಲ್ಲ.

Exception: augmented verb root + suffix for ಇರು:

1. Present: ಇಲ್ಲ.
2. Past: ಇರಲಿಲ್ಲ.
3. Future: ಇರಲ್ಲ.

AFAIK, the colloquial and written forms are the same.

Converting to question

Change the last character of the suffix from ಲ್ಲ to ಲ್ವಾ.

Example for present: Don't you see? - तुम नहीं देखते?। - ನೀನು ನೋಡಲ್ವಾ?

Continuous Tense

Examples:

1. Present: I am seeing. - मैं देख रहा हूँ। - ನಾನು ನೋಡುತ್ತಾ ಇದ್ದೇನೆ.
2. Past: I was seeing. - मैं देख रहा था। - ನಾನು ನೋಡುತ್ತಾ ಇದ್ದೆನು.
3. Future: I will be seeing. - मैं देख रहा होऊँगा। - ನಾನು ನೋಡುತ್ತಾ ಇರುತ್ತೇನೆ.

Let X ∈ {positive,negative} × {present,past,future}. In the X continuous tense, the verb is conjugated as two words. The first word is the verb's present VP. The second word is the conjugation of ಇರು in the X simple tense.

Sometimes these two words are joined by संधि. This is unusual in spoken form but sometimes happens in written form. To do this, remove the vowel from the present VP (i.e., replace the ತ್ತಾ by ತ್ತ್). E.g., ನೋಡುತ್ತಾ ⊕ ಇದ್ದೇನೆ = ನೋಡುತ್ತಿದ್ದೇನೆ.

Kannada lacks a separate past habitual tense. It uses the past continuous tense instead.

To colloquialize, modify the present VP and the conjugation of ಇರು in the X simple tense as discussed in the section on colloquializing the simple tense.

Perfect Tense

Examples:

1. Present: I have seen. - मैं देख चुका हूँ। / मैंने देखा है। - ನಾನು ನೋಡಿದ್ದೇನೆ.
2. Past: I had seen. - मैं देख चुका था। / मैंने देखा था। - ನಾನು ನೋಡಿದ್ದೆನು.
3. Future: I will have seen. - मैं देख चुका होऊँगा। - ನಾನು ನೋಡಿರುತ್ತೇನೆ.

Let X ∈ {positive,negative} × {present,past,future}. In the X perfect tense, the verb is conjugated as 'past VP ⊕ suffix'. The suffix is the conjugation of ಇರು in the X simple tense.

To implement संधि, remove the vowel from the past VP.

To colloquialize, modify the conjugation of ಇರು in the X simple tense as discussed in the section on colloquializing the simple tense.