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Concept
Sanskrit verbs
Summary
Sanskrit has inherited from its parent, the Proto-Indo-European language, an elaborate system of verbal morphology, much of which has been preserved in Sanskrit as a whole, unlike in other kindred languages, such as Ancient Greek or Latin. Sanskrit verbs thus have an inflection system for different combinations of tense, aspect, mood, voice, number, and person. Non-finite forms such as participles are also extensively used.
Some of the features of the verbal system, however, have been lost in the classical language, compared to the older Vedic Sanskrit, and in other cases, distinctions that have existed between different tenses have been blurred in the later language. Classical Sanskrit thus does not have the subjunctive or the injunctive mood, has dropped a variety of infinitive forms, and the distinctions in meaning between the imperfect, perfect and aorist forms are barely maintained and ultimately lost.
Verb conjugation in Sanskrit involves the interplay of five 'dimensions', number, person, voice, mood and tense, with the following variables:
Further, participles are considered part of the verbal systems although they are not verbs themselves, and as with other Sanskrit nouns, they can be declined across seven or eight cases, for three genders and three numbers.
Classical Sanskrit has only one infinitive, of accusative case-form.
The starting point for the morphological analysis of the Sanskrit verb is the root. It is conventionally indicated using the mathematical symbol √; for instance, "√bhū-" means the root "bhū-".
There are about 2000 roots enumerated by the ancient grammarians, of which less than half are attested in actual use. Allowing for sorting reduplication and other anomalies, there remain somewhat over 800 roots that form the practical basis of the verbal system, as well as the larger part of the inherited nominal stems of the language.
Compared to kindred Indo-European languages, Sanskrit is more readily analysable in its morphological structure, and its roots are more easily separable from accretionary elements.
Official source
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