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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. >

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.

Before the final endings — to denote number, person, etc., can be applied, additional elements may be added to the root The resulting component here after any such affixion is the stem, to which the final endings can then be added to obtain the conjugated forms.

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. 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.

The perfective ("aorist") and imperfective ("present") aspect classes are together known as eventive, or verbs that depict events, to distinguish them from stative (verbs that depict a state of being). Both shared the same conjugation, with some small differences. The main difference was that imperfective verbs allowed the use of special present tense (primary) endings, while perfective verbs only allowed the default tenseless (secondary) endings. The present tense used the primary eventive endings, and was used specifically to refer to present events, although it could also refer to future events. The past tense referred to past events, and used the secondary eventive endings. Perfective verbs always used the secondary endings, but did not necessarily have a past tense meaning. The secondary endings were, strictly speaking, tenseless, even in imperfective verbs. This meant that past endings could also be used with a present meaning, if it was obvious from context in some way. This use still occurred in Vedic Sanskrit, where in a sequence of verbs only the first might be marked for present tense (with primary endings), while the remainder was unmarked (secondary endings). If the verbs were subjunctive or optative, the mood markings might likewise be only present on the first verb, with the others not marked for mood (i. e. indicative). In Ancient Greek, Armenian and Indo Iranian, the secondary endings came to be accompanied by a prefixing particle known as the augment, reconstructed as *e or *h₁e The function of the augment is unclear (it is usually thought to be connected to the meaning of 'past'), but it was not a fixed part of the inflection as it was in the later languages. In Homeric Greek and Vedic Sanskrit, many imperfect (past imperfective) and aorist verbs are still found lacking the augment; its use became mandatory only in later Greek and Sanskrit. Morphologically, the indicative of perfective verbs was indistinguishable from the past indicative of imperfective verbs, and it is likely that in early stages of PIE, these were the same verb formation. At some point in the history of PIE, the present tense was created by developing the primary endings out of the secondary endings. Not all verbs came to be embellished with these new endings; for semantic reasons, some verbs never had a present tense. These verbs were the perfective verbs, while the ones that did receive a present tense were imperfective.

Stative verbs signified a current state of being rather than events. It was traditionally known as perfect, a name which was assigned based upon the Latin tense before the stative nature of the PIE form was fully known. While Latin conflated the static aspect concept with tense, in PIE there was no association with any particular tense. The stative aspect was marked formally with its own personal endings, which differed from the eventives by a root in the singular in o grade, but elsewhere in zero grade, and typically by reduplication. Like the perfective verbs, stative verbs were tenseless, and described a state without reference to time. This did not mean that stative verbs referred to permanent states (as in Spanish ser versus temporary estar), but rather that there was no way to express, within the verbal morphology, whether the state was applicable in the present moment, in the past, or in the future. These nuances were, presumably, expressed using adverbs. In many daughter languages, the stative took on a meaning that implied a previous action that had caused the current state, a meaning which resulted in the Greek perfect. Eventually, by shifting emphasis to the inchoative action, an action that was just started or a state that was just begun prior to the resulting state, the stative generally developed into a past tense (as in Germanic, Latin, and later, Greek). The original present sense of the IE stative is seen in the Germanic preterite present verbs such as Gothic wait "I know" (< PIE *, originally "I am in a state resulting from having seen/found"; cf. Latin vidēre "to see", Sanskrit vinátti "he finds"), with exact cognates in Sanskrit véda, Ancient Greek oĩda, and Old Church Slavonic vědě, all of which retain their essentially present tense meaning "I know".

Verbs originally had two voices: active and mediopassive. In some daughter languages (e. g., Sanskrit) this was supplemented with a passive voice; in others (e. g., Latin) the mediopassive evolved to have a passive meaning for roots that were also used in the active voice, but retained its mediopassive character for so called deponent roots.

The moods of PIE included indicative, imperative, subjunctive, optative and perhaps injunctive.

The imperative mood was used for commands directed towards other people, and therefore only occurred in the second and third person. It used its own set of special imperative endings.

The subjunctive mood was used to describe completely hypothetical events, along the lines of "suppose that I oversleep ". It was also sometimes used for future events (which are by definition hypothetical rather than actual) for this reason. The subjunctive was formed by adding the thematic vowel to the stem, along with primary endings, with the stem in the e grade. The subjunctive of athematic verbs was thus thematic, and morphologically indistinguishable from a thematic indicative. For verbs that were already thematic, a second thematic vowel was added after the first, creating a long thematic vowel.

The optative mood was used for wishes or hopes, like the English "may I sleep well". It was formed with an athematic ablauting suffix yéh₁ ~ ih₁ attached to the zero grade of the stem. In Vedic Sanskrit, optatives were very rarely found for characterised stems (primary and secondary derivations); most occurrences of the optative are in root verbs. This is taken by Sihler to indicate that the optative was not really a mood in PIE, but a separate verb, and was thus restricted to being derived directly from roots only, not from already derived verbs. In addition, it appears that in PIE itself, stative verbs did not have the optative mood; it was limited to eventive verbs. Early Indo Iranian texts mostly lack attestations of stative optative forms.

The place of the injunctive mood, of obscure function, is debated. It takes the form of the bare root in e grade with secondary endings, without the prefixed augment that was common to forms with secondary endings in these languages. The injunctive was thus entirely without tense marking. This causes Fortson (among others) to suggest that the use of the injunctive was for gnomic expressions (as in Homer) or in otherwise timeless statements (as in Vedic).

From any particular root, verbs could be derived in a variety of means. In the most conservative Indo European languages (e. g. Ancient Greek, Sanskrit, Tocharian, Old Irish), there is a separate set of conjugational classes for each of the tense/aspect categories, with no general relationship obtaining between the class of a given verb in one category relative to another. The oldest stages of these languages (especially Vedic Sanskrit) reveal clear remains of an even less organized system, where a given verb root might have multiple ways, or no way at all, of being conjugated in a given tense/aspect category — sometimes with meanings that differ in unpredictable ways. This clearly suggests that the tense/aspect categories originated as separate lexical verbs, part of a system of derivational morphology (compare the related verbs "to rise" and "to raise", or the abstract nouns "produce", "product", "production" derived from the verb "to produce"), and only gradually became integrated into a coherent system of inflectional morphology, which was still incomplete at the time of the proto language. There were a variety of means by which new verbs could be derived from existing verbal roots, as well as from fully formed nominals. Most of these involved adding a suffix to the root (or stem), but there were a few more peculiar formations. One formation that was relatively productive for forming imperfective verbs, but especially stative verbs, was reduplication, in which the initial consonants of the root were duplicated. Another notable way of forming imperfective verbs was the nasal infix, which was inserted within the root itself rather than affixed to it.

The most basic verb formation was derived directly from the root, with no suffix, and expressed the meaning of the root itself. Such "root verbs" could be either athematic or thematic; it was not predictable which type was used. The aspect of a root verb was determined by the root itself, which had its own "root aspect" inherent in the basic meaning of the root. Thus, there were verbal roots whose default meaning was durative, ongoing, or iterative, and verbs derived from them were generally imperfective in aspect. Roots whose meaning was punctiliar or discrete created perfective aspect verbs. Stative roots were rare; perhaps the only reconstructible stative root verb was "know". There are numerous unexplained surprises in this system, however. The common root meant "to be", which is an archetypically stative notion. Yet, aspect wise, it was an imperfective root, and thus formed an imperfective root verb , rather than a stative verb.

In early PIE, the aspect system was less well developed, and root verbs were simply used in their root aspects, with various derivational formations available for expressing more specific nuances. By late PIE, however, as the aspect system evolved, the need had arisen for verbs of a different aspect than that of the root. Several of the formations, which originally formed distinct verbs, gradually came to be used as "aspect switching" derivations, whose primary purpose was to create a verb of one aspect from a root of another aspect. This led to a fundamental distinction in PIE verb formations, between primary and secondary formations. Primary formations included the root verbs and the derivational formations that came to be used as aspect switching devices, while secondary formations remained strictly derivational and retained significant semantic value. For example, the secondary suffix derived causative verbs, and retained this purpose and meaning throughout the descendants of PIE. The common primary suffix , however, came to be used for the majority of verb formations in Latin, without any discernible meaning being conveyed by the suffix; its function had become purely morphological. A verb needed no derivational or aspect switching markers for its own root aspect. Affixes of various types were used to switch the inherent aspect to a different type. Such affixes created "characterised" verb formations, contrasting with the basic "root" or "uncharacterised" formation. Examples of aspect switching affixes include yé , sḱé , and the nasal infix, all of which were used to derive imperfective verbs from roots whose inherent aspect was not already imperfective. Conversely, the "s aorist" formation (retained most notably in Greek) used the suffix s to create perfective verbs. Many roots were "hyper characterized", however, with an aspect marker added to a root that already had the correct aspect. This may have been done in order to emphasize the aspect. For example, the s aorist also seemed to have been used when the verb root was inherently perfective already. A root did not necessarily have verbs to express all three aspects. There were many roots that seem to have had verbs for only for one or two aspects in PIE. For example, the root "to be" seems to have formed only an imperfective verb, no perfective or stative verbs derived from this root can be reconstructed. Various later languages amended this situation differently as needed, often by using entirely different roots (suppletion). Latin used the root "to become" to fill in as the perfective aspect of , while the Germanic languages used the root "to live, to reside" in that role. While several aspect switchers were available to be added to the root, particular markers were not exclusively assigned to any root. Certain roots did show a preference for the same markers in multiple daughter languages, but the use of a particular marker was not exclusive, and a variety of formations are often found for the same root. For example, the basic root for "stand", *steh₂ , was a perfective root. Therefore, the root verb had the punctual sense of "come to a standing position; to rise from a sitting position". In order to speak about "standing" in a present, durative sense ("be in a standing position"), the root verb required a derivational marker to put it into the imperfective aspect. For this root, the imperfective aspect switcher was often reduplication (Ancient Greek hístēmi, Sankskrit tíṣṭhati), but the Germanic languages also show a nasal infix or suffix for this root (Gothic present ik standa vs. preterite ik stōþ), at least by a later period. The Slavic languages, meanwhile, also have a form derived with the yé suffix. Such discrepancies suggest that in PIE proper, this root had no imperfective verb at all, and the aspect switched verbs we see in the later descendants were formed independently of each other. Many primary formations retained some "residue" of their original derivational function and meaning, and significant relics of this earlier derivational system can be reconstructed for PIE. The perfective root "to step" is reconstructible with two different imperfective derivations: (Ancient Greek báskō, Sanskrit gácchati) and (Ancient Greek baínō, Latin veniō). Both formations survived side by side in Greek, suggesting that they did not overlap significantly enough in meaning throughout their history for one or the other to fall out of use.

Secondary verbs were formed either from primary verb roots (so called deverbal verbs) or from nouns (denominal verbs or denominative verbs) or adjectives (deadjectival verbs). (In practice, the term denominative verb is often used to incorporate formations based on both nouns and adjectives because PIE nouns and adjectives had the same suffixes and endings, and the same processes were used to form verbs from both nouns and adjectives.) Deverbal formations included causative ("I had someone do something"), iterative/inceptive ("I did something repeatedly"/"I began to do something"), desiderative ("I want to do something"). The formation of secondary verbs remained part of the derivational system and did not necessarily have completely predictable meanings (compare the remnants of causative constructions in English — to fall vs. to fell, to sit vs. to set, to rise vs. to raise and to rear). They are distinguished from the primary formations by the fact that they generally are part of the derivational rather than inflectional morphology system in the daughter languages. However, as mentioned above, this distinction was only beginning to develop in PIE. Not surprisingly, some of these formations have become part of the inflectional system in particular daughter languages. Probably the most common example is the future tense, which exists in many daughter languages but in forms that are not cognate, and tend to reflect either the PIE subjunctive or a PIE desiderative formation. Secondary verbs were always imperfective, and had no corresponding perfective or stative verbs, nor was it possible (at least within PIE) to derive such verbs from them. This was a basic constraint in the verbal system that prohibited applying a derived form to an already derived form. Evidence from the Rig Veda (the earliest attestation of Sanskrit) indicates that secondary verbs in PIE were not conjugated in the subjunctive or optative moods. This suggests that these moods follow the same constraint, and are derivational in origin. The later Indo European languages worked around these limitations, but each in their own way.

The following gives a list of the most common verb types reconstructed for (late) PIE.

Also called "simple athematic", this formation derived imperfective verbs directly from a root. It can be divided into two subtypes:
Normal type: *(é) ti ~ *(∅) énti. Alternating between accented e grade root, and zero grade root with accent on the endings. Narten type: *(ḗ/é) ti ~ *(é) nti. Mostly root accent and alternating lengthened/normal grade, or, according to an alternative view, fixed normal grade throughout. The normal type is the most common by far. Examples: *h₁ésti.

Also called "simple thematic", it functioned the same as the root athematic verbs. There were also two types:
normal type: *(é) eti ~ *(é) onti. Accented e grade root. "tudati" type: *(∅) éti ~ *(∅) ónti. Zero grade root, accent on theme vowel. The "tudati" type is named after the Sanskrit verb that typifies this formation. It is much rarer than the normal type. Examples: *bʰéreti.

*(í) (∅) eti ~ *(í) (∅) onti. Like the athematic equivalent, but the vowel is always i and the root is always in zero grade (like in the "tudati" type). Examples: *sísdeti.

*(né) ti ~ *(n) énti. This peculiar formation consists of an infix né ~ n that is inserted before final consonant of the zero grade root, and inflected with athematic inflection. The infix itself ablauts like root athematic verbs. This formation is limited to roots ending in a stop or laryngeal, and containing a non initial sonorant. This sonorant is always syllabified in the zero grade, the infix is never syllabic. Examples: *linékʷti, *tl̥néh₂ti.

*(∅) néw ti ~ *(∅) nu énti. Formed with an ablauting athematic suffix * néw ~ * nu attached to the root. These are sometimes considered to be a special case of the nasal infix type. Examples: *tn̥néwti.

*(∅) sḱ éti ~ *(∅) sḱ ónti. Thematic, with zero grade root and accent on the thematic vowel. This type formed durative, iterative or perhaps inchoative verbs. Examples: *gʷm̥sḱéti, *pr̥sḱéti.

*(é) s eti ~ *(é) s onti. Thematic, with accented e grade root. Examples: *h₂lékseti.

*(∅) éh₁ ti ~ *(∅) éh₁ n̥ti. This formed secondary stative verbs from adjectival roots, perhaps also from adjective stems. The verbs thus created were, nonetheless, imperfective verbs. This suffix was thematicised in most descendants with a ye extension, thus éh₁ye as attested in most daughter languages. It is unclear if the verb ablauted; most indications are that it did not, but there are some hints that the zero grade did occur in a few places (Latin past participle, Germanic class 3 weak verbs). Some scholars, including the editors of the Lexikon der indogermanischen Verben, believe that the eh₁ stem was originally an aorist stem with 'fientive' meaning ('to become X'), whereas the ye extension created the present with 'essive' meaning, 'to be x'. Examples: *h₁rudʰéh₁ti.

*(o) éy eti ~ *(o) éy onti. Thematic, affixed to the o grade of the root, with accent on the suffix. This formed causative verbs, meaning "to cause to do", or iterative verbs, meaning "to do repeatedly". Most branches, like Germanic, preserve the causative meaning, but some (Greek and Slavic) retain mostly the iterative one. Examples: *sodéyeti, *bʰoréyeti, *h₃roǵéyeti.

This thematic suffix formed desiderative verbs, meaning "to want to do". Two formations are attested:
*(é) (h₁)s eti ~ *(é) (h₁)s onti. Accented full grade of the root. *(í) (∅) (h₁)s eti ~ *(í) (∅) (h₁)s onti. Reduplicated with i, accent on the reduplicated prefix, zero grade root. Examples: *wéydseti, *ḱíḱl̥h₁seti.

*(∅) sy éti ~ *(∅) sy ónti. Similar to above, but with an accented thematic vowel and zero grade root. Examples: *bʰuHsyéti.

* y éti ~ * y ónti. Affixed to noun and adjective stems for a variety of meanings; accent is on the thematic vowel. The thematic vowel of the nominal stem, if any, is retained as e, as is any possible eh₂ suffix, thus creating the variants eyé and eh₂yé , which developed into independent suffixes in many daughter languages.

* h₂ ti ~ * h₂ n̥ti. This formed factitive verbs from adjective stems. As above, the thematic vowel was retained, as e. Like the eh₁ stative, this suffix was often extended with ye in the daughter languages, giving h₂ye
Examples: *néweh₂ti.

* y éti ~ * y ónti. Very similar to the denominative, but formed from adjectives only. The thematic vowel is retained, but this time as o. The existence of this type in PIE is uncertain.

*(é) t ~ *(∅) ént. The same as root athematic imperfective verbs. Most perfective verbs appear to have been of this type. Examples: *gʷémt, *léykʷt, *bʰúHt.

*(∅) ét ~ *(∅) ónt. The same as root thematic imperfective verbs. This formation was very rare in PIE, barely any are reconstructable, but became more widespread in the later languages. The formation seemed to have zero grade of the root and accent on the thematic vowel, like the "tudati" type. Examples: *h₁ludʰét.

*(é) (∅) et ~ *(é) (∅) ont. This formation was maybe even rarer than the root thematic type, only one verb is reconstructable. Examples: *wéwket.

*(ḗ) s t ~ *(é) s n̥t. Inflected as the "Narten" athematic type, with lengthened grade in the singular and fixed accent. This suffix was the primary means of deriving perfective verbs from imperfective roots, though it appears that there were not many verbs created that way. The suffix became very productive in many of the descendants. Examples: *dḗyḱst, *wḗǵʰst.

*(ó) e ~ *(∅) ḗr. Owing to the rarity of stative roots, this formation was correspondingly rare. Only one verb can be reconstructed. Examples: *wóyde.

*(e) (ó) e ~ *(e) (∅) ḗr. This was the only way to form new stative verbs. Examples: *memóne, *lelóykʷe.

The various verb formations came to be reorganised in the daughter languages. The tendency was for various forms to become integrated into a single "paradigm" which combined verbs of different aspects into a coherent whole. This process proceeded in steps:

Combining different forms with similar meanings into a system of three major aspects. The result of this was the so called "Cowgill–Rix" system described above, which was completed in late PIE, shortly after Tocharian had split off and well after the Anatolian split. At this stage, formations that originally had various purposes had their semantics largely harmonized into one of the aspect classes, with a clear distinction between primary and secondary derivations. These formations, however, were still separate lexical verbs, still sometimes with idiosyncratic meanings, and for a given aspect a root could still form multiple verbs or no verbs in that particular aspect. This is the stage visible in early Vedic Sanskrit. Combining the various aspects under a single unified verb, with a clear distinction between inflectional and derivational forms. This involved pruning multiple verbs formed from the same root with the same aspect, and creating new verbs for aspects that were missing for certain roots. At this stage a single verb was defined by a set of principal parts, each of which (approximately) defined the type of formation used in each of its aspects. This stage was in process in Vedic Sanskrit and was largely completed in Ancient Greek, although even in this language there are still verbs lacking some of the aspects, as well as occasional multiple formations for the same aspect, with distinct and idiosyncratic meanings. Many remnants of this stage are also found in Old Church Slavonic, which still had distinct stems for the present, aorist and infinitive/participle. Most Slavic languages later lost the aorist, but verbs still have distinct (and unpredictable) present and infinitive stems up to the present day. Regularizing the formations into "conjugations" that applied across the whole system, so that a verb belonged to a single conjugational class rather than one class for each aspect formation. This stage was partly complete in Latin, in particular in regards to the āre, ēre, īre (first, second, fourth) conjugations. The older system, however, is still clearly visible in the ere class, with each verb in this class, and some in the other classes, needing to be defined by separate present, perfect and supine formations. In Proto Germanic, this process seemed to have been largely completed, with only a few relic formations such as j presents and n infix presents remaining as "irregular" verbs. However, a clear distinction was still maintained between primary and secondary verbs, since the lack of multiple aspect stems in the latter eventually led to the creation of the weak verbs, with most of the original primary verbs becoming strong verbs. A small minority of statives retained their perfect/stative inflection, becoming the preterite present verbs. Gradual reduction in the number of conjugational classes, as well as the number of productive classes. This development is very clearly attested in the later Germanic languages. Afrikaans is an extreme example, where almost all verbs follow the same conjugational pattern. English is also a strong example, where all weak verb classes have merged, many older strong verbs have become weak, and all other verbs are considered irregular relic formations. Dutch and German also show this development, but the non productive strong verb classes have remained more regular. Swedish still retains two weak verb classes, although only one is productive. In the Romance languages, these developments have also occurred, but to a lesser degree. The classes āre ēre ere īre remain productive; the fourth ( īre) though is generally only marginally productive. The gradual tendency in all of the daughter languages was to proceed through the stages just described, creating a single conjugational system that applied to all tenses and aspects and allowing all verbs, including secondary verbs, to be conjugated in all inflectional categories. Generally, the primary verbs were largely all lumped together into a single conjugation (e. g. the Latin ere conjugation), while different secondary verb formations produced all other conjugations; for the most part, only these latter conjugations were productive in the daughter languages. In most languages, the original distinction between primary and secondary verbs was obscured to some extent, with some primary verbs scattered among the nominally secondary/productive conjugations. Germanic is perhaps the family with the clearest primary/secondary distinction: Nearly all "strong verbs" are primary in origin while nearly all "weak verbs" are secondary, with the two classes clearly distinguished in their past tense and past participle formations. In Greek, the difference between the present, aorist, and perfect, when used outside of the indicative (i. e. in the subjunctive, optative, imperative, infinitive, and participles) is almost entirely one of grammatical aspect, not of tense. That is, the aorist refers to a simple action, the present to an ongoing action, and the perfect to a state resulting from a previous action. An aorist infinitive or imperative, for example, does not refer to a past action, and in fact for many verbs (e. g. "kill") would likely be more common than a present infinitive or imperative. (In some participial constructions, however, an aorist participle can have either a tensal or aspectual meaning.) It is assumed that this distinction of aspect was the original significance of the PIE tenses, rather than any actual tense distinction, and that tense distinctions were originally indicated by means of adverbs, as in Chinese. It appears that by late PIE, the different tenses had already acquired a tensal meaning in particular contexts, as in Greek. In later Indo European languages, this became dominant. The meanings of the three tenses in the oldest Vedic Sanskrit differs somewhat from their meanings in Greek, and thus it is not clear whether the PIE meanings corresponded exactly to the Greek meanings. In particular, the Vedic imperfect had a meaning that was close to the Greek aorist, and the Vedic aorist had a meaning that was close to the Greek perfect. Meanwhile, the Vedic perfect was often indistinguishable from a present tense (Whitney 1889). In moods other than the indicative, the present, aorist, and perfect were almost indistinguishable from each other. The lack of semantic distinction between different grammatical forms in a literary language often indicates that some of these forms no longer existed in the spoken language of the time. In fact, in Classical Sanskrit, the subjunctive dropped out, as did all tenses of the optative and imperative other than the present; meanwhile, in the indicative the imperfect, aorist and perfect became largely interchangeable, and in later Classical Sanskrit, all three could be freely replaced by a participial construction. All of these developments appear to reflect changes in spoken Middle Indo Aryan; among the past tenses, for example, only the aorist survived into early Middle Indo Aryan, which was later displaced by a participial past tense.

NOTE: A blank space means the reflex of the given class in the given language is undetermined. Primary imperfective PIE Sanskrit Greek Latin Germ OCS Lith OIr Arm Alb Toch Hitt Root athematic class II (130) two syllable mi verbs (9) 4 or 5 verbs "to be" (*immi), "to do/put" (*dōmi) class V (4 mĭ verbs) mi verbs in OLith. 3 verbs class I common Root thematic 2a: class I; 2b: class VI many ō verbs many ere verbs most strong verbs class I class B I class II; class III, IV (deponent) no Reduplicated athematic class III a few prominent mi verbs Reduplicated thematic a few verbs a few verbs a few verbs relics nasal infix class VII CV n C ánō verbs CV n Cō verbs relics relics n infix verbs class B III an verbs class VII causative nin verbs? nasal infix + laryngeal class IX nēmi verbs a few n verbs 4th weak (fientive) class II (semelfactive nǫ verbs) class B IV class VI no? nu suffix class V, VIII nūmi verbs relics relics class B V causative nu verbs ye suffix 5a: class IV; 5b: passive verbs many * Cyō verbs 3rd conj. i stem; part of 4th conj. strong verbs with j present a few ī/ī verbs many verbs? class B II 5b: passive i verbs class IV subjunctive sḱe suffix 9a: 13 cchati verbs 9a: relics; 9b: several verbs 9a: several verbs; 9b: only discō "learn" combined eh₁ sḱe suffix stative inchoative in ēscere (productive) a few oh verbs other sḱe Homeric habitual past esk verbs inchoative in (ī)scere (productive) c` aorist, ic` subjunctive class IX in B; causative in ṣṣ (very productive) habitual, durative in šk (very productive) se suffix relics relics relics relics relics relics relics relics relics class VIII esp. in A Secondary imperfective PIE Sanskrit Greek Latin Germ OCS Lith OIr Arm Alb Toch Hitt eh₁(ye) stative (th)ē aorist passive most 2nd conj. verbs most 3rd weak verbs ěj/ě verbs; impf. ě > a suffix éye causative caus. verbs (very productive) CoC eō verbs: some iter., a few caus. ēre caus. verbs caus. 1st weak (common) caus./iter. ī/ī verbs caus. weak i verbs (class A II) (h₁)se desiderative esp. 10b: desid. verbs (productive) 10a: future tense relics no? 10b: future tense (h₁)sye desiderative future tense no? no? relic: byšęštĭ future tense Gaulish future tense ye denominative yáti verbs many * Cyō verbs (e. g. ainō, izdō, eiō); iō, uō class XII from n nouns (e) ye denominative class X; denom. a yáti verbs many eō contract verbs many īre, a few ēre verbs denom. 1st weak denom. ī/ī verbs denom. weak i verbs (class A II) (e)h₂(ye) factitive/denominative āyati verbs aō contract verbs āre verbs (1st conj.) 2nd weak in ō aj/a verbs (class III Aa) weak a verbs (class A I) 6b: athem. factitive (o) ye factitive? oō contract verbs? factitive 3rd weak verbs? "a class of Anatolian denominatives"? Perfective PIE Sanskrit Greek Latin Germ OCS Lith OIr Arm Alb Toch Hitt Root athematic class I (predominant in early Vedic; c. 130 attested verbs) root aorist: well attested no no? < 20 class I preterite a few presents Root thematic class II (more common in later Vedic) second aorist "aorist present" verbs (relics) > thematic presents "root aorist" to class I, II highly productive class VI preterite Reduplicated class III (to causatives) aorist to causatives only dua 'to love' class II preterite in Toch. A (usually causative) s suffix classes IV, V, VI, VII first aorist s perfect (to many primary ere verbs) no sigmatic, productive aorist no s and t preterite; in subj., s subjunctive sigmatic sh aorist class III preterite Stative PIE Sanskrit Greek Latin Germ OCS Lith OIr Arm Alb Toch Hitt Root (only *wóyde) vétti "to know" oîda "to know" vīdī "have seen" *witaną "to know" věděti "to know" no? gitem "to know" Reduplicated perfect tense (in Vedic, with present meaning) perfect tense (often with present meaning, esp. in Homer) reduplicated perfect (many verbs); a few perfect presents preterite tense; preterite presents (15 verbs) no? redup. preterite no some class III preterites; perfect ptc. ḫi presents Participles PIE Sanskrit Greek Latin Germ OCS Lith OIr Arm Alb Toch Hitt nt participle: usually active present ptc. yes yes yes yes yes yes only relics no yes meaning like a t participle mh₁n participle: usually middle present ptc. yes yes only relics no? present passive ptc. in * mo yes in OPrus; present passive ptc. in * mo only relics present passive ptc. in * m ? wos participle: usually active past ptc. yes yes v perfects no yes yes no yes t past participle (passive for trans. verbs, active for intrans.) to most verbs yes, adjectival force? yes to weak verbs, some adjectives yes yes passive preterite no no n past participle (same meaning as t participle) to some verbs only relics to strong verbs yes only relics only relics no? no l past participle no no no active "resultative" no no passive no Toch. A gerundive no Other formations PIE Sanskrit Greek Latin Germ OCS Lith OIr Arm Alb Toch Hitt subjunctive subjunctive (future meaning) subjunctive future of 3rd, 4th conj. no no? a subj.? ; s subjunctive < aorist subj. yes optative optative optative im subj. to athematic verbs subjunctive; also wiljaną "want" imperative imperative ("permissive"?) no optative; plural imperfect optative; imperfect no imperative yes yes yes yes yes no no yes yes yes yes lengthened perfect/aorist in ē ? ? long vowel perfect ? ? ? ? ? ? class II preterite in Toch. B ? imperfect imperfect tense (in Vedic, with aorist meaning) imperfect tense no? only dōną "do" no? no? no? aorist, imperfect singular imperfect no? preterite tense? middle voice in i in i in r , passive meaning in i , passive meaning no? no? in r in i in i primary endings in r , secondary in i in r deponent (middle only) verbs yes yes yes no (*haitaną "to call" in post Northwest Germanic) yes dual verbs yes 2nd/3rd person only no 1st/2nd person only yes yes no (nouns only) yes

The stative aspect was reduced to relics already in the Balto Slavic, with very little of it reconstructable. The aorist and indicative past tense merged, creating the Slavic aorist. Baltic lost the aorist, while it survived in Proto Slavic. Modern Slavic languages have since mostly lost the aorist, but it survives in Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbo Croatian and Sorbian. Slavic innovated a new imperfect tense, which appeared in Old Church Slavonic and still exists in the same languages as the aorist. A new past tense was also created in the modern languages to replace or complement the aorist and imperfect, using a periphrastic combination of the copula and the so called "l participle", originally a deverbal adjective. In many languages today, the copula was dropped in this formation, turning the participle itself into the past tense. The Slavic languages innovated an entirely new aspectual distinction between imperfective and perfective verbs, based on derivational formations.