Inchoative verb

An inchoative verb, sometimes called an "inceptive" verb, shows a process of beginning or becoming. Productive inchoative affixes exist in several languages, including the suffixes present in Latin and Ancient Greek, and consequently some Romance languages. Not all verbs with inchoative suffixes have retained their inceptive meaning. In Italian, for example, present indicative finisco 'I finish' contains the form of the suffix, while present indicative finiamo 'we finish' does not, yet the only difference in meaning is that of person subject; the suffix is now semantically inert.

In Romance, the inchoative suffixes in Latin became incorporated into the inflections of fourth conjugation verbs ( īre). Catalan, Occitan, Italian, and Romanian have distinctions between "infixed" (infixed with the inchoative suffix ēscō) and "pure" (non infixed) verbs, with the number of pure verbs tend to be fewer than the infixed ones, while French has pure verbs but treated as irregular.

In Catalan, the 3rd verb category (verbs ending in ‘ ir’) is divided into 2 sub categories: ‘pure’ and ‘inchoative’. The vast majority of 3rd category verbs are inchoative and are marked by the addition of the affix ‘ esc , eix ‘, with less than only 15 to 20 of all 3rd category verbs falling into the ‘pure’ sub category. Inchoative verbs are affected in only their first, second, third and third person plural conjugations. This can be seen below in the table below comparing the present indicative conjugations of the pure verb ‘dormir’ (to sleep) with the inchoative verb ‘servir’ (to serve):
PersonDormir (pure)Servir (inchoative)1stdormservesc2nddormsserveixes3rddormserveix1st pl. dormimservim2nd pl. dormiuserviu3rd pl. dormenserveixen

It is important to note that as nearly all of the 3rd category verbs are inchoative, there is very little, if any, relationship between the inchoative verbs of Catalan and the traditional inceptive meaning and function of inchoative verbs. It is most likely that this verb sub category is named ‘inchoative’ because the associated morpheme ‘ eix ‘ stems directly from the Latin inchoative morpheme ‘ sc ‘, despite its function and usage having disappeared.