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- Czech verbs can be classified (arranged in classes) in several ways. The verbal classes can be characterised in terms of their morphological properties. Verbs that belong to the same class typically accept the same range of suffixes (endings). This article concerns the morphological classification of the Czech verbs and the formation of their admissible forms (including, to some extent, bookish and archaic ones). The first attempts to classify Czech verbs from the morphological point of view were made in the 16th century, for example in Matouš Benešovský's Grammatica Bohemica from 1577. Vavřinec Benedikt Nudožerský in his work Grammaticæ bohemicæ libri duo (1603) distinguished four classes according to the present indicative ending of the 1st person singular: I. – ám, II. – ím, III. – u, IV. – i. Pavel Doležal in his Grammatica Slavico-Bohemica (1746), inspired by the Latin grammar, for the first time classified the Czech verbs according to the infinitive: I. vol-a-ti (vocāre), II. mil-ova-ti (amāre), III. lež-e-ti (iacēre), IV. uč-i-ti (docēre), V. pí-ti (bibere), VI. hr-nou-ti (sēmovēre, āmovēre) and, moreover, verba anomala, i.e. an arbitrary list of several tens of "irregular" verbs including the athematic ones. The Czech (and generally Slavic) verbs have two distinct stems: the present stem (used in forming present indicative, imperative and present transgressive) and the infinitive stem (infinitive, past and passive participles, past transgressive and verbal noun). Both stems are equally important and frequent, it means that there are two basic possibilities of systematic classification of the Czech (generally Slavic) verbs, based either on the present stems or on the infinitive stems. For comparison the Latin verbs have three distinct stems (present, perfect, supine) and their classification is traditionally based on the present stem (I. vocā-, II. tenē-, III. leg-(ĕ,ǐ)-, IV. audī-), the infinitive itself is derived from the present stem (vocāre, tenēre, légĕre, audīre). As there are six types of the infinitive stem, there are also six corresponding classes (Franz Miklosich, Formenlehre der slawischen Sprachen, 1856 and Jan Gebauer, Historická mluvnice jazyka českého, 1898), usually arranged in the following manner: I. nés-ti, vés-ti (*ved-ti), péci (*pek-ti), krý-ti, etc. (no stem suffix), II. tisk-nou-ti, III. slyš-e-ti, trp-ě-ti, um-ě-ti, IV. pros-i-ti, V. děl-a-ti, sáz-e-ti (*sad-ja-ti), láti (*la-ja-ti), bráti (*bьr-a-ti), kov-a-ti, VI. kup-ova-ti. This classification is very similar to the Doležal's one (though the class order is different). The classification based on the present stem (e.g. August Schleicher, Formenlehre der kirchenslawischen Sprache, 1852, and esp. August Leskien, Handbuch der altbulgarischen Sprache, 2nd ed., 1886) distinguishes five classes, the classes I-IV have a distinct present stem suffix: I. nes-e-, ved-e-, jьm-e-, etc., II. dvig-ne-, III. kry-je-, *tes-je-, dêl-a-je-, *sad-ja-je-, kup-u-je-, IV. chval-i-, trъp-i-, V. *jes-, *dad-, *jad-, *vêd- (athematic consonantal present stems). The system presented in this article is a system based on the Leskien's classification, adapted to the contemporary Czech language. The main differences are: a) the few athematic (and highly irregular) verbs are treated separately, b) the contracted děl-á- < *dêl-a-je- has moved from the class III to a new class V, c) the contracted sáz-í- < *sad-ja-je- has moved from the class III to the class IV. (en)
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