Introduction to Wistrish verbs

Wistrish verb conjugation is very complex with up to thousands of possible forms for each verb, though most of it comes through polysynthesis. For that very reason it is not productive to show entire declension tables for each verb, so we will mostly focus on patterns of forming different verbs.

Classes

Wistrish verbs can be separated into multiple root classes (the verbs that are not directly dervied from other classes):

Strong verbs - the biggest class, open
Preterite-presents - a minor self-sufficient class, open to some degree, though PP formation is rather rare
Hollow verbs - a minor self-sufficient class, generally closed by itself*

* "By itself" here means that there is generally no hollow verb derivation through adding a bare hollow I ending "-𐌰𐌽" or hollow II ending "-𐌾𐌰𐌽". Though new dependent hollow verbs can still be created through adding hollow aspectual suffixes as "-𐌰𐍄𐌾𐌰𐌽" or "-𐌹𐍃𐌺𐌰𐌽".

And derived (the verbs always trace to some of the root classes and can most of the time considered as aspectual forms of those).

Derived 1 (weak) (-𐌾𐌰𐌽) - a big class, can be considered as causative aspectual forms of other verbs.
Derived 2a (a/o) (-𐌽𐌰𐌽) - a smaller class, can be considered as fientive aspectual forms of other verbs.
Derived 2b (a/e) (-𐍀𐌰𐌽) - another small class which includes cessatives.

Tenses

Wistrish has four simple main tenses:

Present (non-past) - represents a singular present (only in imperfective) or a future (in perfectives and imperfectives) action or state. There is no separate future tense, though non-past perfective forms are usually enough to unambigiously describe future, while imperfective future usually require context.
Past - describes singular past action or state.
Present (non-past) tensal gnomic-iterational - used to describe either a repeating gnomic truth or with provided context is used to describe multiple repeating actions in parallel.
Past tensal gnomic-iterational - similar to present tensal GnIt, but the action no longer repeats / the truth is no longer true.

Multiple compound (mostly relational) tense-aspects exist, though they are used rarer than the simple tenses.

Modes

Wistrish has a so called "subjective-objective mode alignment". Verb can be declined in two modes: subjective and objective. Verbs in subjective mode agree with the sentence subject, while objective mode verbs agree with the object.

Are there voices in Wistrish?

Wistrish does not have a voice as a separate grammatical cathegory, but passive voice is integrated into the aspect system (see below).

Number-person

Wistrish verbs display the number and person of the direct subject, having three persons (first, second and third) and three numbers (singular, dual and plural). Duals exist for all persons.

Aspects

Aspects display how the verb was done, how long or how often. Aspects, unlike moods, are completely synthetic and stackable, with a verb being able to have (and frequently having) multiple aspects at once.

Aspects can be divided into two big groups: main aspects, which indicate repeating / length and are never considered as separate verbs, and side aspects, which indicate other characteristics and can sometimes be considered as separate verbs if they are not stacked.

Aspects also have their own non-finite forms.

Moods

Display the reality of an action. Moods are not stackable and do not have their non-finite forms.

Can be divided into two groups:

Realis - have real past tenses, have past singular forms in past tense, display actions that happened / are happening / will happen.
Irrealis - display hypothetical, wanted and other non-real actions. They do not have real past tenses, the morphological present and past tenses, in them called as submoods I and II are used to describe different degrees of irreality, while being syntaxically tenseless.

Perfectivity

Perfectivity is not displayed through normal suffixal aspects but rather through prefixes. There is a large arsenal of perfective prefixes in Wistrish used to convey different perfective meanings, but they are not stackable and, if the verb has multiple aspects compounded, they are only appied to the final aspect of them all.

Perfectivity exists in non-finite forms and often even kept into the deverbal nouns or adjectives.

Non-finite forms

Infinitive is the main non-finite form. Wistrish infinitives have aspects, styles and perfectivity.

Wistrish participle system is bigger than the Gothic one as each possible aspect has its own present/past participles. Past participles are active by default and do not inherit Gothic passive meaning: passivity is fully expressed through the passive aspect.

Wistrish gerunds are formed with a feminine i-stem (or for weak/causative verbs i/ō-stem) suffix "-𐌽𐍃". Gerunds function identically to the nouns in a sentence and have aspects, styles and perfectivity.

Styles

A minor group of prefixes which display some action properties.

Evidentiality

A pseudo-mood prefix 𐌴𐌹-, which marks that the verb in described was told to the speaker by someone else, without speaker being confident in truthfulness of the statement.