Conjugation of verbs

It is important to take a closer look at Malagasy conjugation in order to teach it at school. The Malagasy language has been studied scientifically for less than a century and none of the pioneers has yet compiled a list of verbs in Malagasy for their conjugation. There is no book covering conjugation thoroughly but only general analyses have been published by traditional grammarians and linguists. This communication therefore concerns the conjugation of verbs in Malagasy. We propose a classification based on the existence of voices. There are four groups of verbs: those which don't contain the passive (-ina/-ana) or the indirect (a-) voices, called verbs of the first group; those which have the indirect voice and don't contain the passive voice, called verbs of the second group; those which have the passive voice and don't contain the indirect voice (third group); and those which have the passive and indirect voices, called verbs of the fourth group. The method used is that of electronic dictionaries in the sense of Gross (1989). Finally, this talk discusses models and classes of conjugation, irregular and defective verbs.

Key-words:Verbs, conjugation, groups of conjugation, irregular verbs, defective verbs

13/01/2022