Sloveso

Sloveso is a term used in several Slavic languages, notably Czech and Slovak, to denote the word class we call a verb in English. A sloveso expresses actions, events, or states and typically forms the predicate of a sentence. Verbs generally agree with their subject in person and number and carry information about time and modality.

Morphology and forms: Slovesa are inflected for person, number, tense, mood, and voice. Many Slavic languages distinguish aspect, distinguishing imperfective and perfective forms that reflect whether an action is ongoing or completed. Verbs also have non-finite forms, such as infinitives, participles, and adverbial participles used to build compound tenses and adjectival phrases.

Conjugation and usage: Verbs are often organized into conjugation classes, with regular and irregular patterns. They may be transitive or intransitive and can take objects, show voice (active or passive), and may require auxiliary verbs to form certain tenses. Tense and mood encode time, reality, or hypothetical situations.

Lexical vs auxiliary: Sloveso can be main verbs carrying lexical meaning or auxiliary verbs that help form tense, aspect, or mood. Non-finite forms participate in complex predicates and adjectival phrases, while participles may agree with gender and number in some languages.

Across languages, sloveso remains central to sentence structure, contrasting with other parts of speech by its rich inflection and role in expressing time, aspect, and modality.