verbsto

Verbsto is a theoretical concept used in linguistics and in constructed-language design to describe a centralized repository or inventory of verb stems that can be combined with inflectional material to produce full verb forms. The term combines the word verb with a shortened form of store or stem, emphasizing the idea that stems are the primary building blocks stored for reuse across inflectional paradigms.

In a versto system, each verb stem carries a set of features such as person, number, tense, aspect, mood, voice, and transitivity. Inflection is realized by applying a rule set that maps these features to affixes, stem modifications, or stem-externally added material. This separation between the stored stems and the rules that realize morphology allows flexible re-use of stems across multiple grammatical contexts and languages.

There are different architectural variants. A static versto maintains a fixed inventory of stems that does not change during discourse, while a dynamic versto allows stems to be introduced, revised, or deprecated as language use evolves. Some analyses view versto as a descriptive tool for understanding morphologically rich systems, whereas others use it as a design principle for constructing conlangs with reusable stem inventories.

Example: in a toy language using a versto, the stem eat- may be stored once. With suffixes for tense and aspect, forms such as eat-o (present), eat-a (past), and eat-u (future) can be generated consistently from the same stem. This illustrates how a versto supports systematic generation of verb forms from a compact stem inventory.

See also: lexicon, stem, morphological paradigm, agglutinative morphology, templatic morphology.