Vowel and
consonant alternations occur very often in various verbs in the
present tense paradigm.
The most common vowel alternations are:
a
– ă: sar/sărim
(I jump – we jump)
ă
– e: văd/vezi
(I see – you see)
o
– oa – u: pot/poate/putem
(I can – he can – we can)
i
– e: vin/venim
(I come – we come)
Most
alternations occur in the root verb as we can see in the examples
mentioned above.
The vowel alternation:
e
– eadansez/dansează
(I dance – he dances) occurs in the Present Tense suffix (ez
/ eaz).
All the verbs with the suffix "ez"
register this type of alternation in the third person singular.
The most common consonant alternations
are:
d
– z: văd/vezi
(I see – you see), deschid/deschizi
(I open – you open), cred/crezi
(I believe – you believe)
s
– ş: cunosc/cunoști
(I know – you know), citesc/citești
(I read – you read)
t
– ţ: trimit/trimiți
(I send – you send)
All the consonant alternations occur in
the 2nd person singular (văd/vezi:
I see/you see). The Present ending "i"
produces a consonant alternation.
Grammatical features
There are
specific rules according to which alternations occur in the Present
Tense paradigm.
Most
alterations in Romanian are the result of some special phonetic laws
that can be explained by differences in the phonetic structure of
various forms of the verbs in the Present.
The
chronology of these alternations is related to the changes produced
in the history of the Romanian language. The oldest alternation is "a
– ă"and dates from the twelfth century.
The alternations increase the irregular
grammatical features of the verbs in the Present and occur also in
the Past Tense paradigm (forming the participle).
All the
alternations in the Present Tense paradigm occur also in the nouns
and adjectives flexion.
phonetic alternations_verbs_present
