frequentative

Frequentative in linguistics and grammar refers to a verb expressing repeated, frequent action. Frequentative verbs in English end in -er and -le (as bobble from bob, curdle from curd, dazzle from daze, slither from slide, sparkle from spark, and trample from tramp ). English frequentative verbs are a closed set, and English no longer produces frequentative verbs with these suffixes. Instead, in contemporary English the frequentative aspect is usually expressed by the plain present tense of the verb, e.g., “I walk to work (usually),” which describes a habitual action, as opposed to the present progressive “I am walking to work (right now).” In Latin, however, frequentative verbs are common in all periods. Frequentatives occur very frequently in the comedies of Plautus and Terence, in Cicero’s letters, and in the Satyricon of Petronius. Latin frequentative verbs often do not differ in meaning from simple verbs, and they often replace the original simple verbs in Romance languages (languages descended from Latin) because the frequentatives are perfectly regular whereas the simple verbs may be somewhat or very irregular. In Latin, frequentatives are formed from the suffixes -tāre, -itāre, -sāre added to the past participle of the simple verb. For instance, the simple verb canō, canere, cecinī, cantus “I sing, to sing, I have sung, sung” would be a regular verb of the third conjugation (whose present infinitive is marked by -ere ) except for the third principal part, cecinī (from an unattested kekanai, a reduplicated perfect inherited from Proto-Indo-European). To the inflectional stem cant- of the past participle cantus, Latin adds the suffix -tāre (reduced to -āre after the preceding t ) resulting in the absolutely regular first conjugation verb canto, cantāre, cantāvī, cantātus (compare Italian canto, cantare, cantai, cantato ). Cantāre becomes cantare in Italian, cantar in Spanish and Portuguese, and chanter in French.