¹ The forms treated in this article are those of ordinary modern conversational and prose Italian. The phonemic transcription used is discussed in detail in the author's article Italian Phonemes and Orthography, to appear in Italica; for typographical reasons, Ĩ = /λ/. The morphophonemic symbol ^x indicates that an initial single consonant of any following grammatical element or of any word in the same breath group is automatically doubled. The hyphen indicates morphological division.

In the citation of examples, this principle has been followed: if the examples given constitute a complete list of all the forms manifesting any phenomenon, they are listed without comment; but if the examples are only representative samples of a class of forms too large to list in full, they are followed by ‘etc.‘ Complete listing of all the forms of certain larger classes must be reserved for treatment in an exhaustive grammar.

² Which could, of course, be called ‘classes A and B’ or the like. In Italian, however, as in the other Romance languages, the correlation between grammatical and biological gender, in forms referring to animate objects, is close enough to warrant retention of the traditional terms.

³ Some nouns, especially those in -ísta, have both m. and f. endings and belong to both Ia and Ib; many of them may also be used as adjectives (faššísta, komunísta, etc.).

⁴ A number of these nouns have also m. pl. forms of type IIa, which are normally used in extended or transferred meaning (lefrútta dellálbεro ‘the fruits of the tree’ ~ ifrútti dεlpekkáto ‘the fruits of sin’, etc.).

⁵ For the purpose of this discussion, the term ‘impure’ will refer to the following consonants or consonant clusters: /ṭ, ḍ, ɲ, ps, s + cons./; and ‘pure’ to all other consonants and consonant clusters.

⁶ Used also before dέi ‘gods’: Ĩidέi ‘the gods’.

⁷ In poetical or very colloquial usage, the form l is also used before f. pl. nouns beginning with a vowel (leččeţióni ‘the exceptions’ [normally leeččeţióni], etc.).

⁸ Grán is also used, in colloquial speech, in the f. before a pure consonant (grán virtú ^x ‘great virtue’; unagrán bέlla ‘a fine figure of a woman [lit. a great beautiful woman]‘, etc.).

⁹ Absence of mention of a given distinction, in connection with any pronominal form, means that the form in question does not make that distinction.

¹⁰ May also be used as an indeclinable adjective, cf. §2.

¹¹ This term is here used in a somewhat broader sense than that usually given to it; ‘system’ or some other term would do equally well. All the tenses may be used in independent clauses; what is to be emphasized is the parallelism between present and past tenses in indicative, future, and subjunctive, which makes it desirable to present these three categories as of the same rank.

¹² Cf. E. B. Davis, ‘Italian e’s and o‘s’, Italica 14.117–125 (1937), and G. L. Trager's discussion of the phonemic interpretation of open and close e and o in unstressed syllables, Italica 16.145 (1939).

¹³ Classification in further detail, according to the types of root alternants and other irregularities present in individual verbs, would not be rewarding in proportion to the complexity and cross-patterning involved. The enumeration of the peculiarities of individual verbs is rather a lexicographical than a grammatical matter; in an extensive treatment, the various root alternants, etc., would have to be listed separately for each verb.

¹⁴ Not all verbs have a present participle in current use; that of many verbs is used only substantivally (ilrimanénte ‘the remainder’: rimanére ‘to remain‘).

¹⁵ The structure of Italian finite verb forms is very heterogeneous, and often an element is to be assigned to one category rather than another only on the basis of parallels or contrasts throughout the entire system; no complete or absolute parallelism can possibly be set up in the structure of verb forms as a whole.

¹⁶ The choice of ‘strong’ past tense marker is determined by lexical criteria.

¹⁷ The term root will refer to the ‘chief root’ of a verb, and alternant to the root alternant used in the particular form under discussion. The alternants of έssεre ‘to be’ have been listed in §4.11.3; in its endings it follows conjugation IIIb.ii.

¹⁸ Cf. §4.11.1.e.iv for special root alternants of díč- ‘to say’, fač- ‘to do’ in dí-te, fá-te.

¹⁹ The root alternant έra ‘was’ (: έssεre ‘to be‘) behaves in imperf. 1.-3., 6. as if it were equivalent to theme + tense marker, i.e. the personal endings -o and -i are substituted for -a, and -no is added directly to it (); but in 4., 5. it behaves like a simple theme, with tense marker -vá- added before the personal endings (εra-vá-mo, εra-vá-te).

²⁰ Some verbs add -r- of the future directly to root or alternant, as follows:

1. root alone: and- ‘to go’; kad- ‘to fall’; dov- ‘ought’; par- ‘to seem’; pot- ‘to be able’; tra ^x- ‘to draw’; ved- ‘to see’.

2. root minus final consonant: dič- ‘to say’, fač- ‘to do’.

3. root with last consonant assimilated to -r-: verbs in -duč- ‘to lead’; dɔl- ‘to hurt’; pɔn- ‘to place’; riman- ‘to remain’; tεn- ‘to hold’; vol- ‘to be worth’; vɔl- ‘to wish’.

4. root with thematic vowel á (IIb): d- ‘to give’, st- ‘to stand’.

²¹ Including pres. subjv. 4. used impera ti vally (§4.44).

²² The forms lo, la and all those ending in -i have alternative forms without the final vowel (l; m, t, etc.) for optional use before a word beginning with a vowel.