Defective Verbs

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The term “defective” refers to bases that are not used in all the expected morphological categories. They are called “defective” because they are deficient, or lacking.

Take English “go.” The correct past of “go” is—or once was—”goed.” But we no longer say “goed,” so we can call the English verb “go” defective. It is lacking a past tense form. Similarly, we hardly use the present “wend” anymore, but we use the past tense “went” all the time.

We combine present “go” and past “went” to create a full entry. This is called suppletion, the process of “filling up” a word’s forms.

Only a few Greek verbs are defective, but they are important verbs. Since you can’t predict how suppletion occurs, these are verbs that absolutely require memorization, at least so you know the bases that join together, and when, to create complete dictionary entries.

Learn the information on this handout (which uses iota adscript):

Also learn this handout, which presents the same information but in a different way: