Chapter Wheelock 8: 3rd Conjugation Present Active Indicative Because the thematic vowel e in the third conjugation is short and usually unaccented, it went through many sound and spelling changes by the Classical Period. We know that to find the stem, we remove the re from the present infinitive, giving us a stem that ends in "e," but due to these sound and spelling changes, the e rarely sticks around. In the present active indicative, it generally turns into a short i. Endings Sg Pl ag Singular Plural 1 - -imus 1 ag agimus 2 -is -itis 2 agis agitis 3 -it -unt 3 agit agunt NB that the vowel changes look like those in the 1st and 2nd conjugation future endings, but be sure not to confuse these endings as being future. Imperfect Active Indicative The imperfect of the third ag 1 the same set of endings that it does 2 3 all the other conjugations (bam, bs, etc). conjugation is easy because it uses Future Active Indicative A noticeable difference between the future in the 1st and 2nd conjugations and that of the 3rd 4th and is the lack of the future infix -bi-. In 3rd and 4th, the sign of the future tense is the vowel --, which shows up in all of the forms except the 1st person singular, where the stem vowel contracts and disappears, and we use the "m" personal ending. Endings Sg 1 -am 2 -s 3 -et Pl -mus -tis -ent ag 1 2 3 Singular agam ags aget Plural agmus agtis agent Sg agbam agbs agbat Pl agbmus agbtis agbant
To help keep the different future endings straight, we can use the mnemonic device "in conjugations 1 and 2, for future use bo, bi, bu. In conjugations 4 and 3, for futures use a and e"
Present Imperative Just like in the other conjugations, the singular imperative is just the present stem. In the plural imperative, the short e again turns into a short i. dcere, lead facere, do dcere, say ferre, bear dc fac dc fer ag vinc Sg age vince Pl agite vincite
There are some common verbs that have slightly irregular singular imperatives: the e drops off the end. They do, however, act normally in the plural.