Verbs
As in most Romance languages, the Portuguese verb is usually inflected to agree with the subject's grammatical person (with three values, 1=I/we, 2=you, 3=he/she/it/they) and grammatical number (singular or plural), and to express various attributes of the action, such as time (past, present, future); completed, frustrated, or continuing; subordination and conditionality; command; and more. As a consequence, a regular Portuguese verb stem can take over 50 distinct suffixes. (For comparison, regular French and Italian verbs have about 40 distinct forms.)
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Famous quotes containing the word verbs:
“He crafted his writing and loved listening to those tiny explosions when the active brutality of verbs in revolution raced into sweet established nouns to send marching across the page a newly commissioned army of words-on-maneuvers, all decorated in loops, frets, and arrowlike flourishes.”
—Alexander Theroux (b. 1940)