# Spanish: Abolir - defective



## AquisM

So I'm not sure whether this should be here or in the Solo Español forum, but I guess it's to do with etymology so I'll post it here.

This thread is inspired by another discussion on defective verbs: http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=2428577

Why is it that some verbs like _abolir_ are defective? I know that nowadays the 'non-existent' forms of the verb are accepted and used, but why was there such a weird rule in the past? If I have done my research correctly, the 'official' rule is that only the forms that have a suffix beginning with an 'i' exist. My question is why.

Este hilo es inspirado por otro hilo sobre verbos defectivos: http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=2428577

¿Por qué hay algunos verbos en español que son defectivos, como _abolir_? No hablo de verbos como _soler, _ni aquellos como _llover, nevar..._, ni aquellos como _gustar, doler..._, sino aquellos como _agredir, blandir..._ Sé que hoy en día se usan y se aceptan esas formas 'inexistentes', pero, ¿por qué había una regla tan rara en el pasado? Si no me equivoco, creo que la regla 'oficial' es que solamente existen las formas del verbo cuyos sufijos empiezan con la 'i'. Por qué?


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## Outsider

AquisM said:


> I know that nowadays the 'non-existent' forms of the verb are accepted and used [...]


You're thinking of _abolir_, right? But I suspect that's a rather exceptional case. Most defective verbs remain defective today.
All I can tell you is that the "forbidden" forms of defective verbs sound bad, cacophonic.


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## CapnPrep

AquisM said:


> If I have done my research correctly, the  'official' rule is that only the forms that have a suffix beginning with  an 'i' exist. My question is why.


The forms with a suffix  beginning with ‹i› are also happen to be (almost) exactly the ones where  the verb stem is unstressed. These forms are generally more regular and  therefore easier to produce than those where the stem is stressed. For  some verbs, speakers may be unsure whether diphthongization is required (_agrédo_? _agriédo_?), and so they will tend to avoid stem-stressed forms. The homophony of some forms like _abuelo_ and _blando_ may play a role, but it cannot be the only explanation. 


Outsider said:


> All I can tell you is that the "forbidden" forms of defective verbs sound bad, cacophonic.


I would say that, in this case, the perception of cacophony is the result of the defectiveness, not the cause of it.


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## Forero

I joined WR specifically to understand these verbs. Since then, I have learned a lot and, I hope, helped a lot, but I never got the answer I came here for. My original thread was here. I am still curious.


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## merquiades

Me parece muy acertada la explicación del CapnPrep.  Estos verbos defectivos como agredir, abolir, blandir son tan poco frecuentes que el hablante no sabe a ciencia cierta como se ha de conjugar, ¿agrede, agride, agriede?.  Y si lo intenta como ves suena rarísimo.  Resulta también que en la vida diaria sus sinónimos se emplean con más frecuencia "atracar, atacar, asaltar", "derogar, suprimir", "empuñar, esgrimir".
Me parecería lógico que primero se utilizase menos el verbo, o sea, que perdiera su vitalidad frente a otros verbos, y que después desapareciesen las formas acentuadas en el radical.  Pero puede que sea pura cacofonía - abuelo (no), abulo (no), abolo (no).


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## CapnPrep

merquiades said:


> Pero puede que sea pura cacofonía - abuelo (no), abulo (no), abolo (no).


There is nothing inherently cacophonous about these forms, since otherwise _abuelo_ should also sound bad as a noun. And I guess the prepositional phrases _a bulo_ and _a bolo_ would sound OK if one found a meaningful context for them.

Anyway, _abulo_ cannot normally be the 1st sing. (pres. ind.) of _abolir_, because there is no _o_ > _u_ stem change in any other Spanish verb here. This verb is exceptional because the stem vowel _o_ has mostly been eliminated in _-ir_ verbs (e.g. _complir_ → _cumplir_, _podrir_ → _pudrir_). The only major exceptions are _dormir_, _morir_, and _oír_. _Dormir_ and _morir_ are very irregular, but very frequent, so speakers might try to extend their forms to _abolir_ (_abuele_, _abulió_, _abuliendo_, _abuelto_), but this verb is apparently not common enough to maintain such a paradigm (plus there is the possible problem of homophony with the nouns _abuelo_/_a_ in the diphthongized forms). It makes sense for a less frequent, learned word like _abolir_ to have a regular conjugation, but because of the historical change I just mentioned, there are actually no examples of fully regular verbs of the form _…o…ir_.

Similar remarks apply to verbs of the form _…e…ir_: all common verbs show diphthongization (_hervir _→ _hiervo_) and/or metaphony (_hirvió, pedir_→ _pido_/_pidió_). A low frequency verb like _agredir_ will have difficulty adopting these irregularities, but at the same time, there are no examples of _…e…ir_ verbs that maintain the stem vowel _e_ throughout their conjugation.


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## Forero

_Blandir_, _aterir_, _empedernir_, _denegrir_, _aguerrir_ creo que son todos.

Si existen las formas de _-iera_, _-iese_, _iendo_, ¿por qué no las de _-a_ o _-e_? Por ejemplo, si se usa _denegriendo_ o _denegriésemos_, ¿por qué no _denegramos_ y no _denegren_?


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## XiaoRoel

Podéis consultar mi opinión aquí. Y más consideraciones sobre el tratamiento de estos casos en el diccionario en el mensaje 14 del mismo hilo.
Un saludo.


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## swift

Buenos días, Xiao Roel.

En el otro hilo apuntas a cuestiones eufónicas para explicar la defectividad de esta serie de verbos. Sin embargo, aquí se ha planteado la idea opuesta, es decir, que la cacofonía resulta de la defectividad y no al revés. Yo tiendo a pensar que esta segunda propuesta tiene sustento. ¿Qué opinas? También se han aportado argumentos morfológicos acerca de la vocal temática.


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## XiaoRoel

Intentar explicaciones históricas profundas como la yod de los sufijos en *-y-, o pensar e la motivación morfológica no llevan más que a unos salsipuedes irresolubles y algo fantasiosos. Como decía en el hilo de sólo español son cultismos de uso restringido y no se les puede aplicar explicaciones diacrónicas como a una palabra tradicional.


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## CapnPrep

Forero said:


> _Blandir_, _aterir_, _empedernir_, _denegrir_, _aguerrir_ creo que son todos.


Here are all the verbs I could find in the DRAE or in the DPD with the mention "U. solo las formas cuya desinencia empieza por -i":


arrecir[se], aterir[se], [des]colorir, compungir, desabrir, embaír, empedernir, manir, desvaír, preterir, abolir, garantir 
 _Agredir_, _blandir_, _denegrir_, and _tra[n]sgredir_ are listed with full conjugations (along with _garantir_, in Argentina and Uruguay). _Aguerrir_  only appears in the adjectival form _aguerrido_, so it's more than just defective; it's not even a verb anymore.

Other dictionaries may disagree about this list, and of course no dictionary reflects every speaker's metalinguistic knowledge (if any) or spontaneous usage (if any) of these words. But it's a start.


Forero said:


> Si existen las formas de _-iera_, _-iese_, _iendo_, ¿por qué no las de _-a_ o _-e_? Por ejemplo, si se usa _denegriendo_ o _denegriésemos_, ¿por qué no _denegramos_ y no _denegren_?


_Denegren_ is stem-stressed. But you're right about the 1st and 2nd plur. pres. subj. forms: These are the only two forms where we find a stressed suffix that does not begin with ‹i›. So it would be good to test speakers' intuitions about these forms to find out what the underlying rule is (if there actually is one).


Forero said:


> I joined WR specifically to understand these verbs. Since then, I have learned a lot and, I hope, helped a lot, but I never got the answer I came here for. My original thread was here. I am still curious.


You asked a question in that thread about whether the existing forms of defective verbs were always regular, or if they could show stem vowel alternations. I have only found one example in the DRAE: _preterir_, which is _i_-defective but otherwise supposedly conjugated like _pedir_. So, _pret*i*rió_, _pret*i*riendo_, etc.


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## OBrasilo

What about _abolisco_ or _abolizco_? After all, the corresponding Italian form of _abolire_ is _abolisco_. Same for the others, _agredir_ in Italian exists as _aggredire_ with 1st person singular as _aggredisco_, same for _transgredir_ (_trasgredire_), with _trasgredisco_, etc. So I think the 1st persons singular of said verbs even in Spanish should be sought with _-sc_ or _-z_c.


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## CapnPrep

OBrasilo said:


> What about _abolisco_ or _abolizco_? After all, the corresponding Italian form of _abolire_ is _abolisco_.


Yes, but Spanish is not Italian… In Spanish, _abolisco_ could only be a form of the verb *_aboliscar_, and _abolizco_ could only be a form of the verb *_abolizcar_, *_abolicir_, or *_abolicer_.


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## merquiades

CapnPrep said:


> Yes, but Spanish is not Italian… In Spanish, _abolisco_ could only be a form of the verb *_aboliscar_, and _abolizco_ could only be a form of the verb *_abolizcar_, *_abolicir_, or *_abolicer_.



Many of the -ir(e) verbs which add the infix (-iss-,-isc-, eix) in French and Italian have infinitives ending in -cer in Spanish:  establecer, compadecer, obedecer, ofrecer (seems there are 115).  Abolir could have naturally become *abolecer but it didn't.  Garantir became garantizar but that's a bit marginal,  *abolizar would be odd.  I still would believe these verbs are defective because their synonyms are much more popular so there's no need to have them.


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## Ben Jamin

The Verbix gives the following pattern:
*Presente*
yo       abolo
tú       aboles
él       abole
nosotros abolimos
vosotros abolís
ellos    abolen


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## CapnPrep

merquiades said:


> I still would believe these verbs are defective because their synonyms are much more popular so there's no need to have them.


But it could also be the opposite: the synonyms developed and became more popular because the original verbs were defective. 


Ben Jamin said:


> The Verbix gives the following pattern:


Yes, we've already said that _abolir_ does have a full conjugation, according to current dictionaries and other references. But actually you will notice that the non-_i _forms are grayed out in Verbix: that is how they indicate defective/hypothetical forms.


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## Forero

CapnPrep said:


> Here are all the verbs I could find in the DRAE or in the DPD with the mention "U. solo las formas cuya desinencia empieza por -i":
> 
> 
> arrecir[se], aterir[se], [des]colorir, *compungir*, *desabrir*, embaír, empedernir, *manir*, desvaír, preterir, abolir, *garantir*


All these in the list with stressable stem vowels other than _e_ or _o_ would seem to put an end to the connection with stem-vowel mutations.





> ...
> 
> You asked a question in that thread about whether the existing forms of defective verbs were always regular, or if they could show stem vowel alternations. I have only found one example in the DRAE: _preterir_, which is _i_-defective but otherwise supposedly conjugated like _pedir_. So, _pret*i*rió_, _pret*i*riendo_, etc.


My idea was that, if all the verbs with -_e_-_ir_ had all the same vowels in forms with _i_ in the _desinencia_, that would be the regular pattern and thus not an irregularity.  Then the "defective" verbs would be the ones that broke the rule by being too "regular" and thus confusing and to be avoided.

These forms of _preterir_ do seem to destroy that theory.

It seems all that is left is that somebody arbitrarily decided to divide the "nonexistent" forms from the exant forms according to the first vowel letter in the _desinencia_ regardless of stress patterns or vowel mutations, somebody that likes "rules" like "_i_ before _e_ except after _c_".


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## CapnPrep

Forero said:


> All these in the list with stressable stem vowels other than _e_ or _o_ would seem to put an end to the connection with stem-vowel mutations.


You're right, a different explanation is needed for those verbs, but there may not be a single explanation that accounts for all the cases. We can't exclude a priori the possibility that there are different subclasses of _i_-defective verbs that are defective for distinct reasons. It is mysterious why they would all be defective in exactly the same forms of the conjugation, but like you I suspect that this specific rule about "endings beginning with _i_" was a normative invention. I doubt that it could have been completely arbitrary, however. I think it was an attempt to codify a a genuine morphological difficulty that speakers perceived when using these verbs.

If it was an invention, we should be able to find out who invented it, or at least when.


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## Forero

So who wrote the first dictionary in which this "rule" appears?


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## merquiades

Forero said:


> All these in the list with stressable stem vowels other than _e_ or _o_ would seem to put an end to the connection with stem-vowel mutations.My idea was that, if all the verbs with -_e_-_ir_ had all the same vowels in forms with _i_ in the _desinencia_, that would be the regular pattern and thus not an irregularity.  Then the "defective" verbs would be the ones that broke the rule by being too "regular" and thus confusing and to be avoided.
> 
> These forms of _preterir_ do seem to destroy that theory.
> 
> It seems all that is left is that somebody arbitrarily decided to divide the "nonexistent" forms from the exant forms according to the first vowel letter in the _desinencia_ regardless of stress patterns or vowel mutations, somebody that likes "rules" like "_i_ before _e_ except after _c_".



To summarize, mostly what captain et al have said, the mechanism for what has happened in Spanish is relatively easy, but the reasons are very hard to explain.

The -ir verb group in Spanish no longer supports stressed /é/ or /ó/ and as such have been "abolished" from the language.  Unstressed /e/ and /o/ are tolerated but even they are tending to disappear.  The desire is to get rid of them!  -ir verbs want i, u, and maybe a in stems.
1) Verbs with historic open /è/ and /ò/ diphthong to /ie/ and /ue/ (this can happen in regular -ar and -er verbs too).  When the desinence has /ie/ or /io/, the preceding /e/ and /o/ are raised to /i/ and /e/.   
Sentir, siento, sienta, sintió, sintieron, sintiera, sintiese, sintiere, sintiendo.
Morir, muero, muera, murió, murieron, muriera, muriese, muriere, muriendo.
When the verb ending has a stressed /í/, /e/ and /o/ are tolerated.    
Sentía, sentí, sentiste, sentimos, sentido
Moría, morí, moriste, morimos.
2) -ir verbs with historic closed /é/ raise to /í/ when stressed, 
raise to /í/ when unstressed and preceding stressed /ió/ and /ié/ desinences,
remain /e/ before a stressed /í/ ending.   Pedir, pido, pida, pidió, pidiera, pidiendo etc. but pedido, pedí
This pattern is so strong that many verbs not having it traditionally (or any reason to have it) have adopted in relatively recent times:  medir, servir
3) all  -ir verbs with historic closed /ó/ have totally switched to /u/ in all forms, stressed or not:  podrir > pudrir, complir > cumplir
4) a large group of traditional -ir verbs have adopted -ecer endings.  See post #14

Now, after 1, 2, 3, or 4 normally stessed /e/ and /o/ in -ir have successfully been eliminated.  The verbs that escaped one of these paradigms become defective in any form that does not end in stressed /í/.  Spanish no longer excepts this in the same way it doesn't except words beginning with /sp/ or /st/ or words ending in an unstressed /u/.  Why did abolir, preterir, aguerrir etc. escape?  Because nobody uses them and they have more common synonyms?  Or what?

The result can be documented but it's not easy to understand why Spanish does not tolerate stressed /e/ and /o/ in -ir verbs?

Forero, if there is a "rule" it's recent.  Classical Spanish still had stessed /e/ and /i/ in -ir verbs on occasion.


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## XiaoRoel

> arrecir[se], aterir[se], [des]colorir, *compungir*, *desabrir*, embaír, empedernir, *manir*, desvaír, preterir, abolir, *garantir
> *


Arrecir(se), sinónimo de aterir, no se usa, en el español europeo al menos.
Aterir(se), en lo oral lo que se usa es el participio (generalmente como predicativo con estar) y el infinitivo, raramente el imperfecto.
Descolorir, sólo se usa el participio y es infinitivo.
Compungir, lo mismo.
Desabrir, lo mismo.
Embair, lo mismo.
Empedernir, sólo se usa el participio.
Manir, ya no se usa.
Desvaír, principalmente se usa el participio, algo el infinitivo y el imperfecto.
Preterir, cultismo ausente de la lengua oral.
Abolir, cultismo, Se usan todas las formas. En la lengua oral más que nada el participio y el infinitivo, aunque sólo entre gentes con estudios.
Garantir, no se usa.
Como os dije antes, son conjugaciones "fantasma", puro paradigma mecánico.*


*


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## Montesacro

merquiades said:


> Many of the -ir(e) verbs which add the infix (-iss-,-isc-, eix) in French and Italian have infinitives ending in -cer in Spanish:  establecer, compadecer, obedecer, ofrecer  (seems there are 115).



You certainly know that neither _offrire_ nor _offrir_ add the inchoative infix in their conjugation.
Not all Spanish verbs with infinitives ending in -cer have a corresponding inchoative cognate in Italian/French.


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## merquiades

Montesacro said:


> You certainly know that neither _offrire_ nor
> 
> _offrir_ add the inchoative infix in their conjugation.
> Not all Spanish verbs with infinitives ending in -cer have a corresponding inchoative cognate in Italian/French.


it does so in catalan. No
not all in every modern romance language. The -cer developing from -ir are an important development for spanish.


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