Lezgian (Nakh-Dagestanian, Lezgic)

The normal verbal paradigm is based on three stems: the masdar, the infinitive and the aorist (Haspelmath 1993: 136-39). A number of verbs have only infinitive stem forms, and on top of that show additional peculiarities or restrictions. Two types of defective verb are found:

1. Copular verbs (ja ‘be’ & the locative copulas awa ‘be in’, gwa ‘be near’, gala ‘be behind’, kwa ‘be under’ ala ‘be on’) all lack the future, and show two additional peculiarities:

• The bare stem (e.g. awa) is used in place of the rarely-used imperfective (e.g. awa-z-wa).
• The negative imperfective participle takes the negative suffix -č, making it identical to the imperfective past. In the case of normal verbs, the imperfective participle takes the negative prefix te-.

2. The second class of defective verbs are statives with a dative subject. These have an imperfective converb, imperfective and future, with the additional peculiarity that the future has present tense meaning, i.e. the imperfective and future are essentially synonymous (for more on that phenomenon see here).

		normal verb: 'go'		copular verb 'be in'		dative subject verb 'like'
		positive	negative	positive	negative	positive	negative
masdar stem	masdar	fi-n	te-fi-n	---------	---------	---------	---------
	OPT	fi-raj	te-fi-raj	---------	---------	---------	---------
IPFV stem	IPFV CVB	fi-z	te-fi-z	awa-z	awa-č	k'an-z	ta-k'an-z
	IPFV	fi-z-wa	fi-z-wa-č	(awa-z-wa), awa	(awa-z-wa-č), awa-č	k'an-z-awa	k'an-z-awa-č
	PST IPFV	fi-z-wa-j	fi-z-wa-č-ir	awa-j	awa-č-ir	---------	---------
	IPFV PTCP		te-fi-z-wa-j			---------	---------
	FUT	fi-d-a	te-fi-da-j	---------	---------	k'an-da	te-k'an-da
AOR stem	AOR	fe-na	fe-na-č	---------	---------	---------	---------
	PRF	fe-n-wa	fe-n-wa-č	---------	---------	---------	---------
	AOR PST	fe-na-j	fe-na-č-ir	---------	---------	---------	---------
Note: verbs do not necessarily distinguish all three stems; the imperfective negative and future negative of 'like' have been deduced from Haspelmath's description.

In the case of the copulas, Haspelmath notes that there is a non-defective verb 'be' that may be used to express the missing tense-apsect distinctions (p. 317).

References

Haspelmath, Martin. 1993. A grammar of Lezgian. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.