ABSTRACT
The verbal system was the earliest segment of Indo-European grammar to be capably described. Applying insights based on ancient Indian grammar, Bopp compared the Greek and Latin verb with that of Sanskrit, concluding essentially that Sanskrit had maintained the verbal system of the parent language. The results of this conclusion are still obvious in standard treatments of the proto-language. Szemerényi, for example, presents a view of its verbal system that is a composite of the Greek verb, with its many forms related to a base expressed in an infinitive. Accordingly, he assigned to Sanskrit three voices — active, middle, passive — each with seven tenses — present, imperfect, aorist, perfect, pluperfect, future, conditional, as well as other forms (1970 [1989]: 244).
