Defective Verbs · 6:48pm Apr 4th, 2017
Once upon a space, during an Internet far far nearby...
I recently recalled a conversation I had a few years ago with friend and fellow author Integral Archer on the subject of language (a common subject at the time since we were both editing for each other, and both under the belief that if our language was accurate, more people would read and like our stories). Actually, he linked me to a post on r/latin in which someone was asking for help translating "haters gonna hate" into Latin for a tattoo. In a reply it's mentioned that the latin verb "to hate" is defective.
"Defective verbs? What are those?" I asked, having never heard of such a thing before.
Turns out, they're a category of verbs that don't exist in certain tenses, numbers, persons, etc. because apparently that's a thing that can happen in languages. Now, to me, this seemed silly. "Why can't you just fix them?" I proposed. After all, it made perfect sense to me that if you're a linguist and you're cataloging all the forms of a verb that exist in a language, and if you encounter a verb that simply is never used in such certain tenses/numbers/whatever, that you could simply fill them in with whatever seems etymologically consistent for similar verbs that are used in those tenses/persons/whomevers so that they still exist even if nobody ever actually uses it.
It's a simple and elegant solution, is it not? Fix the defective verbs.
Apparently my easy fixes were as silly to him as defective verbs were to me. The end result is that our conversation became adapted into an entire chapter of his story Subjunctive, something I was quite pleased to see. It's a story I definitely recommend; it's about a changeling linguist sent to infiltrate Canterlot and provide reconnaissance for the invasion. The chapter in question is a conversation said changelinguist has with one of the royal guard.
Subjunctive is okay. A bit long and meandering, and really weird, but whatever, it's a fanfic.