The verbs of talk-in-interaction can be divided into two types of inflections: weak and strong. Weak verbs in Danish take one of the following endings in the past tense: -de, -te or -ede as in the words arbejde-de ‘worked’, læs-te ‘read’ and vent-ede ‘waited’. Strongly inflected verbs, also called irregular verbs, are inflected without adding a suffix, e.g. drikke à drak ‘drink’ à ‘drank’. In some cases, however, for example in hang vs. hængte which both mean ‘hung’, there is an actual meaning difference at play i.e. jeg hængte jakken op ‘I hung (up) the jacket’ vs. jakken hang på knagen ‘the jacket hung on the coathook’. 

Below is an overview over these differently inflected verbs. In the overview you will find: weak verbs ending in –ð (soft d) in the past tense; weak verbs ending in –d(ə) in the past tense; weak verbs with vowel lengthening as ending in the past tense, and finally the strongly inflected verbs.

The reader must take notice of the fact that we have only chosen to illustrate the forms of stressed verbs, given that the weak verbs follow the general pattern of the strong verbs, but without stress and stød. If there is an exception to this, it will be clearly indicated.

  Here are some examples of different types of verbs. These are mere examples, see more in Monrad (2010).

Group 1: Soft d (ð) in the past tense (or –d), no vowel alteration in the stem

Stød plays an important role in the meaning of verbs in Danish talk-in-interaction. All the verbs in group 1 which can have stød, have it in the imperative form. The verbs which have stød in the infinitive form typically also have it in the other strong forms, except for the present participle. The realization of the suffixes as either [-ð] or [-(ə)d] in the past and perfect participle forms is due to regional dialectal variance.

Next is an overview of the suffixes in group 1:

Group 2: d in past tense can have vowel alteration in the stem.

Some of these have stem-alteration in the past tense and the perfect participle, and therefore it is often the “stød” that shows the difference between the two forms (for more, see Sounds).

The suffixes in group 2 are:

 Group 3: Long past tense, vowel alteration in the stem

In group 3 the verbs are often different in the past tense and in the perfect participle. 

The suffixes of group 3 are:

Group 4: Strong verbs

The strong verbs are those that do not have any suffixes in the past tense. Most of them have vowel change in the past tense and in the perfect participle. The stød also changes with the different forms. We will limit ourselves two four examples here:

The suffixes are:

Auxiliary verbs

Auxiliary verbs are verbs that go with a non-finite main verb. There are tense auxiliary verbs such as være ’be’ and have ‘have’; passive auxiliaries like være ‘be/have’ and blive ‘will be’ and modal auxiliaries such as kunne ‘could’, skulle ‘should/must’, måtte ‘must/may/could’ and burde ‘should’.

Tense auxiliary verbs mark the tense of the main verb. In the example above er ’be/have’ acts as a tense auxiliary and, together with kommet ‘come (perfect tense)’.

In the example below the verb blir ‘will be’ acts as a passive auxiliary for the passive form angrebet ‘attacked’ in line 2:

The modal auxiliaries indicate the modality of the main verb, in other words, the way in which the main verb should be understood, e.g. hypothetically, wishing, possibility etc. In the example below the verbs må ‘may’ and ska ‘must’ act as modal auxiliaries. In line 3 må shows that it is allowed to call the emergency line in special circumstances. On the other hand, ska in line 5 indicates a norm or obligation i.e. an obligation not to call if it is not an emergency.

Tense and passive auxiliaries are some of the most frequently used verbs in talk-in-interaction. They can all occur both as auxiliary verbs and as main verbs. When they occur as auxiliaries they are normally unstressed, whereas if they occur as the main verb they are stressed. Therefore, we show them in both weak and strong forms below:

The stems of the auxiliary verbs are:
 

• vɛː-, vɛʌ, æ-/a- /eller æʌ̯ aʌ̯), va, vɛːʌ-
• hæ-, hæ-, (h)ɑ-, hæ:-, hɑf-
• bli-, ble(w)-, evt. også bli:w-

There is a consistent difference between the spoken forms of the auxiliary verbs kunne ‘could’, skulle ‘should’, ville ‘would’, måtte ‘may’ and the written forms of the same verbs. The modal verbs do not exist in the imperative or in the present participle.

Here is an overview of the forms of the main modal verbs:

The modal auxiliaries have their short form in the present tense, as opposed to the strong verbs of group 4 which have it in the past tense. Furthermore, their infinitive form is identical to the past tense. In our data the short forms of these verbs are the most commonly used, which is also true for the stressed verbs. The difference between the presence or absence of stød in the stressed forms of the verbs may be regiolectally conditioned.

Placements of the verbs

The verbs of talk-in-interaction are placed differently depending on their inflection, but the placement often corresponds to that of written language:

• Finite verbs (present and past – active as well as passive, and imperative) have a fixed position in the sentence and can only be placed at this position (for more see Sentence schemas).
• Infinitives (active and passive) either have a fixed position in the sentence or as part of an infinitive phrase that can be placed in same position as noun phrases (for more see Word groups/Phrases and Sætningsskema)
• Perfect Participles either have a fixed position in the sentence (the same as that of the infinitive) when it is part of a “compound tense” (see Verb phrase and other verbal constructions under Phrases) or behave like adjectives.
• Verbs in the present participle are the core of verbal constructions and are occur in the same positions as adjectives and adverbs.

When verbs appears alone or are absent

Most often verbs do not occur by themselves in a turn, but when they do it is often as a repair or as an imperative. In the following example the imperative of se ‘see’ constitutes a single turn:

We have not found an example of a separate verb working as repair in our data, but here is an experienced example written down from memory:

In the example above a separate verb in line 2 points to a problem in the previous utterance, and is then corrected by another separate verb in line 3.

Turns-at-talk can also omit verbs all together. That often happens in response-turns to e.g. a yes/no-question, but in lines 12, 13 and 14 below the verb-less utterances act as meaningful contributing units in and of themselves.

According to the grammar of written language, line 14 lacks the copula verb er ‘is’ after det ‘that’. But our data suggests that the Danish copula is often assimilated with the previous pronoun (see more under Copula drop). On the other hand, line 13 is characterized by the obvious absence of any verb. This shows that verbs of talk-in-interaction are not always necessary in order to create meaningful units.