Cornish verbs are made up the stem or the root plus an ending. The stem of the verb gives the general meaning and the ending provides information about the subject of the verb (who did the action), the tense (when), aspect (whether it was a continuous action or not) and mood (indicative or subjunctive). For example, prenav is made up of the stem pren meaning "buy" and the ending -av which indicates that the subject is the first person and the tense is the indicative present.
The infinitive in Cornish is also known as the verbal noun. For example, prena is translated as "to buy" and is a verbal noun with the meaning of "buying". This becomes clear when forming sentences using the infinitive or verbal noun together with a pronoun. Possessive pronouns are used with infinitives or verbal nouns. For example, ev a vynn y brena which means "he wants to buy it" or literally "he wants its buying", and yma ev orth y brena which means "he is buying it" or literally "he is at its buying". Note that an inflected verb takes direct object pronouns. For example, ev a'n pren "he buys it", ev a'n prenas "he bought it" and ev a'n prensa "he would buy it".
Some verbs are only found in the verbal noun form and are not conjugated. These verbs are only used with auxiliary verbs, and are so indicated in the full list. However in recent usage, some of these verbs, such as prenassa, have begun to be conjugated.
yma hi ow tiwrosa she is cycling
mar kwre'ta gwibessa if you waste time
pan wrussons i sevia when they went strawberry picking
ev a wre pyskessa he used to go fishing
Defective verbs do not have a full range of conjugations and are only used in certain forms.
y telledh aga bos war-barth it is right (proper) that they are together
"Meur ras!" yn-medh ev "Thanks!" he said
ny'm deur it doesn't matter to me
y kodhvia dhedhi y wul she should have done it
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