Alexander Ryssdal-Banoun
This document takes a Wittgensteinian approach to learning Italian verbs. I treat no rules as sacrosanct, and consider only patterns and connections. These patterns are implicitly given different weights based on the context. Form follows usage, and mapping to English is considered a tool that may be helpful in some cases, detrimental in others. In the service of learning a language, the connectionist approach is the only valid way. To actually be able to use and understand these verbs fluently therefore there is no substitute to speaking and reading. I have found that the Michel Thomas method, combined with daily conversational practice, the reading of Italian material and the practice of active recall utilizing flashcards, is the optimal way to learn a language. Each tense is treated not as a grammar rule, but as a language game: a distinct psychological activity with its own intent, rules, and patterns. We treat no linguistic form as 'right' or 'wrong' in isolation; forms gain meaning only through their use in context.
As such, this document is focused on psychological intent rather than traditional grammatical categories. Each 'family' groups tenses that share a common psychological function such as stating facts, simulating alternatives, expressing subjectivity, or issuing commands. Below the family level, each tense dictates its own structure based on what is actually difficult about it. The Passato Prossimo gets extensive treatment of auxiliary selection and pronoun architecture because that is where the real challenge lives. The Imperfetto gets a brief, confident treatment because it is mechanically simple. The Congiuntivo Presente is front-loaded with its triggers and false flags because knowing when to use it matters more than knowing how to conjugate it. No uniform template is imposed: each game breathes according to its own needs, shaped by the contours of the subject matter rather than by a predetermined scaffold. This follows from the Wittgensteinian commitment to looking and seeing (PI §66) rather than assuming a common structure.
The document is organized around five interrelated Wittgensteinian concepts:
Families group tenses by shared psychological intent, the form of life they participate in. The Famiglia dei Fatti, della Simulazione, della Soggettività, and del Comando are not grammatical categories but anthropological ones: they describe different human activities (stating, imagining, doubting, commanding) that happen to require distinct verb machinery. Following Wittgenstein's insight that "to imagine a language means to imagine a form of life" (PI §19), each family corresponds to a distinct form of linguistic life. Crucially, no family is foundational. The Presente is not the "default" from which other tenses deviate, any more than "Slab!" is the foundation of "Five red slabs, please." Each tense is a complete language game in its own right. "We are not regarding the language-games which we describe as incomplete parts of a language, but as languages complete in themselves" (Brown Book, §5).
Games are the individual tenses, treated not as rules to be memorized but as activities to be practiced. Just as Wittgenstein's builders (PI §2) play a complete language game with only four words, each tense constitutes a complete game with its own intent, moves, and criteria for success. The Passato Remoto is not a variant of the Passato Prossimo; it is a different game played on a different field, namely that of historical narration.
Algorithms describe the mechanical pattern, the conjugation formula. But following Wittgenstein, the algorithm is never the meaning. Knowing the formula "Radical + Vowel Theme + Person Marker" no more gives you the Presente than knowing the rules of chess makes you a chess player. Wittgenstein distinguishes several roles a rule can play: "The rule may be an aid in teaching the game. The learner is told it and given practice in applying it. Or it is a tool of the game itself. Or a rule is employed neither in the teaching nor in the game itself; nor is it set down in a list of rules. One learns the game by watching how others play it" (PI §54). The algorithms in this document function in the first two ways, as aids in teaching and as tools for reference. But they are not the game.
And the algorithm, like any rule, can itself be further explained by other rules, and those by still others. Wittgenstein imagines a chart used to play a language game, then asks: "Could not these rules again be explained by further rules? Certainly. On the other hand, is a rule incompletely explained if no rule for its usage has been given?" (Brown Book, §21). The chain of explanations must end somewhere. "A rule stands there like a signpost" (PI §85), and "the signpost is in order, if, under normal circumstances, it fulfils its purpose" (PI §87). We do not need a rule for interpreting every rule. At some point we simply act: "I have been trained to react in a particular way to this sign, and now I do so react to it" (PI §198).
In a similar spirit, "Now I can go on" (PI §151) is the moment this document hopes to produce. Wittgenstein describes a pupil watching a series of numbers being written: 1, 5, 11, 19, 29. The pupil tries formulas, and when the pattern clicks, he shouts "Now I can go on!" (Brown Book, §62). What happened in that moment? Perhaps a formula occurred to him, perhaps he simply felt "a slight quick intake of breath, what one might call a slight start" (Brown Book, §64). The point is that "Now I can go on" does not name a hidden mental process; it is something we say under particular circumstances, warranted by those circumstances (PI §154, §179). The algorithms in this document are the formulas that have given me that moment of recognition. Whether they produce the same moment for the reader depends not on the formula alone, but on the whole background of training, practice, and context that the reader brings to the page.
Clusters replace the traditional category of "irregular verbs." Wittgenstein showed that the members of a family need not share a single common property; they may be linked by resemblances without requiring an essence, in "a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing" (PI §66). The irregular verbs do not share one rule they all break; they form clusters of family resemblance: the -TTO cluster, the -SO cluster, the -GO cluster, each united by phonetic or historical kinship rather than by a single governing principle. Categories overlap: a verb may belong to both the GO-cluster and the Root Restoration cluster, just as a person may resemble their mother in the nose and their father in the gait. This is family resemblance, not taxonomy.
A fifth concept, the Vettori d'Uso (Vectors of Use), is introduced as a context cue. These are not definitions of when to use a tense but descriptions of the situations in which native speakers actually deploy them. Meaning is use (PI §43), and the vectors are the record of that use. The Vettori d'Uso function as what Wittgenstein called criteria (PI §580): not causes of the tense, but the observable features by which we recognize which game is being played. "Già" does not cause the Trapassato; it is a criterion for identifying it.
I have produced this document primarily to satisfy my academic and intellectual curiosity about how verbs are used in the overarching way of life that is Italian. It represents an attempt to deconstruct the composite concept designated 'verb usage' into what I have analyzed to be its most important constituent elements from a Wittgensteinian point of view. This document aspires to be an example of an übersichtliche Darstellung: a "surveyable representation" (PI §122). Not a theory of Italian verbs, but a way of laying out the connections between them so that they can be seen clearly. The goal is not to discover hidden rules but to arrange what is already in plain sight.
These observations are patterns that recur across the entire verb system. They are not rules to be applied mechanically but heuristics that, once internalized, allow you to predict the shape of forms you have never seen before. They represent the structural regularities that survive even when individual verbs behave idiosyncratically.
The single most useful boundary in the entire system. -ARE verbs are the largest conjugation class and the most regular, but they are also the class that undergoes the most transformations when crossing into other families. In the Futuro and Condizionale, -ARE verbs mutate their vowel theme from A to E (Il Ponte di Velocità), becoming indistinguishable from -ERE verbs. In the Congiuntivo Presente, -ARE verbs swap from A to I while -ERE and -IRE verbs swap from E/I to A. In the Imperativo, -ARE verbs flip their Tu ending from -i (Presente) to -a, while -ERE/-IRE verbs keep -i. The -ARE class is the one that shifts; the others tend to hold steady. Meanwhile, in the Gerundio, -ARE verbs take -ando while -ERE and -IRE verbs both take -endo, reinforcing the fundamental two-way split.
Across nearly every tense, irregularity concentrates in the Io and Loro forms, while Noi and Voi remain anchored to regularity. This holds for the GO-cluster in the Presente (Vengo/Vengono vs. Veniamo/Venite), for the modals (Posso/Possono vs. Possiamo/Potete), for the Congiuntivo Presente (irregular stem in singular and Loro, infinitive stem in Noi/Voi), and even for the Passato Remoto (the 1-3-6 pattern, where Io/Lui/Loro carry the irregular stem while Tu/Noi/Voi stay regular). Three heuristics capture this:
If you see the pure Vowel Theme (A/E/I) followed by a standard marker, you are looking at the Default Reality (Presente or Imperfetto). If you see the Vowel Theme shift (an -ARE verb using 'i' or 'e'), you know you have crossed into a different family. The A-to-I swap signals the Congiuntivo Presente. The A-to-E shift signals the Futuro or Condizionale. The preservation of the Vowel Theme with a V-marker signals the Imperfetto. The double-S after the Vowel Theme signals the Congiuntivo Imperfetto. These auditory markers are the fastest way to identify which game is being played when you hear Italian spoken.
A verb that is regular in the Presente may have an irregular participle (Scrivere is regular in the Presente but gives Scritto, not *Scrivuto). A verb that is wildly irregular in the Presente (Andare: Vado, Vai, Va, Vanno) becomes perfectly regular in the Congiuntivo Imperfetto (Andassi). Regularity is a property of a verb in a specific tense, not a property of the verb itself. The connectionist approach tracks patterns across tenses rather than labeling verbs as globally regular or irregular.
A small group of verbs (Fare, Dire, Bere, Tradurre, Proporre, Porre, Trarre) contracted their infinitives over the centuries but restore their original Latin roots when conjugated. These roots (Fac-, Dic-, Bev-, Traduc-, Propon-, Pon-, Tra-) appear in the Presente, Imperfetto, Congiuntivo Presente, Congiuntivo Imperfetto, and Gerundio. Learn the root once and you hold the key to five tenses. Compounds always inherit the parent verb's pattern: Produrre conjugates like Tradurre, Supporre like Porre, Predire like Dire.
Essere's total irregularity is not an accident of history but a consequence of its centrality to human life. Wittgenstein compared a word that does too much work to a worn coin whose face has been rubbed blank (PI §71 note). "Being" has been used so heavily, in so many games, for so many millennia, that its surface has been completely eroded. Every tense batters it anew. This is why no algorithm can capture it: the word has been shaped not by rules but by the accumulated force of every context in which humans have needed to express existence. Essere draws from at least five completely unrelated stems across the tense system: Son- (Presente), Er- (Imperfetto), Sar- (Futuro/Condizionale), Foss- (Congiuntivo Imperfetto), and Fu-/Stat- (Passato Remoto/Participio). Each tense reaches into a different historical stratum.