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An inchoative verb, sometimes called an " inceptive" verb, shows a process of beginning or becoming. Productive inchoative exist in several languages, including the suffixes present in Latin and Ancient Greek, and consequently some Romance languages. Not all verbs with inchoative suffixes have retained their inceptive meaning. In Italian, for example, present indicative finisco 'I finish' contains the form of the suffix, while present indicative finiamo 'we finish' does not, yet the only difference in meaning is that of person subject; the suffix is now semantically inert.
Inchoative verbs are affected in only their first, second, third and third person plural conjugations. This can be seen below in the table below comparing the present indicative conjugations of the pure verb ‘dormir’ (to sleep) with the inchoative verb ‘servir’ (to serve):
| 1st | dorm | serv eixo, serv esc, serv eixi, serv isc, serv isc |
| 2nd | dorms | serv eixes, serv ixes |
| 3rd | dorm | serv eix, serv ix |
| 1st pl. | dormim | servim |
| 2nd pl. | dormiu | serviu |
| 3rd pl. | dormen | serv eixen, serv ixen |
It is important to note that as nearly all of the 3rd category verbs are inchoative, there is very little, if any, relationship between the inchoative verbs of Catalan and the traditional inceptive meaning and function of inchoative verbs. It is most likely that this verb sub-category is named ‘inchoative’ because the associated morpheme ‘-eix-‘ stems directly from the Latin inchoative morpheme ‘-sc-‘, despite its function and usage having disappeared.
Frequentative verb forms in Homer and Herodotus use the same suffix.
Not all inchoatives are marked like this, however, e.g. kuolla "to die".
The translative case marks "becoming something" on the noun, thus a target state is marked with the translative case ( -ksi): lehti vaalenee keltaiseksi "the leaf fades to yellow". The transformation from a state is marked with the elative case ( -sta): lehti vaalenee tummanvihreästä keltaiseksi "the leaf fades from dark green to yellow". In eastern Karelian dialects, the exessive case ( -nta) specifically refers to inchoative changes.
In Western Armenian, the penultimate vowel tends to weaken or drop out, so the -անալ suffix is more commonly -նալ, sometimes pronounced -ընալ (հիւանդնալ, նիհարնալ, կարմրընալ).
Inchoatives are considered part of the third conjugation, but they form a special category because the infix drops in the past tense; while regular third conjugation verbs add ց to the present stem, for the inchoatives the ց appears in the place of the dropped ն.
The infix generally retains its inchoative meaning in modern usage, although sometimes the verbs are translated to other languages as simple verbs because the inchoative meaning requires a compound that may be awkward or unnatural in a language that lacks this aspect. (գողանալ - to steal, lit. become thief). This convention does not extend as broadly to the past tenses, where the aorist past has to be translated as an inceptive verb in order to distinguish it from imperfect tenses (e.g., հիւանդանում է may be translated as "he is sick" rather than "he becomes sick," but for հիւանդացաւ, "he became sick" is more precise than "he was sick," which can also be հիւանդ էր, հիւանդանում էր, հիւանդացել է, etc.)
It remains a very productive grammatical feature, and almost any adjective and some nouns can be made inchoative verbs simply by the addition of the suffix -անալ / -նալ.Hagopian, Gayane. Armenian for Everyone. Caravan Books, Ann Arbor, 2005
There are verbs that have a similar form to the inchoative verbs but are different. The similarity may be derived from the similar sounding but grammatically different verbal ending -ենալ, especially in Western Armenian dialects, where dropping the weak penultimate vowel merges -ենալ and -անալ into -նալ. In other cases, the ն derives from an irregular root that belongs to the third conjugation or was subsumed into the third conjugation because of phonetic similarity. The latter category can be recognized by the irregular past tense forms that drop the ն.
The suffix survives in English as -en, and is still somewhat productive although there are other suffixes such as -ify which compete with it. However, verbs with this suffix are now primarily Ergative verb, and also have a causative sense ("to cause to become") when used transitively. Some examples:
Swedish also retains use of the suffix, which is still somewhat productive. Some examples:
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